Afghanistan News December 18, 2005

December 18, 2005

'Finally, we got it': Afghanistan's new parliament due to open Monday
Sunday December 18, 4:09 PM
KABUL (AFP) - Afghanistan's first parliament after nearly three decades of brutal occupation, war and harsh Taliban rule is due to convene Monday in the final step of a transition to democracy launched four years ago.

US Vice President Dick Cheney will head the guest list at what officials have promised will be a "glorious" opening ceremony in the newly renovated parliament building that was ruined in the 1992-1996 civil war.

Despite concerns about the fact that leading figures from the country's bloody past won seats in the September election, many Afghans are excited about their new step on the path of democracy.

"Finally, we got it. We, too, have got a parliament like others," said Kabul resident Abdul Jabar on a road hung with banners of congratulations for the occasion and promising the war-weary population peace and prosperity.

"I'm counting the moments to see it," he said.

But the central Asian nation's troubled history and lack of significant development since the Taliban was ousted in a US-led campaign in late 2001 have left others jaded.

"I've lost faith in the future," said Ahmad Daud, a former military officer. "As long as I remember, no one has served the country with honesty -- the parliament will just not help."

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, elected in the first ever presidential election in October last year, had promised a good life for people "but he was lying," Daud said.

Despite a flood of billions of dollars from the international community after the toppling of the Taliban, most ordinary Afghans still struggle with bone-crushing poverty.

Afghanistan is among the 10 poorest countries in the world, with a life expectancy of just around 44 years. Only about six percent of the population of around 30 million has electricity and most are illiterate.

Too young to remember Afghanistan's last parliament convened in 1973 and having never been to school, security guard Mohammad Alam knows little about what to expect from the 351 parliamentarians.

Many of them are anti-Soviet warlords -- several accused of crimes against humanity -- and religious leaders. Some are former Taliban commanders and there are more than 70 women, whom the Taliban had barred from politics.

"I don't know exactly what they're going to do," Alam says. "But I think they'll work for us," he says, guarding one of the gates to the complex.

Security for Monday's opening session is high amid fears of an attack by Taliban and other extremists waging an anti-government insurgency blamed for more than 1,500 deaths this year.

The hardline movement claimed responsibility for a suicide blast about 500 metres (yards) from the building on Friday, saying it had been intended for parliament. Only the attacker was killed.

"The parliament has been made up by invader Americans," purported Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousuf Ahmadi warned last week. "We'll attack them as we attack the government and invading American infidels."

The United States led the invasion that toppled the Taliban after the regime did not surrender Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden for the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

The sitting of the Afghan parliament is the final stage in a roadmap for democracy adopted at a conference in Bonn, Germany weeks after the Taliban fled.

The nature of the new parliament is difficult to gauge, with the presence of several warlords, including some appointed by Karzai into the Senate, raising some concern.

"The parliament will be conservative but not too much," said National Democratic Institute analyst Neik Mohammed Kabuli. "Most of the main leaders are not extremists."

New MP Safia Siddiqi played down the possibility of strong divisions emerging, such as the ones seen in the civil war.

"Now people are thinking about Afghanistan, the future of this country. They are not only thinking about themselves," she said.

Afghans hope assembly brings peace; Taliban threaten
By David Brunnstrom
KABUL (Reuters) - On the eve of the opening of the first Afghan parliament in decades, MPs and ordinary Afghans hope that for all its flaws and despite renewed Taliban threats it will help end the nation's long cycle of violence.

Monday's inauguration of the 249-seat Wolesi Jirga, or lower house of parliament, and the 102-member upper house, or Meshrano Jirga, will be attended by Vice President     Dick Cheney and other foreign dignitaries and marked by tight security.

On Friday, a bomber died and two passers-by were hurt in a Taliban suicide attack on     NATO-led peacekeepers near the parliament building. On Sunday, an insurgent commander warned Afghans to stay away, saying it could be attacked "at any time."

The Taliban has declared the parliament "bogus" and a symbol of U.S. occupation. "Killing agents of foreign infidels is permissible," Taliban commander Mullah Sabir Momin told Reuters.

Despite threats from the guerrillas, who have stepped up attacks in recent weeks, MPs and ordinary Afghans hope the parliament will bolster stability after decades of bloodshed.

"The Taliban cannot do anything to the parliament, they are not a threat. The people need a parliament," Mullah Salman Rocketi, a Taliban commander who defected and is now an MP for the insurgent-troubled province of Zabul, told Reuters.

Even though many are disappointed by U.N.-backed September polls that were marred by fraud and gave seats to warlords accused of rights abuses, there are hopes for a new beginning.

Protagonists from three decades of conflict, including former Communists, leaders of guerrilla groups that overthrew them and ex-Taliban officials, will sit side by side with a clutch of new idealistic technocrats and women's activists.

The latter say the presence of warlords is far from ideal, but there are hopes the diversity of the first elected legislature since the 1970s will bring further reconciliation in a country still fragile despite billions of dollars of Western aid aimed at building a moderate Muslim state to counter Islamist radicalism.

"The people of     Afghanistan are looking forward to having a parliament back," said Faizullah Zaki, an MP who was formerly a spokesman for ethnic Uzbek factional chief Abdul Rashid Dostum.

DIVERSITY "POSITIVE"
"It is not accidental the political crisis in Afghanistan started when parliament failed," he said at the end of a week-long series of orientation seminars for new MPs.

"The diversity of the parliament is absolutely positive. One should not expect no differences of ideas. But we should learn to tolerate each other and to debate and come to conclusions."

Padshah Khan Zadran, an MP whose tribal forces have clashed with those of President Hamid Karzai, said parliament's aim was to rebuild Afghanistan.

"People will unite because they have witnessed enough suffering. Even those from the factions realize this."

Four years after U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban, many are disappointed by the failure of Karzai's government to improve their lives and are struggling to cope with soaring prices and lack of jobs. They are hoping for change.

"We hope it will provide job opportunities so we can live freely," said university student Ahmad Nawab, while school teacher Mohammad Rasoul added: "This is something Afghans voted for. I hope it changes people's lives for the better."

Human Rights Watch says up to 60 percent of deputies are warlords or their proxies, boding ill for efforts to account for abuses and to stamp out a huge opium and heroin trade.

But Safia Seddiqi, one of two women among more than a dozen figures bidding for the influential post of lower house president, said perhaps 50 percent of MPs were moderates.

"They are thinking about the dignity and unity of Afghans," she said. "They are tired of war and believe in reform."

Mir Ahmad Joyenda, a former communist official now an independent MP, said he would back all policies that were in the national interest and spoke of "a new beginning."

"We must forget the past and work with people, otherwise it will again be fragmented," he said.

Pro-Karzai lawmaker Khalid Pashtun said unity of purpose was vital but the executive needed to listen to parliament.

"If the executive power and the legislative are not together to some extent, the government can never get stronger. If we are apart there is a good possibility parliament can disintegrate."

(Additional reporting by Sayed Salahuddin, Ahmad Sear and Yousuf Azimy)

Afghanistan's new parliament dominated by warlords
Sunday December 18, 05:46 PM
KABUL (AFP) - About two-thirds of the seats in Afghanistan's first parliament in 30 years, to meet on Monday, will be filled by warlords from years of bloody conflict but they are unlikely to form a bloc, analysts said.

Instead the diverse backgrounds of the lawmakers and the fact that one-third of all seats are held by independents will likely give US-backed President Hamid Karzai majority support, they said.

"The majority of the parliamentarians are mujahedins (warlords) or linked to mujahedins," said analyst Neik Mohammed Kabuli from the National Democratic Institute (NDI) in Kabul.

"Mujahedin leaders and parties are a majority in the parliament," confirmed Sabrina Saqeb, 25, the youngest of the MPs to be elected to the 249-seat House of Representatives, the Wolesi Jirga.

The fighters rose to prominence when they joined the resistance to the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation. They later turned on each other in the bloody 1992-1996 civil war for which some have been accused of rights abuses.

That they made a strong showing in the September 18 election is not a surprise given their still considerable influence in the provinces.

"The parliament is between 60 and 70 percent mujahedin or related. But they don't necessarily represent a bloc," a UN analyst said, requesting anonymity.

Sitting among the one-time fighters on the benches will be several progressives, including many of the women who were reserved 25 percent of parliamentary seats.

Ethnic divisions, exacerbated by the 1990s civil war, could count more in determining the future track of the assembly, analysts said.

Close to half of those elected are from the dominant Pashtun group, from which Karzai comes. Pashtuns, who make up nearly 50 percent of the population and dominate in the south and east of the country, were in power without interruption between 1747 and 1978.

"There will be a lot of ethnicity involved," said political analyst and former minister Hamidullah Tarzi.

But MP Shukria Barakzai was confident this would not be a factor for long.

"In the short term, we'll see a divide between Pashtuns and others. But soon the atmosphere will change, and a majority will try to work with Karzai," she said.

Several analysts believed the range of the parliamentarians would allow Karzai, who has the military and financial backing of the international community and represents the progressive camp, to secure majority support.

The only declared opposition force, a coalition led by failed presidential contender Yunus Qanooni, "will be very far from a majority in the Wolesi Jirga", the NDI said in a report.

Karzai's backing is likely to come from most of the Pashtuns, the independents, democratic intellectuals, women and former communists and Taliban, Kabuli said.

The president might also try various "arrangements" to win support, he said.

Tarzi agreed "all kind of incentives" could be on offer.

"There will be attempts to have coordination (between the MPs) for political stability. I don't think there is any other option," he said.

Still trying to recover from the wounds of the past, the country would like to do all it can to avoid a return to the divisions that tore it apart in the 1990s, the analysts agreed.

"If the parliament comes against the government, that will be a new tragedy for Afghanistan," said Sayed Ishaq Gailani, head of a moderate mujahedin party.

The progressive Barakzai added: "We come with new ideas. We cannot go face to face with mujahedins, it would not work. So we have to work together."

Cheney 'must explain rights abuses, detentions in Afghan visit'
KABUL (AFP) - A leading rights group has called for President Hamid Karzai to press visiting US Vice President Dick Cheney about secret detention centres in Afghanistan and rights abuses by US troops.

Cheney is due to attend the inauguration on Monday of Afghanistan's first parliament in nearly three decades, with thousands of US troops here since helping to topple the hardline Taliban in 2001.

"US forces are still detaining people without charge indefinitely in operating bases," Human Rights Watch Asia research director Sam Zarifi told AFP Sunday.

"The problems are not (the main bases of) Bagram and Kandahar, but the 20 to 30 operation bases in the country. We don't know where they are. They are the places where the bad treatments are," he said.

"We'd like to see Karzai ask Cheney to place some legal framework about the behaviour of US forces here, to give access to the Afghan Human Rights Commission, which has a constitutional mandate to observe places of detention."

US troops conducting their "war on terror" in Afghanistan, including hunting down militants from the Taliban and other Islamic groups, have been accused of several violations in Afghanistan.

At least eight detainees are believed to have died in US custody at the main US base at Bagram, near Kabul, since 2001.

"The US detain people, keep them for a while and then release them without charges. It sometimes take two months for the family to know where the detainees are," Zarifi said.

Cheney should in turn use his visit to affirm Washington's support for "justice and accountability" in Afghanistan, including a plan to deal with its war-torn past by putting on trial rights violators.

"Otherwise Mr Cheney's presence tomorrow (Monday) could be interpreted by many Afghans as US approval for the inclusion of many warlords and human rights abusers in the parliament," Zarifi said.

Several men accused of rights abuses will be among the legislators to take their seats in parliament on Monday and rights groups said they may use their new powers to vote themselves an amnesty.

"Why can we put Saddam on trial after two years and not Afghan warlords who violated human rights and who are now going to sit at the parliament he's going to inaugurate?" Zarifi asked.

Cheney To Attend Opening Session Of New Afghan Parliament
Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
December 17, 2005 -- U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney is expected to attend the opening session of Afghanistan's new democratically-elected parliament.

Cheney's office said the vice president will be in Kabul to represent the United States at Monday's first session of the Wolesi Jirga chosen in the September 18 elections. It is Afghanistan's first elected parliament in more than 30 years.

Cheney is expected to also hold talks with President Hamid Karzai and meet with U.S. troops serving in Afghanistan. Cheney's tour is also expected to include a visit to Pakistan, where he will review U.S. relief and reconstruction efforts following Pakistan's devastating October 8 earthquake. Cheney is expected to hold talks with President General Pervez Musharraf.

The U.S. vice president is also expected to visit Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Oman for talks with the leaders of those countries.

Pakistan to attend Afghan parliament session
The Pakistan Link - Dec 17 9:00 AM
ISLAMABAD, Dec 17 : A three-member Pakistani parliamentary delegation left for Kabul on Saturday to represent the country in the first meeting of Afghan parliament, which is scheduled to meet on Monday, parliamentary sources said.

Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly (lower house of the parliament) Sardar Muhammad Yaqub is leading the delegation.

The delegation will stay in Kabul till December 22 and will meet Afghan leaders.

Foreign dignitaries will attend the opening session of the 249-seat Wolesi Jirga, the lower house.

Reports suggest that security has been tightened for the event in view of attacks by Taliban.

A Taliban suicide attacker blew up a car bomb near the parliament, killing himself and another man.

Three Afghan police killed as 'Taliban' attack highway police post
Sun Dec 18, 2:03 AM ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) - Three policemen and a suspected Taliban insurgent were killed when around a dozen attackers stormed a highway checkpost in southern Afghanistan, police said.

"The fighting lasted for more than one and half hours," highway police commander Mohammad Nabi Allahyar told AFP after the attack late Saturday on a key road connecting the main southern city of Kandahar with the capital.

"It was fierce fighting," he said on Sunday.

Allahyar blamed the attack in Zabul province on remnants of the extremist Taliban, which was in power between 1996 and 2001, when they were forced out in a US-led campaign.

Some of the 10 to 15 attackers were also wounded in the gunfight but their comrades were able to evacuate them, he said.

The attack occurred two days before the first sitting of the war-ravaged country's legislature due on Monday after more than three decades of conflict.

Heavy security has been put in place for the opening ceremony to be attended by President Hamid Karzai and foreign dignitaries including US Vice President Dick Cheney, with the government fearing similar attacks on the parliament.

Unrelenting attacks on targets linked to the US-backed government have killed more than 1,500 people this year, most of them militants struck down by Afghan and foreign security forces hunting down insurgents.

Former Taliban commander calls on militants to give up resistance
Source: Xinhua via People's Daily (China) / December 17, 2005
Mullah Abdul Salam Rcoketi, a former Taliban commander and member of Afghanistan's post-Taliban parliament, on Saturday called on his former comrades to give up militancy and join government.

"War is not the way to serve our people. I urge the Taliban to lay down arm, to give up resistance and join the government to serve the nation through the government platform," he told Xinhua in an exclusive interview.

The bearded ex-militias commander, who earned the name of Rocketi for his skill in using rockets against helicopters, was of the view that fighting government would further damage the country's interests.

"Afghans have to get untied and should work for stabilizing durable peace and security in the country," he stressed.

Commenting on his possible problem with his former foes in the parliament, the 49-year-old former Taliban commander emphasized " forgetting the past," adding that "We should bury the past and serve our nation through parliament."

Majority of the members of the two-chamber parliaments are associates of the former regimes, anti-Soviet Union resistance groups and Taliban's former loyalists who fought each other for power and were involved in the past 25 years of war and civil strive.

Remnants of the ousted Taliban regime who staged a violent comeback have vowed to overthrow the Karzai-led administration and expel the US-dominated foreign troops from Afghanistan by Jihad or holy war.

The maiden session of the 249-seat Wolsi Jirga or Lower House and 102-member Mushrano Jirga or Upper House of parliament would be held amid tight security soon.

U.S.-Afghanistan calls screened
Eric Lichtblau, James Risen, New York Times Sunday, December 18, 2005
Washington -- The National Security Agency first began to conduct warrantless eavesdropping on telephone calls and e-mail messages between the United States and Afghanistan months before President Bush officially authorized a broader version of the agency's special domestic collection program, according to current and former government officials.

The security agency surveillance of telecommunications between the United States and Afghanistan began in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the officials said.

The agency operation included eavesdropping on communications between Americans and other individuals in the United States and people in Afghanistan without the court-approved search warrants that are normally required for such domestic intelligence activities.

On Saturday, President Bush confirmed the existence of the security agency's domestic intelligence collection program and defended it, saying it had been instrumental in disrupting terrorist cells in America.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration and senior U.S. intelligence officials quickly decided that existing laws and regulations restricting the government's ability to monitor American communications were too rigid to permit quick and flexible access to international calls and e-mail traffic involving terrorism suspects.

Bush administration officials also believed that the intelligence community, including the CIA and the NSA, had been too risk-averse before the attacks and had missed opportunities to prevent them.

In the days after the attacks, the CIA determined that al Qaeda, which had found a haven in Afghanistan, was responsible. Congress quickly passed a resolution authorizing the president to conduct a war on terrorism, and the security agency was secretly ordered to begin conducting comprehensive coverage of all communications into and out of Afghanistan, including those to and from the United States, current and former officials said.

It could not be learned whether Bush issued a formal, written order authorizing the early surveillance of communications between the United States and Afghanistan that was later superseded by the broader order. A White House spokesman, Maria Tamburri, declined to comment.

Pakistan envoy sees no major Taliban resurgence
Source: Reuters via Dawn (Pakistan) / December 17, 2005 issue
WASHINGTON, Dec 16: Pakistan’s ambassador acknowledged on Thursday that “remnants” of Taliban and Al Qaeda militants continue to operate in Afghanistan and his country’s border, but insisted they are not resurging significantly. In an interview with Reuters, Jehangir Karamat said Osama bin Laden has lost effectiveness, that his Al Qaeda organization has no overarching leadership capable of directing attacks worldwide and that it would be unwise to become “obsessed” with capturing the Islamist militant who directed the Sept 11, 2001, attacks.

Four years after US-led forces overthrew the Taliban, Afghanistan is still troubled by a Taliban-led Islamist militant insurgency and the country has seen a spate of suicide attacks in recent weeks.

In addition, there are media reports that Pakistan’s rugged Waziristan region along the Afghan border may be slipping back into the hands of Taliban and Al Qaeda militants, despite the presence of some 60,000 Pakistani troops.

In Afghanistan, “these are dissidents, political outsiders, some remnants of the Taliban on the run who are carrying out these episodic periodic attacks (but it is a) transient tactical phenomenon” that will end when the country stabilizes, Mr Karamat said.

“I think there is no large-scale organized Taliban presence anywhere” in Afghanistan and the overall outlook is “excellent,” said Karamat, former chairman of Pakistan’s joint chiefs of staff and chief of army staff.

UNREST: As for Waziristan, Karamat said Islamabad was vigorously working to keep the region under control with the border “strongly defended on both sides with no chance of any alien presence there.”

Mr Karamat said he did not know the status of Osama — widely believed hiding along the Afghan-Pakistani border — but “I don’t think he’s effective (and) I don’t think there is an overarching leadership that is directing operations worldwide.”

Recent edicts and tapes issued in al Qaeda’s name are “a ploy to give an impression that there is overall control, guidance and direction” to the group’s activities, he said.

Mr Karamat said efforts are still under way to find Osama but “we shouldn’t be obsessed with that” because it would divert attention from other anti-terror war operations.

He said Pakistan continues to press the Bush administration for the opportunity to negotiate the same kind of civilian nuclear cooperation agreement reached in July with India, even though senior U.S. officials have publicly ruled out this possibility.

Afghanistan's Chance to Heal
Diverse New Parliament Will Bring Together Former Adversaries
By Griff Witte Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, December 18, 2005; A22
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Mamoor Shelgaray is a former fighter. He spent a decade battling Soviet troops as a member of one of the country's most hard-line Islamic parties. Wary of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, he said he believes his country should return to its religious roots by shielding its children from Western television and videos.

Roshanak Wardak is a healer. She spent five years defying Taliban authorities by providing medical care in one of Afghanistan's poorest provinces, while refusing to veil her face. A political independent, Wardak strongly supports the American role here and wants to expand the rights of women.

On the surface, the two Afghans share little. But as of Monday, they will have one thing in common. Both will become members of Afghanistan's new parliament, which will open more than three decades after the country's last freely elected legislature closed its doors. In between came unrelenting conflict, and each of the 351 new members bears its scars.

Like the country, the parliament is badly fractured. The 249 members of the lower house, who were elected in September, and the 102 members of the upper house, who were partly chosen by local councils and partly appointed by President Hamid Karzai, include Islamic scholars, communists, women, Taliban members and technocrats.

Most are people like Shelgaray and Wardak, little known outside their home provinces. But some are nationally known former leaders of factional militias -- such as Mohammed Fahim and Abdurrab Rasul Sayyaf -- who are revered by their followers and despised by others for their bloody roles in the civil war of the 1990s.

When the first session convenes Monday, with Karzai, Vice President Cheney and other foreign dignitaries expected to be looking on, former oppressors will stand and take the oath beside former victims. But a question will hang over the ceremony: After a generation of violent score-settling, will such an eclectic array of people be able to resolve their differences through civilized debate?

"They're going to have to learn to tolerate each other and to cooperate with each other," said Musa Maroofi, a professor of law and political science at Kabul University. "They sense that conflict doesn't work, that fighting each other with weapons is not getting them anywhere. This is the best, and only, opportunity for them to work for a common cause -- for the public interest, rather than their individual interests."

Afghanistan's recent history -- especially the civil war that followed the withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1989 -- suggests such hopes may be misplaced. But Wardak and Shelgaray, both elected members of the lower house, offer at least some cause for optimism. Both have sacrificed much to get to the parliament, and both say they do not plan to waste the chance to help reknit their broken country.

A Doctor and Politician

In the past several months, Wardak's homestead of wheat fields and apple orchards in Wardak province, 25 miles southwest of the capital, has been sprayed by machine-gun fire and assaulted with rockets. It is the work, she suspects, of political opponents.

"Maybe," she said matter-of-factly, "I will lose my life."

Wardak, a serious woman of 49 with a sturdy build and dark green eyes, operates a rudimentary clinic -- a couple of beds, an IV drip and basic medical supplies -- out of her rural home. She was trained as a gynecologist, but in a province with so few doctors, she ends up handling any medical case that comes her way, day or night.

Wardak's grandfather and uncle both served as leaders of the former Afghan national assembly. As a student, she aspired to politics, but her father convinced her that medicine was more suitable for a woman. After the Soviet invasion in 1979, she spent years in Pakistan caring for Afghan refugees. She returned during the civil war and opened her clinic.

She continued treating patients under the Taliban, despite its severe restrictions on women's public activities. She also refused to wear a head-to-toe veil, or burqa .

"I told them, 'If you can show me where the Koran says I should wear the burqa, I will wear seven burqas,' " she said.

Initially, Wardak did not want to run for parliament. She worried it would take her away from her patients, but they convinced her she could do both jobs. After she won, though, some had second thoughts.

"We all trust her. Even the men trust her. That's why they send us to the lady doctor," said Bibi Jamila, a longtime patient in her fifties, who supported Wardak's run for office but is now worried about where she will get medical care. "She doesn't even want any money."

Wardak conceded that her decision to enter politics was a gamble: Can she do more for the people of her destitute province in the parliament than in her clinic? As one of 68 women in the lower house, she said she hopes to help protect Afghan women from abusive husbands and to get more public facilities built in her long-neglected province.

"We depend on the central government. If the center decides to build schools for us, we have schools. If the center decides to build hospitals, we have hospitals," she said. "But right now, students are sitting under the rain, the sun and the snow."

Breaking With the Warlords

Mamoor Shelgaray, 51, an imposing figure with jet-black hair and a long, bushy beard, has similar aspirations for his constituents in Ghazni province, an hour's drive south of Wardak on a dusty plain wedged between snow-capped peaks. But he is also realistic.

"I told the people, 'If I get to the parliament, you should not think that the next day I will build a school for you. It will take a long time,' " he said over tea in his home village of Ander. "Besides, the government doesn't have any money."

Shelgaray said he thinks a more achievable, and urgent, goal is to curb the import of racy Western television programming, which he believes is undermining Afghanistan's Islamic values. He also said he would push for a more severe penalty for Ali Mohaqeq Nasab, a Kabul journalist who was recently sentenced to two years in prison for writing articles deemed blasphemous by the courts.

The son of a tribal leader and Islamic scholar, Shelgaray was denied formal education because of the war with the Soviet Union that broke out in his country when he was a young man. Veterans of that war, known as mujaheddin, form the largest single bloc in the parliament. Shelgaray, who killed countless Soviet soldiers, sees his mission as much the same today as he did then: to defend Islam.

Shelgaray is a longtime member of Hezbi Islami, an Islamic militia that received large amounts of covert U.S. aid during the war against the Soviets. In more recent years, its leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, has been hunted by the U.S. military as a terrorist. Shelgaray said he and the 40 other Hezbi Islami members in parliament have reluctantly broken with Hekmatyar.

"After a long discussion, we decided we should support the government. If I was supporting Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, I would not be here now. I would have a Kalashnikov and be in the mountains," he said.

Still, he questioned why Hekmatyar had not been invited to participate in Afghanistan's reconstruction. Shelgaray ran for parliament on a platform of national unity. He said that should mean reconciling with individuals who are now considered terrorists.

On that point, Shelgaray has a surprising ally in Wardak, who believes that in parliament she can stand toe-to-toe with commanders who once spread fear.

"The position of the warlord is much different than his previous position. Now he is the people's representative. According to the rules, there is no difference between him and me. Now we are equal," she said. "And today, or tomorrow, or maybe after a few months, he will learn that."

Each day for the past week, Wardak has been sitting with those commanders as all new members of parliament participate in training sessions. And each night, she has made the hour-long drive to her village of Shakhabad, in Wardak province, so she can treat as many patients as possible before morning.

But her absence has already been felt. An hour after Wardak left for the capital this month for the first day of training, a woman appeared at her gate. Crying and crouched in obvious pain, she asked to see the doctor. It was left to Wardak's brother to tell the woman that the doctor had gone to Kabul.

Bosnian Serbs donate weapons to Afghanistan
[ Saturday, December 17, 2005 04:58:28 pmIANS ] Times of India, India
SARAJEVO: The Bosnian Serb government will donate a large cache of weapons to Afghanistan, the Banja Luka-based government said in a statement.

The Bosnian Serb entity - Srpska Republic - according to the statement, would donate light weapons and ammunition left as surplus after defence reforms in Bosnia-Herzegovina reduced weapons and troops.

The Srpska's government said it would donate 4,500 machine-guns, 400 howitzers and one million 7.62 calibre bullets.

The international community's representatives in Bosnia-Herzegovina, as statement read, have approved the donation.