Afghanistan News November 16, 2004

November 16, 2004

Militant leader in Afghanistan says group split over fate of U.N. hostages
Tuesday November 16, 1:28 PM AP
The purported leader of Taliban-linked militants holding three U.N. hostages in Afghanistan said his group is split over whether to "get rid" of the captives, and planned a meeting Tuesday to decide their fate.

Negotiations between Afghan government officials and mediators in touch with the captive-takers were also expected to resume Tuesday, after being suspended last week for an Islamic holiday.

The latest of several deadlines set by the group passed Monday with no resolution of their demands for the release of 26 militant prisoners.

Philippine diplomat Angelito Nayan, British-Irish Annetta Flanigan, and Shqipe Hebibi of Kosovo were seized at gunpoint on Oct. 28.

It was the first abduction of foreigners in the capital since the fall of the Taliban three years ago, and raised fears that local militants were imitating kidnappers in Iraq.

Jaish-al Muslimeen, or Army of Muslims, has claimed that the 26 men it wants freed are in U.S. custody, but the American military says it will release no one and has received no list issued by the militants.

Jaish-al Muslimeen leader Mohammed Akbar Agha said his group was meeting Tuesday on the hostage's fate.

"There are some of our members who have hardline views on the issue but there are others who have moderate views," Agha told The Associated Press in a telephone call from an undisclosed location.

"The hard-liners say we should get rid of the hostages. The others say we have the ability to keep the hostages for two years."

Despite the claims of the militants, who have already set a string of deadlines, it remains unclear how much control they have over the hostages.

Afghan officials and diplomats suspect that criminal groups or warlord militias may be involved, and say negotiations are being held with several different groups. Officials suggest the three may still be in the Kabul area.

An Afghan official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said government representatives would meet middlemen on Tuesday to restart talks suspended for Eid al-Fitr, the three-day Islamic festival which ended in Afghanistan on Monday. Ransom demands were the main sticking point, the official said.

Agha insisted his group was not seeking a ransom, and claimed Afghan authorities had concocted that allegation to save face because of their failure to resolve the crisis over the hostages, who had been in Afghanistan to help run the country's landmark presidential elections on Oct. 9.

"We will not hold more talks with the Afghan government," he said.

He said an Afghan mediator contacted the group Monday and conveyed a message that a London-based non-government organization, which he did not identify, wanted to hold talks with them. Agha said the kidnappers would not hold talks "with the foreigners" but could communicate to them through the mediator.

The kidnappers released a video of the frightened-looking hostages three days after armed men forced them from their clearly marked U.N. vehicle on a street in the capital.

A week ago, at least two of the hostages phoned home to say they were all right, but there has been no word on their condition since.

Afghan Militants Reject Ransom, Demand Releases
Mon Nov 15, 9:03 AM ET By David Brunnstrom
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan militants repeated a threat to kill three U.N. hostages and rejected government talk of a ransom offer on Monday, saying they were sticking to their demand for the release of Taliban prisoners.

Akbar Agha, head of the Jaish-e Muslimeen (Army of Muslims), said it would make no further effort to contact the government or the United Nations for talks after 11 p.m. (1:30 p.m. EST) on Monday.

"But if we receive any invitation from the U.N. representatives or Afghan government to talk on the issue, we may consider it," he told Reuters.

"The release of Taliban prisoners is our main demand. We have not demanded for any ransom and it is very clear we would not accept any offer of money against the release of the hostages."

Annetta Flanigan from Northern Ireland, Shqipe Hebibi from Kosovo and Filipino diplomat Angelito Nayan were abducted on Oct. 28 after helping run presidential elections won by U.S.-backed incumbent Hamid Karzai.

A government official said earlier the government and security forces had been trying reach a deal through intermediaries and was considering offering a ransom.

"This possibility is being discussed by high-ranking government officials, but we are not definite that this procedure will be approved," he said on condition of anonymity.

Agha said the Jaish-e Muslimeen Shura, or council, would meet on Monday "and may take a decision," but did not elaborate.

THREAT TO KILL HOSTAGES REPEATED
Earlier Khalid Agha, one of several men claiming to speak for Jaish, said it would decide the hostages' fate on Tuesday night.

"If they will not accept our demand, then we will have no choice but to kill the hostages," he said.

Khalid Agha said the authorities had said via intermediaries they did not know the whereabouts of seven of the 26 Taliban prisoners the kidnappers want in exchange for the U.N. workers.

"Our point of view is that they should release whoever they have identified so far," he said. "If they release 23 out of 26 prisoners, even then we would consider the talks a success ... We can show flexibility on all other demands."

The abductions of the U.N. workers, in daylight in relatively secure Kabul, shocked the foreign aid community, raising fears that militants had begun copying tactics of insurgents in Iraq.

The government has in the past negotiated the release of several kidnapped foreigners, some apparently by paying ransoms.

Jaish-e Muslimeen has accused U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage of stalling talks when he said last week that compromising with hostage takers would lead to more kidnappings.

The militants have said their Shura has already authorized the killing of the hostages, but several deadlines they previously set have passed without incident.

A week ago, two of the hostages phoned home and said they were being well treated, but the kidnappers have said the delay in meeting their demands meant no more calls would be allowed.

They said better food and accommodation provided for the hostages last week when it appeared a deal was near had also been withdrawn and the three had been moved to the mountains.

Jaish-e Muslimeen emerged in August as a breakaway Taliban faction that refuses to recognize the authority of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.

It claims the support of a third of Taliban fighters and analysts say it has gained publicity from the kidnappings and will add to its prestige among militant sympathizers even if it manages to free only a few Taliban members.

Kidnappers say Afghan government "not serious" about saving hostages
ISLAMABAD, Nov 15 (AFP) - Militants threatening to kill three UN workers held hostage in Afghanistan accused the Kabul administration Monday of not being serious about saving their lives, a Pakistan-based news agency reported.

The head of the group that kidnapped the UN workers on October 28 said in an interview that Kabul would be responsible for anything that happened to the three after a new deadline for late Monday, the Afghan Islamic Press reported.

"I as (chief of) Jaishul Muslimeen announce that if something happened to these three people, we will not be responsible for it, but the Afghan administration will be responsible," Syed Mohammad Akbar Agha told the agency.

"We know that the Afghan government has no interest in saving the lives of three people," he said.

"We have put forward two important demands to save the lives of the hostages: the release of prisoners from Guantanamo Bay and withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan," Agha said.

"We will further wait till 11:00 pm tonight (1830 GMT), on 15-11-2004, but we will not trust anyone after that."

Agha repeated an allegation made at the weekend that negotiations with Kabul on the fate of the three had progressed well until a visit by US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage last week.

"Our negotiations entered in a last phase at one point and we were told that the problem will end today, but when the US assistant secretary of state visited Kabul, everything changed," Agha said.

Armitage had said during a two-day trip to Afghanistan that the United States was opposed to negotiations with kidnappers as it only encouraged them to take more hostages.

Annetta Flanigan from Northern Ireland, Shqipe Habibi from Kosovo and Angelito Nayan from the Philippines were snatched from their vehicle in busy lunchtime traffic in Kabul on October 28.

They had been overseeing the war-battered country's first-ever presidential election, won by US-backed incumbent Hamid Karzai.

Agha said the kidnappers felt deceived by the Afghan government.

"I feel that Afghan government is deceiving us. We have said a lot. We have held talks with Afghan government and UN representatives.

"I want to draw the attention of The Philippines and Kosovo governments and the families of the three people that we did everything, we held negotiations and provided telephone facility (to the hostages), but Kabul government has no interest in saving their lives," he said.

Philippines rules out paying ransom for hostages in Iraq, Afghanistan
MANILA, Nov 15 (AFP) - The Philippines ruled out Monday paying ransom for two Filipinos abducted by militants in Iraq and Afghanistan, but said it had high hopes for efforts being made to secure their freedom. Press reports here have said the kidnappers of a Filipino accountant seized in Baghdad this month had demanded up to 12 million dollars for his release.

The foreign office criticized the report in a statement, saying it was unhelpful. 'We reiterate that the Philippines has a no-ransom policy in dealing with abduction cases,' it said.

Another Filipino is being held in Afghanistan with two colleagues working for the UN. The foreign office said it had 'high hopes' for efforts being undertaken by its teams in Baghdad and Kabul to secure the freedom of the hostages.

It said negotiations with the kidnappers in both cases were a 'complex endeavor' that could be long and tedious, but said 'there is always progress in every step of the way.'

President Gloria Arroyo was severely criticized by the United States for capitulating four months ago to kidnappers who had captured a Filipino truck driver in July. Arroyo met the militants' demands by pulling out Manila's small contingent from Iraq and the driver was freed.

Terrorists May Target Karzai's Inauguration, U.S. Govt Says
Nov. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Terrorists in Afghanistan may target the inauguration ceremonies in December for President Hamid Karzai, the U.S. State Department said in a travel alert issued for U.S. citizens in the country.

``Presidential inauguration events in early December may trigger additional violence,'' the State Department said in an e- mailed statement from Washington. ``The potential for violence remains a real concern.''

The State Department cited the Oct. 28 kidnappings of three international workers with the United Nations, who were in Afghanistan to help organize last month's presidential election. An Afghan group is threatening to kill the hostages unless the government frees prisoners.

Karzai, 46, won the Oct. 9 election, taking 55.4 percent of the vote in the country's first direct presidential poll. The UN last week said Afghanistan needs international support to complete its progress toward democracy with general and local elections scheduled to be held in May.

``The ability of Afghan authorities to maintain order and ensure the security of citizens and visitors in limited,'' the State Department said. ``Remnants of the former Taliban regime and the terrorist al-Qaeda network, and other groups hostile to the government, remain active.''

UN workers continue to be targets of attacks, it said.

A group called the Army of Muslims, a breakaway faction of the Taliban, said it is holding the three UN workers. It extended its deadline for killing the hostages until sunset today, Agence France- Presse reported, citing Sayed Khaled, a spokesman for the group as saying yesterday.

Annetta Flanigan of Northern Ireland, Angelito Nayan of the Philippines and Shqipe Hebibi of Kosovo are the first non-Afghans abducted in Kabul since the fall of the Taliban in 2001 in the U.S.- led war on terrorism.

Russia begins handover of Tajik-Afghan border control
DUSHANBE, Nov 15 (AFP) - Russian forces in the Central Asian state of Tajikistan said Monday they have begun the process of transferring responsibility for policing the country's volatile border with Afghanistan to Tajik border guards, under the terms of a new agreement.

'By mid-December, Tajik border guards will take control over 954 of the 1,340 kilometers that Tajikistan shares with Afghanistan,' or 70 percent of the 832-mile border, a spokesman for Russian border guards in the country told AFP.

Russian forces have been posted in the mountains of Tajikistan near the border with Afghanistan for more than 110 years, dating back to the days of the 'Great Game' when Russia jockeyed with Britain, among others, for influence in the region.

In 1993, in the immediate aftermath of the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia and Tajikistan signed an agreement that left some 11,000 Russian soldiers in charge of patrolling the border, one of the chief crossing points for smuggling of heroin from Afghanistan to Europe.

That agreement however was superceded by a new pact signed last month by Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Tajik counterpart, Emomali Rakhmonov, for the phased withdrawal by 2006 of the Russian border guards.

The spokesman said the Tajik border guards would be equipped with the same weapons and other material used by the Russians, while Russian officers responsible for overseeing the patrols of the border would be replaced by Tajik officers.

Promoting alternatives to poppy cultivation in Afghanistan
Source: Food and Agriculture Organization FAONEWSRELEASE 04/143 - UK commits $6.83 million to develop viable livelihood options in poppy-producing areas
Rome, 15 November 2004 -- The United Kingdom has pledged $6.83 million to fund a two-year FAO project to help eliminate opium production in Afghanistan by developing alternative livelihoods in the country's main poppy-producing areas, the Organization announced today.

The funding is for the first phase of a $25.5 million five-year multidonor programme developed by FAO to support alternative agricultural livelihoods, targeting more than 1.5 million people in poppy-producing provinces.

Needed: legal - and lucrative - options - In line with Afghanistan's National Drug Control Strategy, which aims to eliminate illicit opium poppy cultivation by 2013, the project's main objective is to promote livelihood diversification by improving access to farm and off-farm income-generating activities in communities dependent on poppy production. Attention will also be given to communities in which poppy eradication has taken place, where families are facing severe income losses.

"Opium is not a crop of choice for most Afghan farmers. There are just no attractive alternatives at present that can give them a return anywhere near the return opium gives," said John Dixon of FAO's Agricultural Management, Marketing and Finance Service.

The participation of local communities in assessing and developing alternative income opportunities will be crucial to ensure local ownership and to address constraints to implementation before adopting these activities and promoting them beyond the initial project areas.

"We are training people on the ground - from village level up to national political level," said Dixon. "By working to improve the technical and operational capacity of Afghan institutions at all levels, the project will help create an environment that enables organizations to learn what works and for successful pilot projects to be replicated on a larger scale."

Increased dependence on opium production - Afghanistan is the largest producer of opium worldwide, accounting for more than two-thirds of global opium production, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. The 2003 harvest, at 3 600 tonnes, was the second highest recorded to date in the country.

The livelihoods of about 1.7 million rural people -- around 7 percent of Afghanistan's population -- are directly dependent on poppy cultivation. And poppy production has spread to more remote, less accessible parts of the country due to increasing political and physical pressure on the main growing areas since the country's 2002 ban on illicit opium poppy cultivation and the trafficking and consumption of opiates.

Poverty at root of poppy's appeal - For poor rural farmers struggling to survive amid the chaos resulting from more than 20 years of conflict and, more recently, four years of drought, the cultivation of opium poppy has provided relatively secure cash income and the means by which poor farmers and the landless could get access to land. It has also offered the only source of credits and agricultural inputs, with traders often offering advances against future production.

The profitability of opium production at prevailing prices of around US$283 per kilo is hard to beat: poppies are estimated to earn approximately eight times more income per hectare than wheat, using less water and fewer inputs. Markets for outputs other than opium are often non-existent, so it is difficult to generate cash through normal cropping systems.

Prior to the war and drought Afghan households were able to produce over 80 percent of their food requirements. Now, however, they can only cover about 60 percent of their needs.

Horticultural crops like pistachios, citrus fruit, figs, dates and almonds once accounted for 30 to 50 percent of Afghanistan's export earnings. Today, horticultural exports are negligible and many horticultural operations no longer exist.

Re-establishing post-harvest processing capacity for selected traditional Afghan products such as high-quality nuts and dried fruits offers one opportunity for improving livelihoods, according to Dixon.

"The moment you build up local processing activities, you create jobs. This can give poor farmers off-farm income opportunities that can help lift them above the poverty line and provides cash for agricultural inputs," he said.

A holistic approach - The new project will build on FAO's continuing work in the country and dovetail with the ongoing development projects of other organizations operating there. Since 2001, FAO has been working to rehabilitate agriculture in Afghanistan, mainly through emergency activities, such as distribution of seeds, tools and fertilizers, and locust control.

Long-term projects include seed production, the cultivation and marketing of fruits and vegetables, veterinary services, poultry raising projects for women, milk production and marketing projects, the rehabilitation of irrigation systems and the strengthening of fragile Afghan institutions and services.

FAO is working closely with local institutions, non-governmental organizations, the private sector and other partners to ensure a holistic, integrated response that addresses the various factors that drive farmers to cultivate poppies.

According to Dixon, a host of interventions will be needed to ensure sustainable progress in the fight against poppy production: restoration of infrastructure, health and education facilities, power, communication, law and order, to name a few.

"It won't happen overnight, but building up production, marketing and processing capacity will help re-establish acceptable income-generating alternatives. Coupled with effective law enforcement, initiatives like this can contribute to gradually reducing dependence on the drug crop," said Dixon.

"This project is a point of departure," he added. "It sets the scene for a long-term initiative that will require further commitment and support in order to achieve a sustainable impact on illicit poppy cultivation. In the future, funding from other donors will enable expansion of these activities, building on the lessons learned in this pilot phase."

German Troops seen in Afghanistan for a "Decade"
Deutsche Welle - Nov 15 6:50 AM
Foreign troops in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) will have to stay in Afghanistan for at least a decade, one of the force's German commanders said on Monday. Brigadier Walter Spindler told the Neuen Osnabrücker Zeitung newspaper that the 7,000-strong force which includes around 2,000 German soldiers "can reckon with a decade at the earliest, providing developments are positive". Progress had been made in setting up the army, the police force and the secret service, but they needed time to become established, Spindler said. However the international troops will be required over the next 10 years to defend the reconstruction of Afghanistan against drug barons and warlords. The German parliament voted in September to extend the German troops' mission in Afghanistan by another year. (AFP)

Dispute over Afghan boy's funds may delay return
Mon, 15 Nov 2004 14:25:48 EST CBS News Canada
TORONTO - A disagreement over how to spend tens of thousands of dollars raised for an Afghan boy who had heart surgery in Canada may delay his return home, according to his father.

Djamshid Popal, 10, is living in Toronto while having follow-up appointments after heart surgery in early August.

His host family says that although Djamshid enjoys Canada and playing with the family's four young children, he is homesick for his mother and four siblings in their Afghan mountain village.

Djamshid's father, who travelled with him to Canada, says his son should be given any money raised on his behalf to help pay for medications in Afghanistan.

The Muslim Association of Hamilton raised $46,000 for the boy's medical expenses before a Toronto charity and an anonymous donor agreed to cover all those costs.

Since then, part of the $46,000 originally raised has been used to pay for day-to-day living costs, such as clothes, laundry, calling cards and insurance, said association spokesperson Mohammed Hanif Vandal.

He says the association has decided that any money left over will be split between the boy and the two Ontario hospitals that treated him.

Vandal says the boy will not return to Afghanistan empty-handed, but didn't say how much money he would be given for his continuing round of medications.

Popal was brought to Ottawa on July 2 and taken to Toronto Sick Children's Hospital in early August. He left hospital on Oct. 13.

Chronicling the History of Their Afghan Sisters
By NANCY RAMSEY November 16, 2004 The New York Times
In the summer of 2002, Brigitte Brault, a French television journalist working in Kabul, began training 14 Afghan women to be video journalists. It was less than a year after 9/11, little more than six months after the Taliban had been officially defeated, driven into the mountains of Tora Bora, in eastern Afghanistan.

At the time, "it was deeply provocative to teach women to make films," said Ms. Brault, the director of "Afghanistan Unveiled." The one-hour documentary, to be broadcast tonight on PBS's "Independent Lens," follows seven of the journalists as they travel outside Kabul, in teams of two and three, into the various provinces to collect oral histories from women.

The film, crisply edited, is a sort of road movie that paints a collective portrait of the women of Afghanistan. The Kabul journalists in training "were young," said Ms. Brault, 44. "Some were 17, 18, 20 years old." When classes began, many arrived in their chadors, floor-length veils. Classes were conducted at Aina, an internationally financed, independent media organization based in Kabul. "We worked in the garden, and we never went out on the streets with the camera," continued Ms. Brault, speaking by telephone from Kabul.

Mehria Azizi was one of the students. Now 20, she is a native of Kabul, from a family of six brothers and two sisters. When she was 8, her mother was killed. That was in 1992, after the Soviet Union had withdrawn from Afghanistan and before the Taliban took over, when the various mujahedeen factions were fighting for power.

"It was the Ramadan month; my mother was martyred during prayer time," said Ms. Azizi, speaking by cell phone from Kabul, in English, which she began learning when she was 6. Her mother was in the family's home, when a stray bullet from fighting in the streets entered a window and struck her. Ms. Azizi, as the oldest girl, became responsible for taking care of the younger children.

"Afghanistan Unveiled" begins in the winter in Kabul, with the trainees heading out to the countryside in all-terrain vehicles. Before starting, Ms. Brault and others spent many hours trying to convince the women's families that traveling in the country would be not only safe but respectable. The father of one, Jamila Emami, is a mullah. "He was afraid for his daughter, as all fathers are, but in Afghanistan people take care about reputation," Ms. Brault said. "It would have been very difficult to hear someone tell him, 'You have a bad girl because she's a camerawoman.' "

So permission was granted under one condition: that the father accompany the team on their first foray outside the capital. Ms. Brault now laughs at the memory, but all went well. "He is educated,'' she said. "He is not a fundamentalist."

"Afghanistan Unveiled" unfolds as the teams visit the provinces to talk with women, many of whom are reluctant to appear on camera for fear of retaliation from the men in their communities. The first stop is Bamiyan, a region that made headlines in the spring of 2001, when the Taliban blew up giant Buddha statues carved into the mountain there. The team moves on to Herat, a city rich in cultural heritage but very restrictive in women's freedoms, and Jalalabad. The last stop is Badakshan, where a big source of income is cultivating opium poppies. But it is also a province long known for its hospitality and buzkashi, a variation of polo.

In Bamiyan, they discover families living in caves burrowed in the mountain. Zainab, a woman whose thin, weathered face makes her age difficult to determine, recounts the horror of the Taliban years: they burned her house, killed her husband and sons, stole her cows. "If you call yourself journalists," Zainab tells the young women, "you should go to see the places where everything was burned down."

Such give and take continues throughout the hour. "This is not an outsider's point of view," said Pat Mitchell, president and chief executive of PBS. "Afghanistan Unveiled" "is the only film I've seen that has been done by women who lived through the Taliban, who have turned their lives around by a project they share. You experience it with them. The tone is very inviting. It's not a Western journalist going into the provinces to talk to the poor, downtrodden women of Afghanistan."

The women interviewed often speak to the young journalists with a candor they cannot show in their own families or communities. In Badakshan, a forthright young woman tells how she was threatened with rape, mutilation and death if she refused to enter into an arranged marriage. As she talks, she looks directly into the camera.

"Every single woman in Afghanistan has a story, worthy of Steven Spielberg," said Reza, a freelance war photographer whose work appears in National Geographic and who uses only his first name. In summer 2001, he helped found the media organization Aina ( "mirror" in Farsi) as a nonprofit organization dedicated not to repairing "the physical destruction from war," he said - like rebuilding hospitals, schools and roads - but to the "mental and cultural destruction." Crucial to that reconstruction was developing an independent media.

"Afghanistan Unveiled" was financed by the United States Department of State; additional support came from the Asia Foundation, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Unesco. Several of the young journalists have traveled to Washington; Jamila Emami and Gul Makai Rangebar spent a week at PBS and met with Laura Bush. Paula Dobriansky, the under secretary of state for global affairs, said the film is "a calling card for the good we can do in Afghanistan."

When the young women first went to Aina, "some were afraid," Ms. Brault recalled. "But they told me, 'I am brave, this is my duty, I have to show foreigners our country.' " For Ms. Brault, the moment that stands out most was the day in Faizabad, the capital of Badakshan, when Mehria Azizi confronted a group of men, some of whom carried weapons.

"Can anyone tell me why your women generally wear white chadri?" she asks them in the film.

An answer about how women who wear the white chador are devout fails to satisfy her.

"Is it written in the holy Koran that a woman cannot show her face?" she continues. "No, that is not true. Any person who is that ignorant is beyond comprehension."

Ms. Brault was holding the camera, and "suddenly Mehria begins to speak with this man about women wearing the chadri." she said. "I was afraid because all these men were around us, and this young girl is so brave, telling them, 'This is not Islam.' "

Ms. Azizi said she had wanted to be a journalist from a very young age, when she first saw foreign journalists in Kabul. Her mother encouraged her. "Many times she told me, 'My daughter, I hope that everything you want you will arrive at,' " Ms. Azizi said. "If she was alive, I think she would be very happy."

Making enemies instead of friends
Newsday 11/14/2004 By James Rupert
KAMARSAR - On Sept. 24, U.S. soldiers burst into the Khan family's darkened home at 2 a.m., pointing rifle barrels and dazzling lights as they shouted commands. Muhammad Rais Khan, an English teacher and computer specialist, woke, enraged.

"Get out of my house!" he yelled. Citing Afghanistan's new U.S.-backed constitution, he shouted that the troops could not enter a home without a court order, family members said.

"I heard a shot," said his brother, Sherzali Khan. Later, U.S. officers said a soldier shot the teacher dead in self-defense after he fired off an AK-47 rifle. "I heard only one shot," said Khan.

The troops arrested a third brother, Sher Muhammad Khan, and took him to their base outside the city of Khost, several miles away. A day later, he, too, was dead, in U.S. custody. A U.S. Army investigator says he suffered a heart attack.

U.S. Army officers in Afghanistan say the Khan brothers were "bad guys" but refuse to give details or evidence. The villagers of Kamarsar and the pro-American governor of Khost say U.S. troops killed two innocent brothers.

Three years after toppling Afghanistan's brutal Taliban regime, U.S. forces say they are winning a tough guerrilla war here against Taliban militants. But Afghans and human rights investigators say U.S. troops too often kill or torture innocents, undercutting political support for the American presence and for the U.S.-backed government of President Hamid Karzai. Public mistrust has been magnified by more-grievous abuses in Iraq and by deep U.S. secrecy around its anti-guerrilla operations here.

Unlike in Iraq, the United States role in Afghanistan still is staunchly supported by the local population. But Afghan intellectuals and officials warn that human rights abuses are damaging the U.S. campaign in the mountains and deserts in the south, where the Taliban insurgency remains active.

A UN special investigator on human rights, Chicago law professor Cherif Bassiouni, concluded in a September report that many coalition practices "violate international law and encourage others to ignore international standards."

Relatively few of the alleged human rights violations in Afghanistan have drawn any high-level U.S. investigation, However, the Army's criminal investigation command last month recommended that 28 soldiers be prosecuted in connection with the beating deaths in December 2002 of two Afghans -- one a taxi driver from Khost being held at the U.S. air base at Bagram.

U.S. policymakers in Washington and military officers in Afghanistan say there is no major problem. "The coalition forces take human rights very seriously," said Col. Cardon Crawford, chief of operations for U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan. "Are some mistakes going to be made? Yes. Are a lot of them made? No."

But a score of Afghans interviewed in the past month in four provinces disagreed. While U.S. troops work hard to prolong their welcome here by building roads, clinics and schools, "every house raided or village bombed by mistake works against us," said an Afghan who works as an interpreter for U.S. forces in more southern provinces. "Lots of times, our good work in Afghanistan is getting erased by our mistakes," said the man, who asked not to be named for fear of losing his job.

"It's extremely dangerous to go breaking into a Pashtun's house and start searching the women," said Mirajuddin Patan, the pro-American governor of Khost province. "You may have no problem tonight because you have the guns," he said, "but you will have made a lasting enemy of that family's men ... The Taliban are trying to exploit this anger."

U.S. informant arrested - In Khost alone, U.S. troops have been blamed not only for the deaths of the Khan brothers, but also the killing of a local merchant in an Oct. 26 raid in Khost city. They arrested the local BBC correspondent for possessing a satellite telephone, then freed him with an apology. And they arrested one of the main U.S. informants in the province, a senior Afghan officer, after concluding he had misled them into seizing a number of his rivals on the pretense they were Taliban supporters.

The arrest of the officer, known by the single name Afzal, undermines the Americans' contention that they have been raiding homes, religious schools and other targets based on solid information. Khost province is a stronghold both of former hard-line communists who ruled Afghanistan in the 1980s and their arch-enemies, former mujahideen guerrillas who fought them for more than a decade. Afzal, a former communist, "was using the Americans to eliminate his rivals," said Patan, the governor.
Among those rivals may have been the Khan family, members of the same tribe as Afzal, but former mujahideen. The surviving brother, Sherzali Khan, had returned to the village recently from the United Arab Emirates to run for a parliament seat in the spring. "Perhaps Afzal or someone was trying to keep me out of the election," he said.

A big part of the U.S. forces' political problem is that their counterinsurgency is a hidden war. Secrecy rules surrounding nighttime raids by unidentified U.S. units mean there are no independent witnesses and few public explanations when things go wrong. In the raid on the Khans, "I was told that ... [Muhammad Rais Khan] fired on a soldier and put a hole in his shirt" before being shot, said Army Col. Gary Cheek, who commands most U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan.

Whether correct or not, this account has not been heard in Kamarsar, where villagers know only the family's assertion that only one shot was fired, killing Khan.
U.S. officials in Afghanistan will not name the units that conduct the anti-Taliban raids, calling them only "OCF," or "other coalition forces." Other U.S. and Afghan sources say most such raids, including that on the Khans, have been conducted by U.S. Army Rangers. Officers in charge of OCF declined to be interviewed, and other officers said they did not know whether information from the discredited Afzal was used to target the Khan family. They said that if Afzal did finger the Khans, some corroborating evidence -- they did not say what kind -- would have been needed to trigger the raid.

In interviews, three senior U.S. officers in Afghanistan dismissed the Khan family's claim that its men were unconnected to the Taliban. "The family may not have known what those men were doing," said Lt. Col. Pamela Keeton, chief spokesperson for U.S. forces in Afghanistan. "It was confirmed in the village that those were bad guys," she said. No U.S. officer would say what the men were alleged to have done.

Soldiers speak of chaos - Senior U.S. officers speak with confidence of the control that American troops maintain on the midnight raids. "These soldiers understand that tactical actions [such as shooting someone] can have strategic consequences," said Crawford.

But soldiers who have helped in such raids describe scenes of chaos. In one assault on a home, a soldier said, "I smashed a window and tossed in a flash-bang," a grenade meant to harmlessly stun people in a room and give soldiers time to achieve control. "When it blew, I dove in the window and there was this woman screaming, with her clothes burning" from the grenade, which had landed too close to her.

The soldier voiced no sympathy. "The video on that place showed that everybody in the house was hiding contraband in the well. There was no reason we shouldn't have just shot everybody in there," he said.

In Khost province, the raid on the Khan family has badly damaged U.S. efforts, said the governor, Patan. "This was a tragedy ... the killing of a popular teacher," he said. "The Americans really do regret these deaths ... But these are terrible mistakes that are being made."

Patan said the U.S. troops have killed an average of one person a month in raids over the six months he has been in office. While the figure may not seem large, the deaths resonate powerfully among the tightly knit villages and tribes, he said.

"I go to the houses and beg people to be patient with the Americans," Patan said. "I say that it's the Rangers, not the regular troops, and that they have been given wrong information. But people will not be patient forever."

The U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, and the overall U.S. commander, Lt. Gen. David Barno, have promised that troops conducting raids will take along Afghan soldiers to help calm families during the raids, "but this is not always happening," said Patan.

"The preponderance of these missions are being done in the day, with local officials or soldiers present," said Cheek. But where U.S. troops expect an increased threat, they strike in the dark, with night-vision equipment that gives them an advantage.

"I really can't hope to favorably resolve this particular incident," Cheek said of the Khan raid. "We'll have to go back into the village and convince the people that we're there to serve them. But I recognize that I probably will have no best friends in there."

In many southern provinces, popular anger is compounded by bitterness at the Americans' imprisonment of thousands of Afghan men without charges or explanation. Saddad Kuchi, a nomadic shepherd, said two of his cousins were arrested 21 months ago after U.S. troops found them with a pair of binoculars they used for monitoring their herds.

The deputy U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Brig. Gen. Charles Jacoby, this year investigated the two main U.S. military prisons in the country, at Bagram and Kandahar, but has waited months for permission from the Pentagon to release his findings to the public. While Bagram and Kandahar have gotten the most attention, U.S. forces maintain detention facilities at dozens of "forward operating bases" around the country. The Army is investigating the torture of eight Afghan soldiers, one of whom died, at a base in Gardez, west of Khost.

The U.S. command lets the International Committee of the Red Cross visit its prisons, but has denied access to the Afghan government's human rights commission, which has been inundated with petitions by people seeking information on loved ones jailed by the Americans. U.S. officers declare often that American forces are guests in Afghanistan and must cooperate with its government. Still, "We have been asking for almost 10 months, but we can get no information at all" about detained Afghans, said Ahmed Nader Nadery, a member of the government human rights commission.

A top U.S. officer said the U.S. command is not fully convinced that the commission's members are all "good guys," but did not elaborate on why the United States withholds information on the status of detainees.

Four Generals Promised to Persuade Musharraf to Step Down as COAS
By Rauf Klasra – South Asia Tribune
ISLAMABAD, November 12: The Pakistan Army Generals have all along been working in close coordination with the extreme Right wing religious parties and at least four seniors had given secret guarantees to the MMA that they would ensure that General Musharraf would take off his uniform by December 31, 2004.
This fact has now been publicly accepted and revealed by the cornered MMA leadership as the crucial cut off date of the uniform approaches and Musharraf ponders over what to do, despite the maneuvers in the Parliament where he forced his supporters to pass a law enabling him to stay as Army Chief.

But while sitting on the Bill passed by the Upper and Lower Houses of Parliament, the MMA has now started asking the guarantors publicly to deliver what they promised. A report in the influential Friday Times reveals the details. It says:

"Even as the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal prepares to carry out its threat to launch a movement after Eid against General Pervez Musharraf’s uniform, its leadership is trying, behind-the-scenes, to persuade General Musharraf to remove his uniform.

The MMA’s interlocutors are four top army generals which the alliance approached secretly. Alliance sources told TFT that these generals were instrumental in finalising the deal on the Legal Framework Order and guaranteed to the MMA that as quid pro quo for the passage of the 17th amendment, General Musharraf would doff his uniform on December 31, 2004.

The alliance has now approached these generals and wants them to prevail upon Musharraf to honor that commitment. For their part, the generals have reportedly told the MMA to sit tight and wait for the deadline rather than raising ruckus within and outside the parliament.

This back channel was confirmed to TFT by Liaquat Baloch, central leader of the MMA and a top Jamaat-i-Islami leader. He said that the alliance had contacted these generals because they were the guarantors of the deal that allowed the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Q to push through the 17th amendment.

Interestingly, official sources remain tight-lipped on this development. When TFT contacted some officials and ministers, they refused to even comment. This included one government spokesperson whose general lament is that the media do not contact the government for its view.

The four military generals approached by the MMA leadership include new Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee and former DG ISI, General Ehsanul Haq, Deputy DG ISI, Maj. Gen. Zaki Zafar, Chief of Staff to COAS, Lt. General (retd) Hamid Javed and former deputy DG-ISI, now posted to Okara, Maj. Gen. Ehtasham Zameer.

Three of these generals, excluding Lt. Gen. Hamid, are still serving at top positions in the army. MMA sources claim they secretly acted as guarantors on behalf of General Pervez Musharraf.

“We have approached them because the civilian negotiators [SM Zafar, Ch. Shujaat Hussain, former prime minister Jamali etc] had no power to give any commitment on behalf of General Musharraf. They were part of the negotiations just for ‘public and media consumption’,” Baloch told TFT.

This fact was also brought to the notice of the National Assembly by Qazi Hussain Ahmed, who disclosed, during debate on the uniform bill, how a team of military generals had struck a deal with the MMA leadership soon after the October polls. At the time Qazi had startled the entire house by saying that General Musharraf had agreed to make Maulana Fazlur Rehman the deputy prime minister of Pakistan and Liaquat Baloch as Speaker of National Assembly, besides promising to induct a dozen or so MMA MPs as federal ministers.

Qazi’s speech in the National Assembly was the first official confirmation from the top MMA leadership of the involvement of army generals in stitching the deal between Musharraf and the alliance. Qazi had claimed that these secret negotiations were held even before the maiden session of NA was summoned on November 16, 2002. Another important revelation was the claim by Qazi that General Musharraf had absolutely no problem in working with the MMA as was generally perceived by the media at home and abroad.

He told the house that it was the MMA leadership that had walked out of the proposed deal and refused to accept the offer to make Fazlur Rehman the Deputy PM because Musharraf was not ready then to give a cut-off date to take off his uniform. “He [Musharraf] wanted us [MMA] to accept him in uniform for an indefinite period. But we weren’t prepared to do that,” Qazi told the house.

Now, Liaquat Baloch says the alliance has approached the generals who helped cut the deal. “Yes, we have asked them to get Musharraf to honor the deal,” he told TFT. When asked why the MMA had contacted the generals to resolve a political issue and did this not amount to involving the military in politics, Baloch said the alliance had contacted the generals because “they negotiated with us for breaking the political impasse over the LFO issue”.

“If these generals had not given us solid guarantees that Musharraf would take off his uniform on December 31 we would not have signed the deal,” Baloch said. “We now want to hold them to that promise.”

Official sources corroborate Qazi’s and Baloch’s accounts and say Musharraf involved the generals after the political interlocutors failed to get the MMA to sign the deal. “He decided to deal with them directly and brought in the generals,” one source told TFT.

It was obvious that Musharraf would get the Inter-Services Intelligence to deal with the issue because the ISI has a long history of political involvement and machinations. So, three big guns of the ISI were made part of a team in addition to Lt-Gen (retd) Hamid to negotiate with the MMA.

TFT asked Baloch how the generals had reacted to the MMA’s demand to get Musharraf to honor the deal. He said they were being ‘evasive’ and were ‘reluctant’ to entertain MMA’s complaints. “They have told us to remain cool and calm and wait for the deadline,” Baloch told TFT. “They have objected to our making noises on the issue prematurely. They think it is unjustified.”

The MMA leadership thinks the generals are fobbing them off. “They are now advising us to wait and see. But when they brought to us the messages from their boss they praised him for being a man of honor and commitment. They even told us that General Musharraf was not like General Ziaul Haq,” Baloch told TFT.

Baloch said these generals were so sure that Musharraf would keep his word that they just wanted us to trust the words of their chief. “‘There is no need to put all these assurances in black and white’ was how they talked to us about him,” Baloch said.

Some observers say the MMA has been hoist by its own petard. “They broke away from the ARD to cut a deal and save their government in the NWFP. Now that they find themselves in a trap they want to talk about commitments and guarantees. They also say they oppose the role of the army in politics and yet they were not averse to making a deal with army generals. You can’t have your cake and eat it too,” said one analyst."