Afghanistan News November 2, 2004

November 2, 2004

UN hostages held in separate hideouts, captors say
Tuesday November 2, 4:12 AM AFP
Militants claiming to hold three UN hostages in Afghanistan said they were being kept in different mountainous locations, and repeated threats to kill them if a rescue attempt was made.

"They are not in one location, they are in three different districts," the commander of Jaishul-Muslimeen (Army of Muslims), Akbar Agha, told AFP by phone.

Agha said that if Afghan security forces looking for the hostages managed to free one, the other two would be killed.

"Even if they get to one district and get access to one of the hostages, the other two will be killed immediately in the other two places," he said.

Jaishul-Muslimeen, a murky splinter group of the fundamentalist Taliban militia who were toppled from power three years ago, has threatened to execute the UN election workers by midday (0730 GMT) Wednesday unless foreign forces quit Afghanistan and the United States frees all Taliban prisoners.

Annetta Flanigan from Northern Ireland, Shqipe Habibi from Kosovo and Filipino Angelito Nayan were abducted at gunpoint last Thursday from their car on a busy road in Kabul in broad daylight.

The group said it gave Al-Jazeera the video of the trio, which was broadcast on the Arabic television channel Sunday. The UN confirmed the three people in the video were their abducted employees.

The images showed the three huddled together on a floor against a blank wall, apparently inside a room. There was no indication of their location.

The three had been working with the United Nations to oversee Afghanistan's first presidential election on October 9.

Afghan security forces have been concentrating their hunt on the Paghman valley west of Kabul, a known lair of kidnappers and bandits and a haunt of some militant Islamic groups.

Jaishul-Muslimeen spokesman Mullah Mohammad Ishaq said unnamed Afghans, whom he described as "influentials and traders", were negotiating with the group for the hostages' release.

"There is contact. There was contact even on the first day and now there is more," Ishaq said.

"We don't recognise any government in Kabul, that is why we don't want to say there are talks between us and the government, but there are contacts between Afghan Muslims and us.

"There are mediators, influentials and traders who are in contact between us and the other side."

Agha told a Pakistani newspaper at the weekend that the traders were acting on behalf of the Hamid Karzai-led Afghan government.

Agha told AFP Monday that there were "contacts" but he would not discuss the nature of the talks.

"But it is going on well. I mean we have not received a negative answer and we are sure that they will release our prisoners," he said.

The captors have demanded that the United States free all Taliban prisoners from detention centres in Afghanistan and from its naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Afghan and UN authorities would not confirm the claims of mediation.

The hostages were in generally good condition and were being fed, Ishaq said. "They are fine and doing well, they can eat as much as they want and they eat biscuits and other things.

"Since the weather is cold and it is a mountainous area they might have some cold or flu but in general they are fine."

The UN said Sunday that the hostages need medical attention but did not elaborate.

Militants holding U.N. hostages set Friday deadline, say hostages held in different locations
By STEPHEN GRAHAM
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) Militants threatening to kill three foreign hostages in Afghanistan on Monday allowed four days for negotiations on their demand that the United Nations withdraw from the country.

One day after a video was aired, showing the three U.N. workers pleading for freedom, the Taliban splinter group claiming to hold them also said the trio had been split up to thwart any rescue.

`That's our strategy,'' Ishaq Manzoor, a spokesman for the group, told The Associated Press in a satellite telephone call. ``If the government and coalition forces find one of them, we will kill the other two.''

Afghan security officials say they have had no contact with the kidnappers, who plucked the three two women from Kosovo and Northern Ireland, and a Filipino man from a U.N. vehicle at gunpoint in the capital on Thursday.

But Manzoor insisted that a businessman was carrying messages between the militants and the Afghan government and the United Nations. He declined to elaborate.
On Sunday, the spokesman had suggested that the group, called Jaish-al Muslimeen, or Army of Muslims, would start killing the hostages on Wednesday if its demands were not met.

The group also insists that Britain withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, and that the United States release all of its Muslim prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
But on Monday he told AP that ``we will wait until Friday for the response of the government and the U.N. After that, we will do what we have said we will do.'' U.N. spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva declined to comment on whether contact had been established or the group's demands.

Afghan kidnappers could have had inside help - govt
By Sayed Salahuddin
KABUL, Nov 1 (Reuters) - Afghan authorities are investigating whether some government figures helped a group of Muslim militants kidnap three foreigners working for the United Nations, officials said on Monday.

A splinter group of the Taliban that abducted them said on Sunday that some members of President Hamid Karzai's faction-ridden government had helped in the kidnapping.

The three were snatched from a busy street in capital Kabul on Thursday by Jaish-e-Muslimeen (Army of Muslims), which has threatened to kill them unless all Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners are released from U.S. custody by noon (0730 GMT) on Wednesday.

"The defense ministry is of the belief that without internal cooperation this work may have not been possible," General Zahir Azimi, the defence ministry's chief spokesman, told Reuters.

He refused to elaborate or say which government department or agency may have helped with the kidnapping. The Taliban regime was overthrown by a U.S.-led coalition in late 2001. The government has previously negotiated the release of several foreign nationals kidnapped by Taliban fugitives, apparently in return for ransom.

Another government official told Reuters the group's allegation that the kidnappers received help could be an attempt to exploit differences as Karzai chooses a new cabinet.

The three foreigners -- Filipino Angelito Nayan, Annetta Flanigan from Northern Ireland and Shqipe Hebibi from Kosovo -- were snatched from their U.N. vehicle in rush hour traffic.

They had been helping to organise Afghanistan's first presidential election, which was held on Oct. 9. The kidnappings have stoked fears among the 2,000-strong foreign community that militants in Afghanistan may be copying tactics used by insurgents in Iraq.

Azimi expressed optimism that the hostages might be freed despite the threat by kidnappers to kill the trio the day after the U.S.-elections, but declined to say if the government was in any contact with the kidnappers.

Seven Afghan suspects have been arrested in Kabul as a result of the investigation, but Azimi declined to give details. Other security sources told Reuters those arrested were not considered primary suspects. "We are optimistic that the hostages will be released," Azimi said, declining to give reasons in case it jeopardises the investigation.

The leader of the group, Mullah Sayed Mohammad Akbar Agha, said if the group's demands were not met, the hostages would be killed "in such a way by which Muslims will be happy". The group has also demanded that the United Nations quit Afghanistan and condemned Britain and America's role as illegal.

"Those who have no military involvement in Afghanistan, such as Philippines, must (also) call Britain and America's meddling in Afghanistan illegal and must stop its contributions through the U.N. for America and Britain's activities," Agha said. The Arabic TV channel Al Jazeera broadcast a video on Sunday showing the three hostages in apparent good health.

Karzai is the undeclared winner of the presidential election and is expected to choose a new cabinet by the end of November. He has led an interim government since U.S. forces helped topple the Taliban, and out of political expediency so-called warlords and drug runners obtained cabinet seats while Washington made winning a war on terror in Afghanistan the first priority.

Now elected with a mandate from the people, Karzai is seeking to marginalise regional warlords and stop drug money from perverting Afghanistan's transition to democracy.

Mystery shrouds identity of militants holding UN hostages
Mon Nov 1,12:43 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - Afghan officials and security experts doubt that a murky Taliban splinter group that has threatened to kill three UN hostages held somewhere in Afghanistan is acting alone.

Only a scratchy picture has emerged of the Jaishul-Muslimeen (Army of Muslims), which has issued video footage of the three foreigners who had been overseeing the last month's presidential election before they were captured last week.

The little that is known of the militants -- that they are small in number, based in southern Afghanistan, and usually operate in cells of two or three -- has raised questions as to how they could have pulled off such a brazen, swift abduction in a city teeming with NATO peacekeepers and Afghan forces.

"Jaish is definitely not holding them directly," an Afghan official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"They are working with another group, and that group is closer to Kabul and they are a criminal group. I am pretty convinced of it."

The group's spokesman and self-described military commander Mullah Mohammad Ishaq said they were assisted by Kabul-based fighter groups angry at the October 9 election, won by US-backed incumbent Hamid Karzai.

"The abduction operation was carried out with the support of the Kabuli Muslim mujahedin (fighters)," Ishaq told AFP by phone.

"Particularly after the election we received lots of contacts from Kabul announcing their support to us. Lots of people have been disappointed and want to join the struggle against the infidels. The election was just to strengthen the US influence in Afghanistan."

Ishaq and the group's alleged leader Akbar Agha say their followers include former fighters with the hardline Taliban regime ousted in a US-led campaign late 2001, but they distance themselves from the mainstream movement headed by fugitive spiritual leader Mullah Omar.

Ishaq and Agha say they differ from the mainstream Taliban in seeking to forge alliances with traditionally anti-Taliban factions from more northern-based ethnic groups.

"It is not only a Pashtun movement, there are Tajiks with us, there are Hazaras with us, there are Uzbeks with us and all mujahedin who are against the United States' invasion of Afghanistan," Ishaq said.

Afghanistan's recent history is a portrait of shifting allegiances. Key warlords switched sides from communists to anti-communist resistance in the 1980s, and in the subsequent civil war commanders joined hands one day and fought the next.

"Everything here is incestuous, always bear that in mind," a regional security official told AFP.

"Rival groups form alliances even for an hour, they've been doing it forever."

The mainstream Taliban say Jaishul-Muslimeen is too small and unfamiliar with Kabul to expose themselves and pull off such a bold operation as Thursday's kidnappings.

"They are a very limited number of people and they don't have access to Kabul to carry out operations," spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi told AFP.

Jaishul-Muslimeen claim to have grown out of the ashes of the Taliban's defeat three years ago.

"Three months after the US invasion of Afghanistan the mujahedin gathered and established Jaishul-Muslimeen, under the leadership of Amir Akbar Agha," Ishaq said.

Dissident commanders angry at the Taliban's humiliating retreat formed the breakaway group in late 2001, but it soon fizzled out, an intelligence official and a religious leader in Pakistan said.

They began re-emerging in southern Afghanistan in recent months, against a backdrop of negotiations between incumbent Karzai's government and moderate Taliban figures.

The abductions stunned security officials in Kabul with its precision, swiftness and boldness.

Armed men in a black four-wheel-drive with tinted windows stopped a UN-marked car on a busy road at lunchtime, pulled out the three and shoved them into the black vehicle, and sped off, melting into Kabul's choked traffic.

The abductors' ultimatum came at the weekend: unless the United States frees Taliban prisoners and foreign forces quit Afghanistan by midday Wednesday, the hostages will be killed.

Sorting Friends From Foes
Los Angeles Times 11/01/2004 By David Zucchino
For Marines hunting Afghan insurgents, the distinction is often hard to make

MAGAR, Afghanistan — "No Taliban here," the police chief said.

"No, never," the sub-governor added. "This is the safest place in all Afghanistan."

Marine 1st Lt. Jeremy Wilkinson, the snuff-dipping commander of Whiskey Company, was skeptical. Every week, U.S. troops are ambushed by gunmen in these hooded passes along the border with Pakistan.

"Well, everyone says there aren't any bad guys around," the lieutenant told the two ostensible allies as they squatted on their haunches, stolid and implacable. "But how come we keep getting attacked?"

The Afghans had no answers. Wilkinson and his men moved on, penetrating deeper into the Pushtun tribal highlands on a mission emblematic of the shifting U.S. effort in Afghanistan, where both the enemy and the truth are elusive.

Three years after the fall of the Taliban, American forces have seized a measure of control over the restive border region. They have built alliances with local police and militia leaders, buying allegiance through training, equipment and humanitarian projects. The Taliban, defeated but not entirely broken, has support among the ethnic Pushtun mountain tribes here.

Insurgents continue to flow into Afghanistan along ancient donkey trails and rocky ravines from Waziristan, Pakistan's lawless tribal region where Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding. Commanders like Wilkinson lead regular forays into remote canyons, trying to seal infiltration routes and divine the intentions of tribes at war with one another — and sometimes with the Americans.

Wilkinson, a sturdy, sandy-haired man of 29, is weary of dealing with the mountain Pushtuns, and can sound jaded at times. Yet he also expresses faith in the value of straight talk, noble intentions and a helping hand.

"I don't lie to them, so I expect them not to lie to me," the lieutenant said. "But it doesn't always work that way."

Two years ago, a Times reporter traveled the border with combat teams of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division. Their focus was on finding and destroying weapons caches, sealing and searching villages and arresting suspected Al Qaeda members.

Today, with the biggest weapons caches already found, Wilkinson's Marines conduct mostly "soft knock" missions. Aggressive raids and the pursuit of Al Qaeda leaders — including Bin Laden — are left to a secret U.S. Special Forces unit operating from a secure base near the provincial capital, Khowst.

The Marines are focused on Taliban fighters and the Pushtun tribesmen who support them. Compared with U.S. forces here two years ago, they operate from a relatively secure foothold.

"The area has improved dramatically over the past two years," said Maj. Gen. Eric Olson, the operations commander for coalition forces in Afghanistan, citing better security and support from local police and militias who once fought the Taliban.

U.S. forces certainly have more control here than in Iraq. Where the Iraqi insurgency is deep and broad, support for the Taliban is confined to pockets such as the border region and south-central Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda fighters — mostly Arabs and Chechens — are based in Pakistan, not Afghanistan, Olson said. It is mostly Taliban fighters, not foreigners, who receive aid and sanctuary from fellow Pushtuns as they slip back and forth across the porous border — a frontier U.S. troops are not permitted to cross except in certain cases of hot pursuit.

For the Marines of Whiskey Company, maintaining security and beating back the Taliban require regular patrols into the remote mountains, where they face hostile villagers, roadside bombs and rocket attacks.

The troops, from the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, are based at Camp Salerno, a burgeoning military city near Khowst. Two years ago, Salerno was a rough tent camp. Today, it has satellite TV, internet connections, a PX, barbershop and a mess hall that serves hot meals — and steak and lobster on Friday nights.

The Marines encountered the district police chief and sub-governor in Magar, a remote hamlet carved from a mountainside at 7,500 feet. In the mud-and-stone dwelling that serves as the office of the sub-governor, Khanan Mangul, hangs a dusty portrait of interim Afghan President Hamid Karzai. But Wilkinson had dealt with Mangul before and did not fully trust him.

"The sub-governor is a little wishy-washy," said Wilkinson, older and more self-assured than most lieutenants, having served nearly eight years as a Marine enlisted man. "He tends to blow with the wind."

Wilkinson is wary of being manipulated, and he understands the precarious nature of his mission. In a sense, allegiance to the U.S. also is for sale, wrapped in the fragile promise of a generator or well or four-wheel-drive truck.

"You can't buy an Afghan," he said after listening to the sub-governor. "But you sure as hell can rent one."

Wilkinson had more confidence in the police chief, Kalim Khan, a stout, bull-necked Pushtun the Marines had nicknamed "Unibrow" for his thick black eyebrows. Some of the information provided by Khan on previous visits proved to be true — a pleasant surprise.

The lieutenant relies on civil affairs and military intelligence teams, and on two local Afghan "terps," or interpreters, code-named John and Bob for their protection. The civil affairs team assesses humanitarian needs and doles out assistance. The intelligence team pokes around for information about the Taliban.

In Spera, a mountain hamlet two hours by dirt track from Khowst, the teams encountered sullen elders in dark turbans who complained about the lack of paved roads, electricity and running water. They also were angry about searches of their homes by U.S. forces.

Spc. Chris Ifill, a civil affairs reservist who was a college junior in Philadelphia just a few months ago, let out a sigh. He'd been in Afghanistan only a few weeks, but he'd heard it all before. He told the elders that if they would just point out Taliban fighters and sympathizers, the Americans wouldn't have to conduct searches.

"Until your people stop turning their heads when they see something instead of telling us what they know," Ifill said, "we won't have the security we need to provide humanitarian assistance."

The bearded faces of the elders were inscrutable.

"Can we get a new truck?" Adrim Gul, a village militiaman, asked abruptly.

A new four-wheel-drive truck recently provided by the Americans had been driven off a cliff by a police officer, killing the district police chief's nephew and destroying the vehicle.

Ifill reminded the elders that a U.S. helicopter had flown survivors of the accident to Camp Salerno for treatment. Then he hinted that a new truck could be on the way, provided the flow of useful information improved.

The elders murmured and spat. They picked at their calloused feet and scraped their teeth with matchsticks.

"We'd like a tractor also," Gul finally said.

Another elder asked for chairs for the village school, where children sit cross-legged on a dirt floor. Ifill wrote out a note on a scrap of paper, asking election officials to donate leftover polling station chairs, and signed his name.

He gave the elder the note, along with a tiny medallion of St. Michael, the patron saint of paratroopers. It showed an angel stomping a devil.

"What is this?" the elder asked. As the interpreter struggled to explain, Ifill ended the meeting, leaving the elders hunched over the medallion.

That night, Wilkinson sent sniper teams up the surrounding ridges, hoping to intercept Taliban fighters crossing the border five miles away. He also sent teams to search vehicles plying the narrow dirt tracks.

They found nothing. Wilkinson figured that if there were any Taliban in the area, the arrival of a noisy military convoy of 13 vehicles and 73 armed Americans would have frightened them off. But he also knew that two major infiltration routes were nearby.

Wilkinson and his men spoke often of confronting and killing Taliban fighters. They were frustrated by the insurgents' refusal to fight head-to-head battles, and by their reliance on roadside bombs and hit-and-run attacks. They considered such tactics unmanly, and unworthy of true warriors.

Wilkinson also was growing tired of local elders claiming there were no Taliban around. U.S. satellite and signal intelligence strongly suggested otherwise, he said.

"This canyon is one of the hottest places in the country right now," he said.

That night, the village elders in Magar invited Wilkinson and his interpreter to an iftar, the breaking of the Ramadan fast. Wilkinson, his automatic rifle in hand, climbed a stony hillside at dusk and sat cross-legged on the floor of a mud dwelling.

On a scuffed sheet of plastic, a crowd of men sat around a spread of goat meat, a stew of potatoes and beans, and the Afghan flatbread called naan. They filled and refilled Wilkinson's cup with green tea.

Walikha Khan, a black-bearded villager who said his brother Barakh had been shot and arrested by U.S. forces six months earlier, warned Wilkinson that the villagers were not afraid of fighting. His father and grandfather had killed rival tribesmen over the years, he said, and he was prepared to fight any invaders — tribesmen or Americans.

Khan said rival tribesmen were falsely claiming that Taliban were active in his village.

"Don't make the mistake the Russians made," Khan said. "They had informers and they arrested the wrong people and it turned everyone against them. This can happen to the Americans too."

Wilkinson calmly sipped his tea, but he took Khan's threat seriously. He asked Khan whether he could guarantee the Marines' safety. Normally, village elders make a grand show of assuring U.S. forces that they will protect them; Pushtun tribal codes require visitors to be provided hospitality and sanctuary.

"I don't want to guarantee your safety," Khan replied, "but I'll try."

It was the first time Wilkinson had not received an absolute guarantee. He wanted to show Khan he wasn't cowed.

"That's OK," he said. "We hope someone starts a fight. We're always ready."

That night, Wilkinson posted sniper teams and observation posts on the ridges surrounding his base camp. He sent patrols up and down the canyon. There was no attack.

The next morning, as the patrol prepared to leave Magar, Wilkinson had his mortar team fire nearly 20 high-explosive rounds into the surrounding canyons. If anyone was lurking and waiting to detonate roadside bombs, he hoped the explosions would drive them off.

The mortars soared into the blue sky, exploding in clouds of gray smoke, their delayed boom echoing off the canyon walls. The entire male population of Magar squatted at the edge of the hamlet to watch.

Wilkinson believed that some of the villagers were Taliban supporters. "Two out of 10 people here hate you and want to kill you," he said. "You just have to figure out which two."

The patrol arrived safely at its final base camp, on a rocky escarpment above a streambed. Wilkinson sent out teams to search vehicles plying the dirt switchbacks and trails carved into the mountainside. They found nothing.

It had been a fairly uneventful mission, with many more to follow. They had found evidence of Taliban, but no Taliban. They had fired mortars, but no shots. They had made no arrests and confiscated no weapons.

"Hey, sometimes just showing a presence, seeing what the community needs, asking questions — sometimes that's enough," Wilkinson said. "We'll be back."

Throughout the night, the Marines listened to the grinding gears of overloaded trucks chugging over the streambed, to the tolling of bells around the necks of grazing camels, to the bleating of goats scouring the barren hillsides for tough wild grasses, and to the insistent braying of donkeys. Long before dawn, the cocks began to crow.

Sometime in the night, the radio team received a message: The brother-in-law of a Marine in Whiskey Company had just been killed by an explosive device in southern Afghanistan. The Marine took the news hard, and Wilkinson decided to get the young man back to base right away so that he could be flown out to help return the body.

It wasn't the first time a combat death had affected the company. "I hate to say it," he said, "but just about everybody here knows somebody who's been killed or wounded."

Long before first light, Whiskey Company was packed and ready to move out. Headlights cutting through the dust, the convoy snaked slowly along the narrow switchbacks, headed back down the mountain to the sanctuary of the camp called Salerno.

US soldier killed in southeast Afghanistan
Tuesday November 2, 2:18 AM AFP
An American soldier was killed and two others wounded when their patrol was attacked by "enemy forces" in southeastern Afghanistan, a US army spokesman said.

"It was an incident early this afternoon in Paktika province between a US patrol and enemy forces," Major Mark McCann said.

"As a result, one US soldier was killed and two were wounded," he said, adding he had no further details on the incident.

The wounded soldiers were evacuated to a US medical facility in Khost province and were in a stable condition, McCann said.

Southeastern Afghanistan, which borders Pakistan's restive tribal regions where forces have been hunting Al-Qaeda and other militants, has been a hotspot for the US-led coalition fighting insurgents.

On October 21, three American soldiers and their Afghan interpreter were wounded in the same province when a bomb exploded as their convoy passed.

And on October 16 two American troops died in central Uruzgan province, one of the former strongholds of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban. They were also killed by a roadside device.

The US-led coalition of 18,000 troops has been in the country hunting Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters since US forces helped topple the Taliban regime three years ago. Some 16,000 of the troops are American.

More than 140 coalition soldiers have died in Afghan operations since the start of US-led military operations.

The latest attack follows a series of violent incidents and the kidnapping of three foreign United Nations workers who had come to Afghanistan to work on the country's landmark presidential election held on October 9.

The hostage takers have threatened to kill the three -- a Filipino man, a Kosovar woman and a British-Irish woman -- unless US forces and the United Nations leave the country and Taliban prisoners held here and in the United States are freed.

Since the election, which US-backed incumbent Hamid Karzai won in a landslide, a suicide bomber has also struck in one of Kabul's busiest shopping districts, killing an American woman and an Afghan girl. Three Icelandic peacekeepers and five other Afghans were wounded in the attack.

On Friday, an American peacekeeper with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force which operates in the capital and in the north, was shot and wounded in the same area, Chicken Street.

The multinational force numbers around 9,000 troops from around 30 countries.

Four killed and eight wounded in clashes between Afghan commanders
Radio Afghanistan 11/01/2004
Four people were killed and at least eight others wounded in a six-hour-long armed clash between two local commanders in Alisheng District of Laghman Province.

A security official in Laghman said that the clash erupted between Commander Amanollah and Commander Esa in the Sala area of Alisheng District. He said the commanders did not hold an official post, but did have armed men.

Perhaps the clash was sparked off by personal differences. It is reported that the security forces have been deployed in the area. He said the clash erupted in a mountainous area where they could not prevent such incidents.

Local commanders have clashed several times in Laghman.

Afghan gov't destroys 4,000 hectares of poppy fields: official
KABUL, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- About 4,000 hectares of poppy- cultivated land has been destroyed this year in Afghanistan, the interior minister said here Monday.
"Counter-narcotics department has destroyed around 4,000 hectares of poppy-planted land in the country during 2004," Ali Ahmad Jalali said while opening a seminar on "Prevention of Poppy Cultivation".

Poppy cultivation began to rise in the post-Taliban Afghanistan as many farmers have been devoting their lands to grow the easily profitable crop, mainly in the countryside where the central government has little sway.

Poppy-cultivated lands have grown from 80,000 hectares in 2003 to 100,000 hectares in 2004 in Afghanistan. With an output of 3, 600 tons of opium in 2003, the central Asian state has become the world's largest single supplier of the raw material used in manufacturing heroin.

The Afghan government, under a five-year counter-narcotic strategy launched last May, aimed to reduce opium cultivation by 70 percent by 2008.

Britain is losing the fight against 'blossoming' Afghan drugs trade
BY Colin Freeman in Kabul - Daily Telegraph
British-led efforts to fight heroin production in Afghanistan will be dealt a severe blow this week with the publication of a United Nations report that shows the country has become the biggest supplier of illicit drugs in the world.

Although £70 million of British taxpayers' money has been earmarked for fighting narcotics since 2002, the latest figures will show that the war-torn country has overtaken Colombia as the most prolific dealer.

Britain, which has a direct interest in tackling heroin because of its own addiction problem, has led international efforts against the trade through law enforcement, education and crop substition projects.

The report, due out on Thursday, from the UN Office of Drug and Crime, however, exposes a huge rise in the cultivation of opium poppies - the raw ingredient for making heroin. The situation contrasts sharply with Colombia, where a large American-backed fumigation campaign has cut production of the coca plant - which provides the base paste for cocaine.

On a visit to the Colombian capital, Bogota, last week, Antonio Maria Costa, the UN drug office's executive director, said that Afghanistan was now the biggest overall narcotics producer although Colombia was still the main source of cocaine.

UN estimates earlier this year showed Afghan opium production to have soared since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, generating $2.3 billion (£1.3 billion) - more than half the nation's GDP - last year. Poverty-stricken farmers can earn up to $15,000 (£8,200) from a year's harvest.

Fresh concerns were raised last week by Moscow's decision to withdraw thousands of Russian guards from Afghanistan's border with Tajikistan - effectively reducing surveillance on a major heroin route. America has also been criticised for turning a blind eye to local warlords' involvement in the trade in return for co-operation in hunting down Taliban and al-Qaeda elements.

British officials are also frustrated by the lack of co-operation from powerful elements in Afghanistan's government and security forces.

Yet the British are optimistic that measures they have put in place, and a renewed commitment by President Hamid Karzai to tackle the heroin trade, will have an effect. Mr Karzai said yesterday that fighting the country's booming illegal drug economy was his most pressing task. "The fight against narcotics will be my top priority in the future," he promised in a written statement after talks with visiting Nato officials.

"We've said many times that we're expecting an increase in opium poppy cultivation this year," said Bill Rammell, the Foreign Office minister. "We know from other countries which have managed to stamp it out that production actually increases before reduction takes effect. There are no short cuts to success."

In a recent British-backed programme initiated by Mr Karzai, provincial governors were asked to reduce drug production by 25 per cent. Only a third co-operated and others were reluctant to order the destruction of crops for fear of angering local farmers.

Mr Karzai has pledged to make drug eradication one of his key policies since becoming the country's first democratically elected leader. With British backing, he is expected to embark on a bold programme to sack cabinet members, governors and police chiefs suspected of involvement, tacit or otherwise, in drug-trafficking.

A British Prisons Service specialist is advising the Afghan government on a jail for drug lords and Britain is also involved in creating an elite counter-narcotics police team. So far this year, 53 tons of heroin have been seized - a fraction of the estimated 3,000-4,000 tons produced annually

Last bastion of Afghan resistance
Reuters 11/01/2004 By Salar Hill
The burial place of Afghanistan's greatest resistance hero is a desolate, windswept hill deep in the Panjsher Valley.So windswept, in fact, that the Asian Development Bank is funding a study there into ways of harnessing the force that sweeps through the majestic valley to generate electricity.

Tiny windmills spin atop a tall antenna, recording scientific data that is fed into a computer at the base.

The instruments note every change in the wind, but political winds are also blowing through the Panjsher — and they don't necessarily augur well for the future.

Though provisional results show Mr Hamid Karzai easily winning Afghanistan's first direct presidential election, voters in the valley rated him virtually the most unpopular man in the country.

Nearly 48,000 people voted in the Panjsher in the October 9 poll, but just 367 cast their ballot for Mr Karzai, the man Washington chose to lead the country after a US-led coalition toppled the Taliban in punishment for harbouring Osama bin Laden, architect of the September 11 attacks.

The valley epitomises the ethnic fault lines that traverse the country, following the mountain ranges that created them in the first place.

The Panjsher is home to much of Afghanistan's Tajik community — which makes up around 27 per cent of the population — and for centuries the rugged terrain, hostile climate and sometimes belligerent nature of the people have made it the heartland of Afghan resistance to central authority.

More recently, it was here that the Soviet occupation of the 1980s got bogged down — the US-funded mujahideen, aided by foreign fighters such as bin Laden, scoring punishing hits in a guerrilla conflict that was to Moscow what the Vietnam War had been to Washington.

And it was here that the Taliban, having swept through most of Afghanistan with their fundamentalist brand of Islam, also came unstuck.

Unable to finish off a coalition of resistance groups known as the Northern Alliance, the Taliban allowed bin Laden's men to assassinate its leader, Ahmad Shah Masood.

Masood, who is buried on that windswept hill, was killed two days before September 11, 2001.

Three years on, the Panjsher Valley is still providing resistance, but this time against Mr Karzai and the Pashtuns he represents.

"Why vote for Karzai? Karzai is Pashtun and we should vote for Tajik," said wizened Haji Mohammed Khan (75) as he limped down a gravel road on a pair of crutches. He lost a leg in a 1993 rocket attack he blamed on Pashtun warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, now a wanted fugitive and Taliban supporter.

Mr Karzai was never a Taliban supporter, but he was appointed president without much mujahideen experience and had to give key government positions to Tajik leaders with more impeccable jehad credentials such as powerful Defence Minister, Mr Mohammad Qasim Fahim.

Mr Fahim was also his principal vice-president, but when Mr Karzai dumped him ahead of the elections, the veteran commander shifted his considerable muscle — and that of his community — behind fellow Tajik Yunus Qanuni, who finished runner-up.

Not even the attraction of having the brother of hero Masood as his running mate could persuade Panjsheris to vote for Mr Karzai.

So now that Mr Karzai has the election won, many in the Panjsher are worried about a backlash.

Most of the young men in the valley have drifted to the cities to look for winter work, after their summer toil in the narrow strip of rich agricultural land that straddles the Panjsher River as it courses through steep gorges and ravines from the Hindu Kush mountains.

"We need jobs and opportunities here to stop people from leaving," said Haji Moizin Ahmad (68) at Changram, a town about 160 miles north of the capital.

"We need schools and hospitals and factories, and the new president should provide this even if we didn't vote for him."

Panjsher isn't the only place in Afghanistan where the country's ethnic lines are starkly drawn.

Mr Abdul Rashid Dostum won easily in Takhar, home to the Uzbek community, and Mohammad Mohaqiq led the vote in Hazara areas. But even there Mr Karzai still had enough appeal not to be humiliated.

But winning 367 votes in Panjsher undermines his hopes of being seen as a president who is national, rather than Pashtun — the traditional rulers of Afghanistan.

He also has to shake off the image that he is an American puppet, a view widely held in the Panjsher, where Tajik gratitude to Washington for providing the air power that finally allowed the Northern Alliance to beat the Taliban is now stretched thin.

Bush's Taliban success
The Union Leader 10/31/2004 By Charles Krauthammer
IN THE 1990s, Afghanistan was allowed to fall to the Taliban and become the global center for the training, indoctrination and seeding of jihadists around the world. This month, Afghanistan completed its first free election, choosing as president a pro-American democrat enjoying legitimacy and wide popular support. This represents the single most astonishing geopolitical transformation of the last four years.

In 2001, we had nothing there. What had the Clinton administration left in place? No plausible military plan. Virtually no intelligence. No local infrastructure. No neighboring bases. The Afghan Northern Alliance was fractured and weak. And Pakistan was actively supporting the bad guys.

Within days of 9/11, the clueless airhead President that inhabits Michael Moore's films had forced Pakistan into alliance with us, isolated the Taliban, secured military cooperation from Afghanistan's northern neighbors, and authorized a radical war plan involving just a handful of Americans on the ground, using high technology and local militias to utterly rout the Taliban.

Bush put in place a military campaign that did in two months what everyone had said was impossible: defeating an entrenched, fanatical, ruthless regime in a territory that had forced the great British and Soviet empires into ignominious retreat. Bush followed that by creating in less than three years a fledgling pro-American democracy in a land with no history of democratic culture and just emerging from 25 years of civil war.

Most amazing of all, John Kerry has managed to transform our Afghan venture into a failure in which Bush let Osama bin Laden get away because he "outsourced" bin Laden's capture to "warlords."

Outsourced? The entire Afghan War was outsourced. How did Mazar-e Sharif, Kabul and Kandahar fall? Stormed by thousands of American GIs? They fell to the "warlords" we had enlisted, supported and directed. "Outsourcing" is a demagogue's way of saying "using allies."

And in Afghanistan it meant the very best allies: locals who had a far better chance of knowing what cave to storm without getting blown up. As Kerry himself said on national television at the time of Tora Bora (Dec. 14, 2001): "What we are doing, I think, is having its impact and it is the best way to protect our troops and sort of minimalize the proximity, if you will. I think we have been doing this pretty effectively, and we should continue to do it that way."

Now, as always, the retroactive military genius says he would have done it differently. Yet in the same interview, asked about how things were going overall in Afghanistan, he said, "I think we have been smart, I think the administration leadership has done it well and we are on the right track."

With his endlessly repeated Tora Bora charges, Kerry has made Afghanistan a major campaign issue. So be it. Who do you want as President? The man who conceived the Afghan campaign, carried it through without flinching when it was being called a "quagmire," and has seen it through to Afghanistan's transition to democracy? Or the retroactive genius, who always knows what needs to be done after it has already happened — who would have done "everything" differently in Iraq, yet in Afghanistan would have replicated Bush's every correct, courageous, radical and risky decision — except one. Which, of course, he would have done differently. He says. Now.

Did U.S. mistakes let bin Laden escape from Afghanistan 3 years ago?
KRT 10/31/2004
WASHINGTON - Osama bin Laden's reappearance on Friday in a videotape has revived the controversy over how the al Qaida leader and many of his fighters escaped from American troops and their local allies in Afghanistan three years ago.

Sen. John Kerry has suggested several times that the Bush administration failed to kill or capture bin Laden because it turned the job over to Afghan warlords.
"He didn't choose to use American forces to hunt down Osama bin Laden" on the Afghan-Pakistan border at the end of 2001, Kerry said Friday in an interview with WISN-TV in Milwaukee. "He outsourced the job."

Bush administration officials have said they used a combination of Afghan fighters, American military advisers and U.S. air power to attack al-Qaida and Taliban forces in the remote, mountainous Tora Bora region.

Writing in The New York Times on Oct. 19, retired Army Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, said it isn't clear that bin Laden was in Tora Bora at the time and denied that the United States "outsourced" military action. "Afghans weren't left to do the job alone," Franks wrote. "Special forces from the United States and several other countries were there, providing tactical leadership and calling in air strikes."

Who's right? - Knight Ridder reporters Barry Schlachter of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Jonathan S. Landay and photographers Carl Juste and Peter Andrew Bosch of The Miami Herald were at Tora Bora during the battle, and photographer David Gilkey of the Detroit Free Press and reporter Drew Brown traveled there a year later, interviewed Afghan fighters, retraced al-Qaida escape routes and talked to Pakistani intelligence officers who were tracking al Qaida.

Their reporting found that Franks and other top officials ignored warnings from their own and allied military and intelligence officers that the combination of precision bombing, special operations forces and Afghan forces that had driven the Taliban from northern Afghanistan might not work in the heartland of the country's dominant Pashtun tribe.

While more than 1,200 U.S. Marines sat at an abandoned air base in the desert 80 miles away, Franks and other commanders relied on three Afghan warlords and a small number of American, British and Australian special forces to stop al-Qaida and Taliban fighters from escaping across the mountains into Pakistan.

"We did rely heavily on Afghans because they knew Tora Bora . . . ," Franks wrote. Military and intelligence officials had warned Franks and others that the two main Afghan commanders, Hazrat Ali and Haji Zaman, couldn't be trusted, and they proved to be correct. They were slow to move their troops into place and didn't attack until four days after American planes began bombing - leaving time for al-Qaida leaders to escape and leaving behind a rear guard of Arab, Chechen and Uzbek fighters.

"Ali and Zaman both assured our people that they had forces in blocking positions on the Spin Ghar (mountains) when there were, in fact, no people there," said a U.S. military official who played a key role in the campaign. "So besides taking Afghans at their word, we had no plans to bring up sufficient forces to make up for perfidy."

U.S. reconnaissance photos showed what appeared to be campfires at high altitudes along the trails across the mountains into Pakistan. The Afghans said the fires belonged to sheep herders. Instead, "they were exfiltrators, pure and simple," said an American military official.

Zaman and Ali began trying to negotiate an al-Qaida surrender even before they began their ground attack. Then, on the second day of the attack, Zaman declared a cease-fire. Ali and a third commander, Haji Zahir, who joined the attack at the last minute, resumed fighting after a few hours, and the U.S. bombing never stopped. But Zaman left open an escape route through the Waziri Tangi valley.

U.S. intelligence analysts estimated that 1,000 to 1,100 al-Qaida fighters, along with some of the group's top leaders, escaped the American dragnet at Tora Bora.

A Pakistani official later told Knight Ridder that intelligence reports suggested that some 4,000 al-Qaida members escaped and that 50 to 80 top leaders paid Zaman or Ali as much as $40,000 apiece for safe passage out of Tora Bora.

It isn't clear, however, whether bin Laden and his top aide, Ayman al Zawahiri, were among them, as Kerry has alleged. Bin Laden was last seen heading out of the Afghan city of Jalalabad toward Tora Bora in a convoy on Nov. 15, 2001. U.S. officials thought they'd heard him on a local radio transmission in Tora Bora in December, but later said they might have been mistaken.

Dentist Sinks His Teeth Into Relief
LA Times 10/31/2004 Steve Chawkins
Jim Rolfe has spent weeks and about $50,000 trying to fill a big void in Afghanistan. Now he is planning to set up his own clinic in Kabul. At 65, Jim Rolfe has been a dentist for a long time, but his practice in downtown Santa Barbara hardly prepared him for what he found in Afghanistan.

"There was a continuous flow of problems you couldn't imagine even existing in the U.S.," he said. "It's like coming onto an auto accident with bodies lying all over the street. That's how it is when a person opens his mouth to be treated."

Like numerous other medical professionals who pitch in at Third World clinics for brief periods, Rolfe wanted to spend a few weeks simply doing what he could. What he didn't count on was his spark of altruism turning into a full-fledged mission.

So far, Rolfe has spent more than $50,000 of his own money to provide dental care in Afghanistan. What he has in mind, though, is far grander in scope than simply writing a check.

Rolfe could be the only Santa Barbara dentist currently looking to buy land in Kabul. When he finds it, he will plunk down a used shipping container he purchased as the hub of his future clinic. He will rig it up with a generator and running water, outfit it with dental equipment, recruit U.S. professionals, train Afghan dental assistants, and, practically overnight, give Afghans in sore need of dental work an opportunity to get it.

Rolfe has a gray beard, rock-star-length hair, and a down-to-earth style. It's not hard to picture him as what he once was: the official dentist — as well as goat tender and truck driver — for a Santa Barbara commune called Brotherhood of the Sun.

Decades later, his office is as distinctive as his background. Conga drums and bongos sit in the waiting room for patients anxious to take the edge off their visit to the dentist. Patients recline to view TV sets mounted in the ceiling as a fountain cascades in the background. Designed and built by Rolfe, the treatment areas are cozy beige nooks with curved walls, a style Rolfe calls "Southwestern Eskimo."

Such comforts are a world away from the grim certainties of a country torn by war over the last 30 years. Sitting in his waiting room, Rolfe wearily reels off the statistics: The average male dies at 44. One in four children die by age 5. Ten percent of the population are orphans. Only one in seven people can read.

And the number of people in a land of 27 million who have ever seen a dentist is too small to measure.

"I'd look into mouths and just see a disaster," he said. "Instead of teeth, I'd see abscessed roots. These people had never had their teeth cleaned; I'd pull out tartar in huge rocks."

In 2002, Rolfe read about an orphanage in a remote mountain province and volunteered there for three weeks. He worked from 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., using the children he treated as his "assistants."

"When I saw how grateful they were, I cried," he said. "They couldn't wait to get treatment."

Two years later, he returned for another couple of weeks, this time setting up shop at a women's clinic in Kabul.

For this trip, Rolfe had made a portable wooden dental chair, pocked with a Swiss-cheese pattern of holes to reduce its weight.

He also had some help. A recent graduate of Kabul's medical university acted as translator for $20 a day. He was jobless, as were all of the other 314 graduates in his class. And one of Rolfe's Santa Barbara patients, yoga instructor Hayley Parlen, came along as well. She had hoped to teach yoga techniques to children in Kabul but wound up assisting Rolfe.

Parlen, 29, had learned about Rolfe's plans when she was getting her teeth cleaned. She had no idea that within months, she would be able to soothe frightened women by intoning, in the local dialect, standard dental bromides such as "Just breathe" and "It'll only hurt for a second."

"With one hand, I'd suction blood from their mouth and with the other, I'd squeeze their hands or massage their forehead," she said. "My calmness translated to them that they'd be OK."

Rolfe is looking for donations and volunteers to help him on his planned trip in April. Setting up a booth at a recent state dental conference in San Francisco, he already has recruited Ike Rahimi, an Afghanistan-born dentist who treats farm workers in the San Joaquin Valley.

"The need is enormous," said Rahimi, whose mother might accompany him on the trip to see sisters still in Afghanistan. "Life is not so forgiving there."

In January, the secondhand shipping container that Rolfe bought for $2,500 will be stuffed with equipment and placed on a freighter to Rotterdam. From there, it will travel by rail to southern Russia, and then by truck through Uzbekistan, and, finally, to Kabul.

When it's set up, it will house a lab and three dental chairs. Westerners now fly four hours to Qatar for dental treatment. With his new facility, Rolfe hopes to treat them for fees that will subsidize treatment of the poor. He hopes to eventually add simple accommodations for visiting professionals and classrooms where Afghan hygienists and technicians can be trained.

His is not the first such plan in Afghanistan. Other dentists have volunteered as well, and the American military has worked on restoring the nation's only dental hospital. Still, Rolfe said he has to focus on not being overwhelmed. "I feel like a drop of water in the desert," he said.

Restoring Afghan culture
VOA 11/01/2004
Said Makhdoom Raheen, Afghanistan's minister for information and culture, says that decades of conflict and repression exacted a terrible price. "War has destroyed our traditional culture," said Mr. Raheen.

Irreplaceable Afghan cultural treasures were destroyed or stolen during the civil war that followed the withdrawal of Soviet forces in 1989. Afghanistan's national museum was pillaged and badly damaged. In March 2001, the radical Islamic Taleban regime destroyed two giant one-thousand-five-hundred year-old Buddha statues at Bamiyan. "All we are breaking are stones," said Taleban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, who ordered the destruction.

Restoring Afghanistan's cultural treasures is a major challenge. Afghan culture minister Said Raheen says the problem is compounded by the fact that many of the professionals who managed Afghan cultural sites and institutions were killed or forced into exile. And despite efforts by the government, he says, "we are unable to prevent looting." The Afghan culture ministry has recruited a five-hundred-member security force to protect cultural heritage sites. Mr. Raheen said that illegal trafficking in antiquities by warlords is a serious problem, especially in the provinces of Logar, Kapisa, Takhar, and Balkh.

The U.S. is cooperating in international efforts to help safeguard Afghanistan's cultural heritage. President George W. Bush says that the Afghan people are seeking to recover their heritage:

"The Afghan people are showing extraordinary courage under difficult conditions. They're fighting to defend their nation from Taleban holdouts, and helping to strike against the terrorist killers. They're reviving their economy. They've adopted a constitution that protects the rights of all, while honoring their nation's most cherished traditions."

"I think the people of Afghanistan want their country to succeed," said U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad. "They don't want to go back to the old days and that's not surprising, given the conditions in Afghanistan earlier."

This is an editorial reflecting the views of the United States Government.

Afghan Waiting Game
FOX News 11/01/2004 By Scott Heidler
KABUL — It is all but official that Hamid Karzai will be the first democratically elected president of Afghanistan. The people of this war-torn nation want to get on with their lives and continue down the path of reconstruction behind an elected leader, but that destiny has been delayed another few days.

Last Thursday Karzai surpassed the 50 percent plus one vote he needs to achieve a simple majority and retain his position as the leader of Afghanistan after nearly three decades of war.

But the announcement due by the joint U.N./Afghan election body has hit another speed bump. Most of us who have been here for months were certain that it would happen over the weekend, some of us placing bets on the day. Now it's looking more likely that we will know whom the next four-year resident of the White House will be before Karzai gets to hold his celebrations.

And that's not the worry of the election body according to Vice Chairman Ray Kennedy's response to a question whether the announcement will come before or after Nov. 2, "We have our own election to be concerned about."

It was just after Mr. Kennedy's press conference that another waiting game began. As I was exiting the U.N. compound a call came over internal-U.N. radios, "Three U.N. staff have been abducted in Kabul."

Those U.N. workers were kidnapped in a brazen daytime operation in the middle of one of Kabul's most affluent neighborhoods. A Taliban splinter group has claimed responsibility — sending fear into the international community here that an Iraq-like trend of violence and abductions might be on the way.

And the release of video aired first by Al-Jazeera made it even more eerily similar to Iraq.

Just two days after the kidnapping I was speaking with an American businessman just off the boat. He arrived in Kabul to consult businesses on their Afghan operations, but in light of the kidnappings he might be getting right back on the boat.

Saying if this recent kidnapping turns out to be a trend similar to Iraq, "That changes the game entirely."

Many journalists from around the world descended on Afghanistan to cover the historic election on Oct. 9. I spent a combined seven months in Iraq last year and over the last few weeks ran into old friends and colleges who have also spent time there. There was an identical exchange in all of those conversations, "It's so nice to be in Afghanistan and not Iraq."

Now, the Afghan international community is on edge for just that reason. Are we going to see a shift to an insurgency similar to Iraq, or are these kidnappings a cheap and unorganized copycat? Either way, the lives of three people who came here to do good hang in the balance.

In my opinion the Taliban and all its affiliates are not nearly as organized as groups now wreaking terror in Iraq. In fact, Karzai and the U.S. military have made it clear that rank-and-file Taliban will need to be reintegrated with Afghan society.

So, be it my hopeful thinking rooted in self-preservation or correct analysis, I don't think Afghanistan will turn into an Iraq. The biggest challenge around the corner will be when Karzai begins the difficult job of cutting up the cabinet pie once he is named president.

Undoubtedly this process will step on the toes and disappoint some who have gained their power and position by the gun. It is their reaction that we need to be worried about.

For the meantime, we are waiting. Waiting for the official announcement that President Karzai will continue to call the heavily fortified Kabul Palace home and waiting to see if we will have to start hunkering down in our compounds a la Iraq. I'm more inclined to dust off my suit for the inaugural parties than to start filling sand bags.

Poverty, tribal pride in Bamiyan may pose political challenge to new Afghan president
The Associated Press 11/01/2004 By Matthew Pennington
BAMIYAN - Along the winding dirt road that climbs into Afghanistan's remote central highlands from Kabul, the tattered campaign posters from October's presidential elections tell a worrying story for the victor, Hamid Karzai.

Despite winning a clear majority nationwide, Karzai's candidacy did not energize ethnic groups other than his own Pashtun kinsmen, nowhere more so than in Bamiyan, scene of some of the worst excesses of the former ruling Taliban.

The journey to Bamiyan from Kabul illustrates the problem. In the Pashtun villages near the capital, the campaign posters are mostly of Karzai. Reach the ethnic Tajik communities in the foothills and images of his chief rival, Yunus Qanooni, start to dominate. Arrive in the isolated mountain settlements of Bamiyan and there's only one candidate -- Mohammed Mohaqeq, chieftain of the hardy Hazara tribe.

Between 1998 and 2001, hundreds of Hazaras were massacred for their resistance to the Taliban. And in what was perhaps the hard-line militia's most wanton cultural crime, they destroyed two towering 1,500 year-old Buddha statues -- ancient religious icons that offended their rigid interpretation of Islam.

Unsurprisingly, the American-led offensive that toppled the Taliban in late 2001 was welcomed here. Yet the U.S.-backed Karzai, who has held power since then, failed to poll even 10 percent here in the Oct. 9 election -- even though he had a local Hazara leader as his running mate.

That rejection could bode ill as Karzai embarks on a five-year mandate to reunite a country where tribal rivalry has turned to outright conflict.

Mohaqeq, a former commander in the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance and who was recently ditched from Karzai's Cabinet, traded on a renewed sense of ethnic pride among Hazaras and perceptions that their undeveloped corner of Afghanistan has missed out on foreign aid in the past three years.

He streaked home with 76 percent of the Bamiyan vote, and fared even better in neighboring Daykundi province, also dominated by Hazaras, despite a third-place national finish with 11 percent of the ballots.

While rural development projects have brought relative prosperity to the poor of Bamiyan after years of neglect -- there are no Taliban rebels to intimidate aid workers -- many others feel left behind.

Poignantly, a few families who had their homes burned down by the Taliban live in some of the hundreds of small cave shrines hollowed out of the historic cliff face where the grand Buddha images once stood.

"I hear that Karzai is the king of Afghanistan, but he hasn't helped us," said Ruqiar, a 21-year old mother in a traditional sequined dress and green shawl, cradling her baby boy in front of a pitiful stone-age home shared with 10 others. "The only thing we've got from Karzai is security."

Unfulfilled promises on big-ticket projects to bring electricity to the city and rebuild the road to Kabul also worked against Karzai at the polls.

"Tens of millions of dollars has been spent on roads in Kandahar city," said Karzai-appointed provincial Gov. Mohammed Rahimaliyar, referring to the main city in southern Afghanistan, dominated by Karzai's fellow Pashtun tribesmen. "Bamiyan still doesn't have one meter of asphalt."

The Central Highlands, where most eke out a living by herding sheep and growing wheat, is cut off for five or six months each year by heavy snow.

"Hazarajat has been less developed than the other regions. It's always been the same," Abdul Rahman, a campaigner for Mohaqeq, said, as he broke his Ramadan fast. "I'm sure the next five years will be the same as the past three." Suspicion of central government dates back to the late 19th century when a brutal pacification campaign waged by Afghan King Amir Abdur Rahman displaced Hazaras and gave their lands to Pashtuns.

As minority Shiite Muslims, the Hazaras -- who make up at least 10 percent of Afghanistan's estimated 25 million people -- have since suffered discrimination and been marginalized from mainstream political and economic life.

But that has started to change. Karzai's interim Cabinet included several Hazaras, and Mohaqeq's strong showing in the election -- and dogged refusal to concede defeat -- makes him a force to be reckoned with.

"Hazaras have traditionally been the downtrodden group in the country, and now it's their chance to stand up and claim what is theirs," said Molly Little, a United Nations field worker based in Bamiyan.

Many in the city say the resounding vote for Mohaqeq was less a vote against Karzai than the culmination of a shift in regional power, toward Mohaqeq's faction in the dominant local Hezb-e-Wahdat party and away from that of Karim Khalili -- Karzai's vice president and running mate.

The current provincial administration, widely accused of corruption and failure to address the region's needs, is loyal to Khalili, who fled the country during the Taliban era and has made little impression since returning.

Rahman said his candidate, Mohaqeq, never left Afghanistan. He described him as the "strong face of the Hazaras."

"If Karzai ignores us, he will have another defeat in the parliamentary election" planned for the spring, Rahman said.

One worrying aspect of the renewed ethnic pride appears to be an increasing suspicion of other Afghan tribes, although foreigners are welcomed. Anecdotal accounts point to petty persecution of Pashtuns and Tajiks by local authorities, and Tajiks displaced from Bamiyan during the years of conflict have struggled to reclaim land appropriated by government and given to Hazaras.

Rahimaliyar, the provincial governor, said ethnic divisions could grow stronger if Karzai isn't seen as addressing Hazaras' concerns.
But he sees little danger of rebellion.

"God willing, people will never go back to the gun. They can go to the ballot box instead," he said. "People are grateful for peace."