Afghanistan News April 25, 2005

April 25, 2005

5 killed in border clashes in Afghanistan
STEPHEN GRAHAM Associated Press Sun, Apr. 24, 2005
KABUL, Afghanistan - U.S. and Afghan soldiers backed by warplanes and artillery battled suspected insurgents in clashes near the border with Pakistan, and four fighters and one Afghan soldier were killed, the U.S. military said Sunday.

In another incident, one Afghan soldier was killed and another was injured Sunday when the vehicle they were traveling in hit a land mine east of Kandahar, said U.S. military spokesman Sgt. Terry Somerville.

The injured soldier was flown to the nearby U.S. base for treatment, Somerville said.

The clashes occurred Thursday near Gayan, 100 miles south of the capital, Kabul, in Paktika province, a military statement said. Another Afghan soldier was wounded, while no Americans were reported hurt.

In one battle, Afghan soldiers and troops from the U.S.-led force in Afghanistan fought about 20 gunmen near the border with small arms and called in artillery and warplanes. One Afghan soldier and two militants were killed.

A second battle ensued as the insurgents tried to retreat, and two more rebels were killed, the military said.

The wounded Afghan soldier was in stable condition at the U.S. base in the southern city of Kandahar, it said.

U.S. and Afghan forces repeatedly have fought with insurgents along the mountainous border in recent weeks, suggesting Taliban-led militants are reviving their 3-year-old insurgency after a winter lull.

Taliban-led militants are still operating along the mountainous eastern border with Pakistan despite the presence of 17,000 American soldiers more than three years after toppling the religious militia for harboring Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida operation.

The fighting continues to hamper the arrival of badly needed reconstruction aid across the south and east, though U.S. aircraft appear to have inflicted heavy casualties on the rebels, and commanders hope an amnesty offer will sap their strength.

At least three members of the Taliban government ousted in 2001 have taken up the offer - the details of which remain murky - this week, though it remains unclear what influence they have over those still fighting.

"The government of Afghanistan continues to offer the insurgents a means by which they can stop the fighting and come together to forge a brighter tomorrow. But until then, were fully prepared for anything," Brig. Gen. Jack Sterling, a senior U.S. commander, said in the statement.

American commanders have another reason to hope for an end to the insurgency as they become more involved in helping Afghan forces fight Afghanistan's illegal narcotics industry, the world's largest.

In the latest anti-drug operation, police destroyed a heroin laboratory in Achin district of eastern Nangarhar province, an official told The Associated Press.

One person was arrested during the operation on Saturday, Faizan ul-Haq, a spokesman for the provincial government said. One policeman was slightly injured in a shootout with guards at the lab, he said.

The U.S. military has promised to help identify targets in a crackdown on refiners and traffickers and take a leading role in the training of Afghan police.

Coalition forces, insurgents clash near border
April 24, 2005 Combined Forces Command - Afghanistan Coalition Press Information Center (Public Affairs)
BAGRAM AIRFIELD, AFGHANISTAN -- A firefight near Gayan city in Paktika Province left at least four insurgents dead Thursday.

One Afghan Security Forces soldier was killed and one ASF soldier was wounded in the same firefight.

Afghan Security and Coalition forces observed up to 20 armed individuals along the Afghanistan border with Pakistan early Thursday morning. Afghan Security Forces and Coalition forces engaged the individuals with small arms and called in artillery fire and U.S. Air Force A-10 close air support onto the insurgents’ positions, killing two. One ASF soldier was also killed in the ensuing battle.

The insurgents fled the area but were again spotted by Afghan and Coalition forces. This second battle resulted in the deaths of two more insurgents and the wounding of the ASF soldier. The remaining insurgents fled the area.

“The people of Afghanistan have spoken and they’ve made it known that they want Afghanistan to move forward,” said U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Jack Sterling, Combined Joint Task Force-76 deputy commanding general (support). “The insurgents want Afghanistan to turn back the clock, to move back to the days of oppressive Taliban rule. Clearly this isn’t what Afghanistan wants for its future.”

“The government of Afghanistan continues to offer the insurgents a means by which they can stop the fighting and come together to forge a brighter tomorrow. But until then, we’re fully prepared for anything, as Thursday’s incident clearly shows,” Sterling said.

The wounded soldier was evacuated to Kandahar Airfield where he is in stable condition.

Car bomb explodes in Afghan capital, no casualties reported
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) A car bomb exploded next to a main road in the Afghan capital Sunday, destroying a taxi but causing no casualties, officials and witnesses said.

The bomb blew the roof off the taxi, which was parked near residential buildings on the side of a road in eastern Kabul. The road is frequently used by U.S. and NATO military vehicles and has seen a string of attacks on foreign troops, but the target of Sunday evening's explosion was not clear.

Plane crash-lands in Afghan capital, pilot feared killed, police say
Monday April 25, 3:18 PM AP
A small plane landing at the airport in the Afghan capital skidded off the runway and burst into flames Monday, police said. The pilot was feared dead.

"There seemed to be a problem with the undercarriage and it skidded off to the left and caught fire," Gen. Aminullah, head of police at Kabul airport told The Associated Press. "I think he (the pilot) must have died because of the fire."

He said it was unclear who the plane belonged to but said there were no passengers on board. ADVERTISEMENT

U.N. examining move into former Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) The United Nations said Sunday it wants to expand its operations in Afghanistan into two former Taliban strongholds, arguing that ``development, peace and security go hand-in-hand.''

The world body's top official in Afghanistan, Jean Arnault, and an aide to Afghan President Hamid Karzai led a delegation to Zabul and Uruzgan on Monday to explore the possibility of a ``sustained presence'' in the two provinces, a U.N. spokeswoman said.

The provinces are at the heart of a three-year-old insurgency by Taliban-led rebels which has scared off aid workers and deprived its communities of assistance. The U.S. military has long urged the U.N. and relief agencies to come to the south and east, arguing that security is improving.

``The U.N. fully believes that development and combating poverty will make everyone more secure, particularly in these two provinces where international assistance has been minimal,'' spokeswoman Ariane Quentier said.

Afghan police foil suspected car bomber in western city, official says
Monday April 25, 1:41 PM AP
Afghan police foiled a suspected car bomber in the western city of Herat, an official said Monday, as investigators puzzled over an explosion which destroyed a vehicle in the capital.

Police in Herat found rockets, mines and anti-aircraft shells after stopping a Toyota sedan at a checkpoint on Sunday, Interior Ministry spokesman Latfullah Mashal told The Associated Press. The driver tried to flee but was arrested by police, Mashal said.

"We think they were planning to explode it in the city," he said.

He declined to say who might have been planning the alleged attack, saying the investigation was incomplete.

A bomb exploded in the capital, Kabul, on Sunday evening, destroying the taxi in which it was loaded but causing no injuries.

Mashal said investigators had made no arrests in that case and said it was too early to indicate who was responsible.

Officials suspect anti-Taliban factions disgruntled at efforts to disarm them may be behind violence in the capital, though the incidents also come amid a flurry of clashes between militants and Afghan and U.S.-led forces further south.

On Sunday, the Romanian government said one of its soldiers was killed and two others injured when their patrol vehicle struck a mine near Kandahar, while the U.S. military reported the deaths of four suspected militants and two Afghan soldiers.

In another incident, Mashal said five police were injured in a shootout with militants who attacked a government office in southeastern Zabul province. Local officials said the incident happened Saturday and that police believed they had killed or injured several of the assailants.

US and Afghan troops dump 4 bodies into Pakistan
Daily Times Monitor
LAHORE: US and Afghan forces on Sunday threw four bodies into Pakistani territory, claiming the deceased were Pakistani nationals, Geo news channel reported.

However, Pakistani security forces refused to pick the bodies up, saying the deceased were not Pakistanis, it added.

Witnesses also said the hands and feet of the deceased had marks of cigarette burns, handcuffs and shackles, the channel added.

North Waziristan Agency’s political agent and Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) officials said they did not know who the victims were, and it would take several hours to confirm the identities of the deceased, the channel said. In a separate incident in Afghanistan, US and Afghan soldiers battled suspected militants near the border with Pakistan, and four fighters and one Afghan soldier were killed, the US military said on Sunday, agencies reported.

An Afghan soldier was killed and another was injured on Sunday in a landmine explosion east of Kandahar, a US military spokesman said. A car bomb also exploded in Kabul, causing no casualties.

Also, an explosion in Kandahar province on Sunday killed a Romanian soldier and wounded two.

The UN said on Sunday it wanted to expand its operations in Zabul and Uruzgan, arguing that “development, peace and security go hand-in-hand”.

PM Erdogan's Afghan visit to develop bilateral ties
Turkish Weekly
Afghanistan's independence, territorial integrity and national unity are important for Turkey, said Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Afghanistan on Thursday, on a visit to strengthen bilateral relations between the two countries. Erdogan arrived in the capital Kabul on Wednesday and attended a dinner where he said, "Turkey seeks the end of terrorism, illegal drug trafficking and fanatic movements in Afghanistan."

Speaking at the dinner, organized by Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Erdogan's honor at the Afghan Foreign Ministry, Erdogan said that Turkey supports the reform process in Afghanistan. "We hope our brothers, the Afghan citizens live in peace, prosperity, security and comfort," he added.

Erdogan said: "Turkey has been commanding the International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) since Feb. 13, and will continue to put forth efforts to secure the peace and stability in Afghanistan."

Karzai for his part noted that Afghanistan and Turkey were the first states to mutually recognize each other and thanked Turkey for its unparalleled efforts in the ISAF program and for protecting Afghanistan's security.

Erdogan pledged Wednesday to promote more investment in Afghanistan by Turkish companies, winning him praise from a government struggling to lessen the role of relief groups in its reconstruction.

The Turkish government will soon establish a commission dedicated to encouraging private investment in Afghanistan, Erdogan said after talks with Karzai in the Afghan capital. He mentioned Turkish involvement in building schools, roads and irrigation systems, but gave no details.

Karzai for his part said about 60 Turkish companies were already active in Afghanistan, adding, "We are very satisfied with their work."

Karzai has said that private enterprise is the key to reviving Afghanistan's economy after more than 20 years of conflict and to fulfill his promise to lift its long-suffering population out of poverty.

Officials have also urged donor nations to channel billions of dollars in reconstruction funds through ministries instead of aid organizations and proposed a law banning relief groups from government contracts.

Turkish companies are among the foreign contractors working on road reconstruction projects and have experienced several shooting incidents and kidnappings blamed on Taliban-led militants. The New Anatolian with AP

In Kabul, dust coats all: vehicles, clothes, teeth
The Indianapolis Star 04/22/2005 By Diana Penner
KABUL - The dust is incredible. Fine as talcum powder but almost as abrasive as volcanic ash, it works its way into every crevice and every orifice -- within hours. Soldiers talk about having to replace their eyeglasses every few months because the dust has scratched the lenses.

Standing outdoors and taking notes, I can feel the grit of the dust coat a notebook page before I can fill it, causing my pen to hesitate and stick. I can feel the dust has coated my teeth. Vehicles can be obscured by the dust in just a hundred yards or so. On an overcast and breezy day, it's difficult to tell whether clouds or dust have a greater impact on visibility. Clothes, shoes, jackets, hair, cameras, computers, lungs -- all collect the dust like magnets.

Years of drought have left Afghanistan -- or at least Kabul and surrounding areas, which are really all I've seen -- devoid of much vegetation. That leaves dirt, which blows. And blows and blows.

A day or so ago, a dirt devil danced through Camp Phoenix, where the roadways and walkways between barracks, offices and buildings like the fitness center and dining hall are coated with the dust. Dirt devils, swirling dervishes created when winds incite the dust in just the right way, apparently are not an uncommon sight on base. Hooch, brick, hooah!

Military acronyms and jargon could fill a notebook -- you live in a "hooch"; a "brick" is a two-way radio. My favorite: Hooah! It's kind of an all-purpose exclamation, as near as I can tell, perfected by Lt. Col. Paul Grube. It might be used as an _expression of agreement, surprise or admiration, or to motivate.

Grube slides "Hooah!" into his conversation unobtrusively, as if he's been hit gently in the solar plexus and is just expelling a little extra air, militarily.

In civilian life, the 42-year-old Grube, of Georgetown, near New Albany, is a sixth-grade teacher at Highland Hills Middle School. He uses "hooah" on his kids, too. "You gotta have energy to learn," says Grube. "It keeps 'em fired up!"

In a Jail in Cuba Beat the Heart of a Poet
Afghan, Now Freed by U.S., Scribbled on Paper Cups but Never Stopped Writing
By N.C. Aizenmann Washington Post Sunday, April 24, 2005; Page A19
PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- Among the old leather volumes in the library of Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost is a black plastic binder full of rumpled letters he wrote, sent from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

At the bottom of each form is a perfunctory salutation. The rest is taken up with the poems that helped Dost keep his sanity during nearly three years of confinement.

"Bangle bracelets befit a pretty young woman," begins one of the poems. "Handcuffs befit a brave young man."

The letters were one in a series of measures the Afghan-born author said he took to record the torrent of imagery and insights that flooded his brain nearly every day of his captivity.

At first, deprived of paper and pen, Dost memorized his best lines or scribbled them secretly on paper cups. Later, he was supplied with writing materials and made up for lost time by producing reams of poems and essays -- only to have all but a few of the documents confiscated by the U.S. government upon his release.

"Why did they give me a pen and paper if they were planning to do that?" Dost asked last week with evident anguish. "Each word was like a child to me -- irreplaceable."

The slight, soft-spoken man of 44 was back in his library Friday in this city near the Pakistani-Afghan border, surrounded by stacks of Islamic texts. It was just two days after the U.S. government had delivered him and 15 other former prisoners to Afghan authorities.

As soon as he was freed, Dost headed east to Peshawar, his home since the 1980s, where several hundred well-wishers and eight shy children waited to greet him in a large carpeted parlor.

Dost said he was arrested by Pakistani police in November 2001, along with his younger brother, Badr. The two were kept in solitary confinement for two months, then transferred to U.S. military detention in Afghanistan, where prisoners were kept in larger groups but forbidden to speak to one another.

The brothers, both gemstone dealers, said they had been falsely accused by enemies linked to the Pakistani government and detained in the frenzied hunt for terrorists that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They said they had no links to either Afghanistan's Taliban regime or al Qaeda.

But their American captors, they said, seemed to believe otherwise. In Afghanistan, they said, Americans sheared off their beards, forbade them to wash, shoved their faces into the dirt and screamed curses in their ears during frequent interrogations.

The accounts could not be independently verified. The procedures are secret, and U.S. officials in Afghanistan refused to comment on the 16 detainees released last week.

Badr, who was released six months ago, said he volunteered to clean out the metal drums used by prisoners for bathing, hoping to get close enough to Dost to quietly compare notes on the accounts they were giving interrogators.

Dost had other priorities.

"What kind of spring is this," he whispered in verse as Badr approached, "where there are no flowers and the air is filled with a miserable smell?"

Badr said he gaped in disbelief. Even in prison, his brother was composing poems.

But Badr said he gained new appreciation for Dost's talent after they were shipped to Guantanamo in May 2002. The two were kept in separate wire pens, and could only glimpse each other from a distance. The U.S. government had declared all such prisoners "enemy combatants," subject to indefinite detention and ineligible for many rights accorded prisoners of war.

Badr said he grew increasingly depressed, until one day someone handed him a tiny note written on a flattened paper cup.

"It was just a short poem," Badr recalled. "Something about how in life everything is possible and we should be patient because freedom is close at hand." But it was enough to swell his heart with hope. "I was suddenly so happy," he said.

Dost had smuggled the note to Badr through an ingenious ruse. Every few days, representatives from the International Committee of the Red Cross arrived with forms so prisoners could write brief letters home. They were given only 10 minutes, but that was enough to dash off other notes on hidden scraps of paper cups. Prisoners then passed the messages between wire pens on pulleys made of threads from their prayer caps.

Dost said he also began adding poems to the Red Cross forms. When they reached Peshawar, his oldest son carefully stowed each new missive in the black plastic binder.

In his first months of confinement, Dost's poetry had been full of despair. But now, having at last found a way to record his compositions, Dost said he felt his spirits lift. The heat and mosquitoes in the camp were as bothersome as ever, but his sense of hopelessness gave way to optimism and defiance.

"Just as the heart beats inside the darkness of the body, so I, although in a cage, continue to beat with life," began one letter-poem. "Those who have no courage or honor think themselves free, but are slaves. I am flying on the wings of thought, and so, even in this cage, I am more free than they."

Meanwhile, about a year after Dost's arrival in Cuba, he learned that U.S. authorities had agreed to allow the prisoners pens and paper.

The rules were strict. To prevent detainees from using pens as weapons, the guards gave out a flexible, rubber variety that made writing awkward. Each man was limited to one sheet of paper per shift, but Dost said fellow inmates donated their paper to him, then eagerly read his poems. One of his most popular was a satire criticizing the U.S. military for sending people to Cuba on thin evidence.

"That poem was on everybody's lips," he recalled with a proud smile.

Dost's satirical penchant had gotten him into trouble before. After he wrote a poem lampooning an Islamic cleric in Peshawar, he said, the man bore him such a grudge that he fingered him to Pakistani intelligence agents, leading to his arrest.

At Guantanamo, he said, he had to spend hours explaining to interrogators a satirical essay he had published in 1998, after President Bill Clinton offered a $5 million reward for Osama bin Laden. Dost's essay offered a reward of 5 million afghanis -- then the equivalent of about $113, he said -- for Clinton.

Eventually, he said, the interrogators seemed convinced that he had not meant any serious harm. In February 2004, Dost said, he was transferred to another section of Guantanamo where he had access to as much paper as he wanted.

He continued to produce hundreds of poems, translated the Koran into Pashto and wrote a text on Islamic jurisprudence.

In the meantime, Dost said, he was taken before a review tribunal, a brief procedure that he described as a "show trial," even though it ultimately resulted in his release. To date, U.S. military officials said, 232 Guantanamo detainees have been released and more than 500 remain in custody.

Often, Dost said, the guards conducted raids when officials suspected a detainee had issued a fatwa -- an Islamic decree against them. Each time, all inmates' writings were confiscated. Dost said he was assured that his work would be returned to him on his release.

But when that day finally came last week, Dost said, he received only a duffel bag with a blanket, a change of clothes and a few hundred papers -- a fraction of his writings.

This parting blow, he said, struck him harder than all the humiliations of confinement. On Friday, as well-wishers swarmed into his home, he said his only thought was how to recover his work.

"If they give me back my writings, truly I will feel as though I was never imprisoned," he said. "And if they don't . . . "

Dost's voice trailed off. For the first time in three years, he was at a loss for words.

Rights group calls for torture probe into role of Rumsfeld
Sun Apr 24, 1:08 AM ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) - A US human rights group has demanded that a special prosecutor be named to investigate US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former CIA director George Tenet and other top officials for possible war crimes related to the torture and abuse of prisoners.

Nearly a year after photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison shocked the world, more than half a dozen official investigations have resulted only in prosecutions of lower ranking soldiers, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Saturday under the title "Getting Away with Torture?"

"The evidence demands more," the report said. "Yet a wall of impunity surrounds the architects of the policies responsible for the larger pattern of abuses."

The report argues that the evidence indicates that decisions and policies made by Rumsfeld and other high-ranking officials facilitated widespread abuse of prisoners in violation of US and international law, notably the Geneva Conventions.

It cited mounting evidence that they knew or should have known violations took place, and failed to act to stem the abuse, making them legally liable for the actions of subordinates further down the chain of command.

Besides Rumsfeld, the report cites Tenet; Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the former US commander in Iraq; and Major General Geoffrey Miller, the former commander of a military-run detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The known evidence, the report said, "already makes a compelling case for a thorough, genuinely independent investigation of what top officials did, what they knew and how they responded when they became aware of the widespread nature of the abuses."

It called for the appointment of a special prosecutor on grounds that Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez was himself deeply involved in devising the policies that led to the abuse, and thus had a conflict of interest.

It also called on the US Congress and the president to establish a special commission to investigate the matter, and name a special prosecutor if Gonzalez has not already done so.

At least seven investigations have been conducted since the Abu Ghraib scandal broke.

But Human Rights Watch said all but one was conducted by the military on itself, and none examined the role of senior civilian leaders. The CIA also is reported to have conducted internal inquiries but no details have been made public.

The report highlights Rumsfeld's role in approving coercive interrogation techniques in December 2002 for use only on prisoners in Guantanamo -- including the use of dogs to incite fear, "stress" positions, and the stripping of detainees -- which later migrated to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Rumsfeld rescinded the approval for the use of the techniques January 15 after the Navy's general counsel objected. But the US commander in Iraq later apparently drew on the list in devising his own interrogation guidelines in Iraq September 15, 2003, which itself was later rescinded.