Afghanistan News June 8, 2004

June 8, 2004

Afghanistan hit by wave of attacks as voting sites open nationwide
Tuesday June 8, 3:02 AM AFP
Violent weekend attacks against UN workers and government officials have renewed fears for Afghanistan's landmark democratic polls this year, as voter registration sites opened across the whole country for the first time and another US soldier died in the south.

The latest attacks come as US-led coalition soldiers fight an escalating insurgency in the south and southeast, mountainous regions believed to be home to a permanent Taliban presence.

A US soldier was killed and two others wounded Monday after their vehicle hit a roadside bomb in southcentral Uruzgan province, a US military spokeswoman said.

"One US soldier was killed today and two were wounded during a patrol after their Humvee drove onto an improvised explosive device ... near Deh Rawood," about 400 kilometres (310 miles) southwest of Kabul, Master Sergeant Cindy Beam told AFP.

UN staff working on the elections survived a bold attack in southeastern Paktia province on Sunday when militants attempted to ambush their four-vehicle convoy with two landmines and followed up with small-arms fire.

The 15 international and Afghan staff, who were being escorted by armed police, were unharmed.

The incident is the most serious since two Britons working on security for the polls were beaten and shot dead with their Afghan interpreter in eastern Nuristan a month ago.

A spokesman for the US military, which was called in to provide air support to the besieged UN convoy, said the attack had been a "fairly protracted engagement."

Lieutenant Colonel Tucker Mansager said the US-led coalition was working closely with the Afghan government and the United Nations to provide "a secure and stable framework for these democratic elections in September."

But Medecins Sans Frontieres, a medical aid group which lost three European and two Afghan staff in a shocking ambush and shooting last week, said the coalition's activities were putting aid workers at risk.

Actions such as distributing leaflets linking the provision of aid with cooperation with soldiers "create a misperception that humanitarian action is in service of someone's military or political cause," the group's director of Dutch operations Kenny Gluck told AFP.

While it is not known who is responsible for the recent attacks, remnants of the Taliban regime have threatened to disrupt the elections scheduled for September and warned Afghans against working with the electoral process.

Voter registration sites were open in each of Afghanistan's 34 provinces Monday after a small number of booths started work in southeastern Paktika province.

"I can confirm voter registration sites opening in Nuristan yesterday (Sunday) and Paktika today (Monday)," electoral commission spokesman Mohammed Azam said. "This covers the whole country."

The main phase of voter registration began on May 1 but several provinces were initially excluded because of security concerns. So far some three million of an estimated 10 million eligible Afghans have registered to vote.

The US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai has stressed that elections will go ahead in September as planned, but fears are rife that the polls may be hurt by the ongoing insurgency and funding problems.

The presidential and parliamentary polls are projected to cost around 101 million US dollars. But despite large pledges, the United Nations, which is helping to organise the vote, has so far no received no money to pay for them.

While the international community has pledged some 70 million dollars, "not one penny is in the bank," UN spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva said Sunday.

Meanwhile, violent attacks show no sign of abating.

In addition to the attack on the UN convoy on Sunday, suspected Taliban killed a policeman in a three-hour attack on a government headquarters in eastern Logar province.

US-led troops, which now number some 20,000 in the country, fought militants in Zabul, Kandahar and Uruzgan provinces on Thursday, Friday and Sunday in engagements which left at least 17 suspected Taliban dead.

Aid groups suspend more Afghan work after attack
By Sayed Salahuddin Monday June 7, 7:32 PM
KABUL (Reuters) - Five foreign aid groups have suspended operations in a northwestern Afghan province after attackers threw a grenade at the office of an Italian aid agency.

The attack on the office of Alisei in Qalaye Naw, capital of Badghis province, caused no casualties, but comes after five aid workers were killed in Badghis last week.

Sunday night's blast prompted the agency and four other foreign non-governmental organisations to suspend operations in Badghis, a foreign aid official said.

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) has already suspended its its operations in Afghanistan after three of its European and two Afghan staff were killed in Badghis last Wednesday.

A spokesman for the United Nations said its agencies were continuing to work in the province, which was until recently considered one of the safer parts of Afghanistan.

Provincial police chief Amir Shah Nayebzada said Sunday's attack had involved a single handgrenade, which caused no casualties and little damage. He blamed Taliban militants and their al Qaeda allies for the attack.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for last Wednesday's attack, accusing foreign aid agencies of supporting the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.

The latest attack came hours after a U.S. convoy carrying foreign and Afghan election officials was attacked with rocket propelled grenades and small arms fire in the southeastern province of Paktia. That attack also caused no casualties.

The Taliban, overthrown by U.S.-led troops in late 2001, has declared a holy war against the Afghan government, foreign troops and aid workers and have vowed to disrupt landmark elections scheduled for September.

Continuing insecurity in the provinces has already forced President Hamid Karzai to postpone the polls from June.

About 750 people have been killed in militant-related violence in Afghanistan since last August, making it the bloodiest period since the Taliban's fall.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch said at least 32 aid workers had been killed in Afghanistan since March last year, disrupting humanitarian aid to millions of Afghans.

On Friday, Amnesty International called on the international community to take steps to restore security, saying that reconstruction efforts would otherwise be undermined.

The violence has occurred despite the presence of about 20,000 U.S.-led troops hunting militants in the provinces and about 6,500 NATO-led peacekeepers mainly based in Kabul.

U.S. soldier killed by Afghan bomb
Monday, June 7, 2004 Posted: 1855 GMT (0255 HKT)
TAWARA, Afghanistan (CNN) -- A U.S. soldier was killed and two others wounded Monday near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar as American troops battled Taliban fighters along the rugged border with Pakistan, a U.S. commander said.

The soldier died after a remote-controlled roadside bomb detonated underneath his Humvee near Deh Rawod in Afghanistan's Uruzgan Province, according to U.S. Central Command.

He was one of three soldiers in the vehicle who were taken to a military hospital in Kandahar.

About 20,000 troops from the Army's 25th Infantry Division and the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit have been fighting Taliban forces in provinces along the Pakistan border in recent days.

In other violence, two improvised explosive devices detonated Monday alongside an Army convoy, and an Army camp in Paktika Province was the target of a rocket attack overnight. No injuries were reported in either incident.

Seven U.S. troops have been killed in the past month in Afghanistan, where U.S. troops are battling remnants of the al Qaeda terrorist network and the Taliban militia that once ruled most of the country.

U.S. Calls in Air Strikes After Afghan Convoy Hit
Mon Jun 7,11:00 AM ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - U.S. troops called in air strikes after a military convoy came under attack in Afghanistan's Uruzgan province Monday, a senior Afghan official said.

Uruzgan's governor Jan Mohammad Khan told Reuters that one of four vehicles in the U.S. convoy was hit by a blast in Deh Rawud district, but he did not know if this had caused any casualties.

However an official in Deh Rawud, who did not want to be identified, said he saw four U.S. servicemen being taken by stretcher to a helicopter after the blast.

Khan said U.S. troops called in air support and laid siege to suspected Islamic militant positions. "American forces have encircled the area and are not letting Afghan troops in there," he said.

The U.S. military was not immediately available for comment.

Reagan’s legacy overshadowed by Afghan ‘blowback’
Daily Times
Ronald Reagan’s legacy in Asia is most visible today on the Afghan-Pakistan frontier, where his drive to end the Cold War climaxed with the CIA-backed humiliation of the Soviets in Afghanistan but lit the touchpaper of radical Islam that spawned Al-Qaeda.

Elsewhere in Asia he is noted for forging for some of Washington’s strongest-ever relationships with the Philippines, South Korea and China in a highly-personal bid to defeat communism. Reagan ruled over the CIA’s biggest ever operation, the funding and arming of the jihad (holy war) against Soviet troops who had invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and were driven out by US-armed Islamic militants 10 years later.

The Central Intelligence Agency spent billions of dollars arming and funding Islamic warriors to slip into Afghanistan from western Pakistan to fight the Soviets. “It was monumental, it was historic,” retired Pakistani general Hamid Gul, who headed the ISI military spy agency from 1987-1989, said of Reagan’s role in defeating the Soviets. “We were receiving arms and logistics from the CIA, we were partners in this struggle,” Gul told AFP, estimating the CIA spent six to seven billion dollars in supplying arms and logistics to Islamic fighters or “jihadis.” “The jihadis he supported. It was their resistance against the forces of occupation and repression — thatt’s what jihad is — that Reagan identified himself with,” Gul said.

His greatest achievement was that he stood behind the Islamic world when it was arrayed against the Soviet empire.” Pakistani analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi said Reagan “will always be remembered for American support to these extremist and hardline Islamic groups.” “Al-Qaeda took shape later on but they grew from this period. Some of the Al-Qaeda people were Arabs who fought in Afghanistan during these years, and once the Afghan cause was gone, they regrouped under Al-Qaeda and took up international causes,” Rizvi said. Billions of ammunition rounds and hundreds of thousands of weapons were smuggled over the border on mules and camels, writes US journalist George Crile in his detailed account of the CIA’s backing of the anti-Soviet jihad, “Charlie Wilson’s War.”

Gul blames not Reagan but his successors for the sprouting of Al-Qaeda from 1995. “It was derivative of American wrong policies following after Reagan. It was (George) Bush the first who started reversing policies, he abandoned Afghanistan and the urge for democracy awakened in the hearts of these Muslim fighters was ruthlessly curbed.”

Rizvi sees the roots of the militancy that scourges Pakistan today in the 1980s US-backed jihad.

“Reagan’s policies facilitated orthodoxy in Pakistan. Here the Americans and Pakistanis were building religious orthodox elements and Islamic militancy.” In East Asia too it was Reagan’s drive against communism that defined his legacy.

In South Korea Reagan is remembered as a strong guardian of the military alliance between Washington and Seoul with anti-communism at its core. “Ronald Reagan was the strongest-ever backer of the US-South Korean military alliance,” said Kim Sung-Han, a US expert of the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security.

Reagan’s support for Chun Doo-Hwan’s military dictatorship in the 1980s showed he was prepared to sacrifice South Korean democracy for a strong security alliance against North Korea. “For anti-communism’s sake, Reagan was prepared at one point to turn his back on democracy in South Korea,” said Han.

China’s relationship with the United States during Reagan’s presidency was based on the common strategic interest of curbing Soviet expansion, said Jia Qingguo, a US expert at Peking University. With Reagan’s successful visit to China in 1984, bilateral ties blossomed rapidly across the board including military-to-military ties that reached an apex before retreating after the end of the Cold War, he added.

Both sides felt that they shared some important common strategic interests. Both sides were opposed to Soviet expansion.”

In the Philippines Reagan is remembered for embracing dictator Ferdinand Marcos as a “dependable ally” in America’s fight against communism. Reagan had a particularly close relationship with Marcos until he was forced into exile on February 25, 1986. In the early hours of February 25 a tired and shaken Marcos asked US Senator Paul Laxalt, Reagan’s close friend, whether Reagan wanted him to stay on. Laxalt replied: “We can’t tell you what to do.”

Marcos replied: “Well then Senator, what do you think I should do?” Laxalt replied: “Cut and cut cleanly. The time has come.” Later that night Marcos, with the aid of US military helicopters was lifted from the grounds of the presidential palace and flown into exile. afp

Rights group says Afghanistan needs G8 help, especially more troops
NEW YORK, June 7 (AFP) - Overshadowed by events in Iraq and in the face of worsening security, Afghanistan requires critical support from the United States and other G8 members, especially "urgent" new troop deployments, Human Rights Watch said Monday.
The rights group said Afghan President Hamid Karzai should use his attendance at the Group of Eight summit in the US state of Georgia this week and a June 15 meeting with US President George W. Bush at the White House to press home these points.

"President Karzai should secure urgent new troop contributions for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan (ISAF) and pressure donor nations to increase assistance to help make the Afghan elections free and fair," HRW said in a statement.

"Numerous promises by donor governments over the last year, both to increase funding to Afghanistan and to supply troops to expand ISAF's geographic mandate, had already been broken," it said.

"It's time for the United States and its NATO allies to honor their pledges to provide aid and ensure security in Afghanistan before things deteriorate even further," HRW Asia Division deputy director Sam Zarifi said.

Donor nations had pledged less than would be required for planned September elections to succeed, HRW said.

"Troop commitments have lagged as well. Well over two years after its initial deployment, ISAF is still stationed almost exclusively in Kabul," the statement said.

It urged Karzai to give an "honest assessment" to world leaders he meets during the G8 summit and to Bush.

Five aid workers have been killed and an aid convoy attacked in the past week in Afghanistan.

Governor escaped unhurt, guards injured in south Afghanistan
KABUL, June 7 (Xinhua) -- The governor of southern Uruzgan province escaped unhurt but his bodyguards were injured as his vehicle came under attack by suspected Taliban, Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman said Monday.

"In a clean up operation launched by government troops in Uruzgan and surrounding areas Sunday three guards of the governor got wounded but the governor is safe and sound," Lutfullah Mashal told Xinhua.

Earlier in the day Taliban's spokesman Mullah Abdul Hakim Latifi claimed that Uruzgan's governor Jan Mohammad Khan Tokhi along with his three bodyguards were killed in action in Dai Chopan district of Zabul province at 5 p.m. Sunday.

Uruzgan, Zabul, Kandahar, Helmand and surrounding rugged areas in south Afghanistan have been hit by bloody violence since mid-May in which over 50 people including 30 militants, six US troops and five aid workers have been killed.

Since Taliban's downfall in late 2001, its remnants have threatened to kill any Afghan or foreigners who work under US clout to strengthen the US-backed Afghan government sway in the country.

Attackers Hurl Grenade at Religious School in Afghanistan
Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
KHOST, Afghanistan; 7 June (RFE/RL) -- Reports say attackers hurled a grenade at an Islamic religious school in southeastern Afghanistan.

The attack occurred late yesterday at the madrassa (religious school) in a village near the city of Khost, some 40 kilometers west of the border with Pakistan.

Provincial military commander, General Khial Baz Khan said two students who lived at the school were injured.

The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) said two students were killed and two others injured. The AIP report could not be independently confirmed.

Afghanistan's Karzai Begins Reelection Bid
The Washington Post 06/07/2004 By Pamela Constable Backing From U.S. a Mixed Blessing
KABUL - President Hamid Karzai is the public face of Afghanistan's troubled transition to democracy, the head of a weak civilian government in a country long controlled by gunmen, the beneficiary and victim of American support in a society ambivalent about its past relations with U.S. governments.

Karzai, 47, who is seeking election to a five-year term in September, arrives in Washington Tuesday to begin a two-week international tour that he hopes will serve as a high-profile curtain raiser for his campaign back home.

During the nearly three years since he was installed as Afghanistan's interim leader in a pact brokered by the United Nations following the U.S.-led ouster of Islamic Taliban rule, Karzai has been belittled as an American puppet, an indecisive leader and a hypocrite who touts democratic ideals while making backroom deals with gunmen in a bid to cling to power. But he prefers to describe himself as a realist who puts the need to pacify his jittery postwar nation before all other goals.

"The Afghan people want elections, and they want stability," he said in an interview Sunday on the lawn of his official residence. "Are they compatible? If there is a choice between bringing peace and security, and holding competitive elections, we must decide very carefully."

Barring an unforeseen or calamitous turn of events, Karzai likely will be elected to a five-year term in late September. Eight individuals have declared their intent to challenge him, including a woman physician, a former planning minister and a brother of Afghanistan's late guerrilla hero, Ahmad Shah Massoud. Other candidates could still emerge, but so far none enjoys either Karzai's national stature or international support, and election laws place all challengers at a further disadvantage by allowing only 30 days of campaigning.

U.N. officials and other foreign observers here have expressed increasing concerns that slow and regionally lopsided voter registration, delays in disarming regional militias and mounting Islamic militia attacks could undermine the credibility and security of the elections. But Karzai has said repeatedly that the vote, already delayed by three months, cannot be allowed to slip again.

Many Afghans say they believe Karzai is under U.S. pressure to hold elections soon to provide President Bush with a foreign policy success and bolster his reelection chances. Karzai will travel to Georgia and California this week, then visit the White House and address a joint session of Congress on June 15.

The Afghan president has also come under criticism in recent days for holding private talks with former Islamic militia leaders, prompting widespread speculation that he is offering to share power with unsavory ethnic rivals in order to remain in office.

But Karzai has repeatedly denied making a deal with the militia leaders and said he has no desire to govern in a coalition. In the interview, he said the Afghan public was clamoring for the right to choose its leaders, but he also said his victory at the polls would help strengthen the weak central government and maintain the momentum of national reconstruction.

"The Afghan people have suffered for years. We must provide them the opportunity to vote for and create a more legitimate government than we have today," he said. "I want to be more legitimate than I am today."

Yet Karzai, who lives in a park-like, heavily guarded residential compound with deer, fruit trees and tennis courts, also suggested he had acquired no love for the trappings of power, saying he is "embarrassed by the pomp" and dreams of retiring to a quiet garden spot in his native southern province of Kandahar.

Some Afghans deride Karzai as an "American president," advised by U.S. diplomats and surrounded by American bodyguards. His tenure is sometimes referred to as a "B-52 democracy" secured by 20,000 U.S. troops.

But most people appear to view his muscular U.S. backing -- which has been accompanied by a massive outlay of aid -- as a reassuring asset after a quarter-century of turmoil at the hands of warring domestic militias and predatory foreign neighbors.

In the interview, Karzai outlined his concerns and aspirations for the country, and he made clear his position, reportedly endorsed by his American adviser, that establishing a strong and stable government is a higher priority than building an instant or perfect democracy.

He also said he was less worried about the threat from Islamic terrorism and regional militias than about such issues as poor public service, official corruption, weak provincial administration and political interference by Afghanistan's neighbors.

Last week, Karzai was badly stung by American columnist Robert Novak who described him as "hopelessly corrupt." In the interview he defended his personal honesty and said he had been frustrated in attempts to attack corruption, especially because Afghan public institutions are weak and the reach of the central government is extremely limited.

"I know there is serious corruption, but somehow I cannot grab it; it is a mirage," Karzai said. He said he intends to create a special corruption court, and he vowed to publicly denounce and prosecute any official found to be corrupt, no matter how highly placed.

As for himself, the president quoted a proverb in the Pashto language: "A person who is naked is not afraid of water." Even if senior officials were to be drenched by scandal, he added, "I would not get wet."

The other major issue that concerns Afghans is intimidation and abuse by gunmen, who have controlled much of the country for years. An internationally backed program to disarm and demobilize some 50,000 fighters before elections has met with resistance from senior militia leaders.

But instead of standing up to the warlords, Karzai has angered many Afghans, including his own aides, by holding private negotiations with them during the past two weeks. The capital is rife with rumors of Karzai promising a share of power to men responsible for years of destructive factional fighting and rapacious rule.

"Mr. Karzai has the right to talk to everyone, to create a good atmosphere for elections. But if he makes a coalition with the fundamentalists, it will kill democracy," said Abdul Hamid Mobarez, the deputy information minister. "People want the warlords to be weakened, not made more powerful."

In the interview, the president sketched a different version of the meetings, saying the militia bosses had offered not to field a candidate against him out of patriotic motives. He said they agreed the country and its institutions "could not sustain" competitive elections between polarized camps without degenerating into conflict.

Karzai adamantly denied having made a deal to form a coalition government but said he wanted to bring the militia bosses "into the political process, not push them into a corner" or "frighten them away. . . . We are not going to conduct a court of the past."

Often described as a leader cut off from his constituents, Karzai acknowledged that ever since he escaped an assassination attempt in Kandahar in 2002, his personal security has become an obsessive priority for his Afghan and American staff.

But he said he takes the common pulse by meeting constantly with visitors from across the country, listening to their complaints and trying to act on them. Karzai also participates in a weekly radio show called "You and the President," in which he answers questions from the public, although his answers are taped.

Last week, he took questions on low public salaries, judicial bias and his criteria for selecting a new cabinet if elected. In his answer to the third caller, Karzai said he would choose senior aides "according to their patriotism and professionalism. . . . The next cabinet should be representative of the people and acceptable to all."

Karzai's challengers, although unlikely to defeat him, have already begun raising questions that could weaken his campaign or at least require a public airing. Some have criticized him for reaching out to "moderate" Taliban officials or neglecting the interests of his Pashtun ethnic group, the nation's largest.

Masooda Jalal, an outspoken physician who ran against Karzai in his successful bid to continue as transitional president during a national convention in 2002, said she was browbeaten by officials who accused her of undermining the U.N. process for Afghan democracy.

"People made the mistake of thinking the process and Karzai were the same thing," Jalal said. "I was seen as a challenge to both, so I was marginalized. I have no office, no party, no international support. I just want to represent myself and the democratic rights of Afghan women."

More recently, Karzai's opponents have jointly protested a provision in the new election law that requires all presidential candidates to collect 10,000 voter ID cards as proof of popular support, a requirement that could be seen as contravening ballot secrecy and a feat that few minority candidates can easily manage.

Last week Karzai said he would consider changing the law, and in the interview he stressed the importance of holding "free, fair and fearless elections," a phrase that seems likely to crop up in speeches as he tours the United States. But he clearly expects to win in September, and he clearly believes that continuity, rather than competition, is what's best for his politically fragile country.

"We are building a nation from scratch," he said. "People want stability and they have tasked me to deliver it to them. They see the train is moving, and they want the current pace to continue. They don't want me to cause friction . . . or make any sudden moves that could bring unnecessary bloodshed. They don't want the train to stop."

Foreign aid workers stay hidden in southwest Pakistan
QUETTA, Pakistan, June 7 (AFP) - Foreign aid workers stayed hidden in a hotel and private homes in southwest Pakistan Monday despite assurances from local authorities over weekend threats of a suicide attack by an Al-Qaeda-linked militant.

"We had plans to partially resume our operation Monday but we delayed it on the directive from the UN security officials in Islamabad," an official for the United Nations' refugee agency UNHCR told AFP.

Around 30 American, British, French and Sudanese aid workers took shelter in a four-star hotel and private homes in the Baluchistan provincial capital Quetta at the weekend after being warned that a former Taliban official was plotting suicide attacks against Western aid workers.

The Pakistani government-run Afghan Refugees' Organization identified the militant as Maulvi Hashim Ishaqzai, who is suspected of having links to Al-Qaeda.

"It is reliably learnt that a group of Taliban headed by one Mullah Hashim Ishaqzai ... is planning to target the UNHCR office and other foreign NGOs at Quetta and other parts of Baluchistan through suicide bomb attacks," the organisation said in a communique addressed to aid groups.

It said only organisations employing US or British nationals would be targeted.

The warning comes two weeks after a double car bomb attack near the US consul general's residence in southern port city Karachi, which killed a policeman. The attack was one of five in a month of mainly sectarian bloodshed in Karachi which took around 50 lives.

The warming also comes amid stepped up efforts by the Pakistani army to weed out Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters from sanctuaries in tribal areas along the Afghan border.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the French Tear Fund, the US Mercy Corps International (MCI), the Asian Medical Doctors Association (AMDA) and two British aid groups Concern and Global Partners suspended operations and their foreign employees took shelter in the hotel and homes.

Senior police officer Rafi Bhatti said police teams visited the refugee camp where the Taliban militant was said to be residing but could not trace him.

"We could not find Ishaqzai and people in the area also told us they have not heard this name before and they had no information about this man," he told AFP.

"We are urging the (NGOs) not to worry and resume their operation," he added.

Provincial police chief Chaudhry Yaqub played down the warning on Sunday.

"Such reports do come to us frequently and we take preventive measures. There is nothing alarming," he told AFP.

Afghan Child Reveals Horrors of Kidnapping
Sun Jun 6, 2004 02:18 PM ET By Mike Collett-White
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Ismail is only 10, but the horrors of his kidnapping ordeal will probably be with him to his grave.

Rescued by Afghan authorities Friday after three months in captivity along with his six-year-old brother Ibrahim, he quietly recounted seeing the bodies of four boys of about his age that had been cut open.

"They took us to a mountain where I saw the bodies of four dead boys," he told Reuters Sunday at the intelligence headquarters of Kandahar, the main city in southern Afghanistan.

"They had taken out the organs from the bodies. They were on the ground at the bottom of this mountain, then the men took them away to bury them. They were boys of about our age. I thought I would not live long when I saw them. I was scared."

The intelligence chief for the south of the country, Dr. Abdullah Laghmani, said local forces were searching for the four bodies, having found one already in Panjwai district to the southwest of Kandahar where he is based.

"We have information that they (the kidnappers) killed five children, cutting their heads off and opening their stomachs to extract their kidneys," Laghmani told Reuters in an interview.

He believes the kidnappers, involved in a worrying rise in the number of disappearing children across the country, planned to sell the kidneys in Pakistan where people are prepared to pay large amounts of money to get hold of healthy organs.

There appear to be other motives, including extortion.

The kidnappers who seized Ismail and Ibrahim from their home three months ago in a village in the remote southwestern province of Nimruz initially demanded money from their grandfather, which he could not hope to pay.

Only then did they threaten to remove the boys' kidneys.

"During these three months I was desperate and feared that I would never see my grandsons again," said a tearful Haji Anwar, an elderly man with a white turban and matching beard, flanked by his grandsons and grasping Ibrahim's tiny hand.

"We were actually planning to hold prayers for them, assuming that they had died."

Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali said recently hundreds of children had been taken out of the country illegally in recent years and some had been kidnapped for their body parts.

According to Laghmani, child kidnapping is a growing problem that may have links with Islamic militant groups like the ousted Taliban and al Qaeda.

"These three men who were arrested did what they did for money, but the money will end up in the hands of al Qaeda and Taliban."

The three kidnappers detained in the latest case had been sent to Kabul for questioning, he said.

"People are worried about child kidnapping in all provinces of Afghanistan, including Herat and Kabul, so we specifically made it a part of our work to try and arrest these people," Laghmani said.

Ismail and Ibrahim had a lucky escape. Locals near the house where they were being kept, around 70 km (44 miles) southwest of Kandahar and close to Panjwai, were suspicious of the boys' presence and the fact that they never left the compound.

When the intelligence chief was alerted, he mustered a force of his own men and local police and raided the address early on Friday, arresting three men as they slept and finding four AK-47 Kalashnikov assault rifles and a machine gun.

Ismail said the boys were hit by their captors, and he pointed to a scar around the base of one of his little fingers which he said the kidnappers had made, threatening to cut the finger off if he did not convince his family to pay the ransom.

The boys are now free and raring to see their mother, who is sick in hospital. "The first thing I'll do when I get home is kiss my mother's hand," smiled Ibrahim.

Musharraf, Karzai Remember Reagan
(VOA) - Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf is remembering Ronald Reagan as a close ally of his nation and one of America's greatest presidents.
Pakistan state television says Mr. Musharraf sent a letter of condolence to Mr. Reagan's widow, noting the late President's contribution to world peace has earned him a permanent place in history.

Meanwhile, the French news service AFP quotes Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai as thanking Mr. Reagan for helping Afghan resistance fighters in the 1980s.

During the Reagan administration, the United States provided weapons and money to the Afghan resistance conducting a holy war against Soviet invaders.