Afghanistan News December 6, 2005

December 6, 2005

12-nation meet prioritizes power for Afghanistan
Mon Dec 5,12:34 PM ET
KABUL (AFP) - Twelve nations agreed to prioritize cooperation on power projects to spur on destitute Afghanistan's reconstruction to help stabilize the country and undercut its massive illicit drugs trade.

The countries -- including China, India, Iran and Russia -- made the commitment in the "Kabul Declaration" on regional cooperation adopted after a two-day conference facilitated by the G8 group of industrialized nations.

The meeting was the first major regional economic conference that Afghanistan has held since emerging in 2001 from the hardline rule of the inward-looking Taliban regime that could count only three nations as friends.

The decades of war that preceded the Taliban's rise to power in 1996 destroyed the infrastructure of the central Asian nation, and much of it is still in ruins today.

The dire need for electricity was a priority at the conference with even the capital only getting a few hours of power a day and the lack of supply a major drawback for investors.

President Hamid Karzai told the opening session that Afghanistan could alone only provide power for six percent of its population and would need to import electricity for at least another 10 years.

Other priorities in the declaration were the sharing of water and facilitating trade, including by improving the road infrastructure and harmonising customs procedures.

Another priority was the fight against drugs: Afghanistan supplies more than 80 percent of the world's opium, used to make heroin, with the illicit trade making up more than half of the country's gross domestic product.

The provision of electricity, water and roads would create new jobs that would help the people of Afghanistan "earn a living beyond illicit trade in drugs," Britain's junior foreign minister Kim Howells told reporters.

Drugs barons and their private armies appear to be involved in some of the regular attacks on police and other groups linked to the government that are mostly carried out by loyalists of the Taliban, which sheltered the Al-Qaeda terror network.

A Taliban-led insurgency has claimed about 1,500 lives this year and cast a shadow over Afghanistan's moves towards democracy, a key step being an election to form the first parliament in more than 30 years that is due to sit this month.

The Kabul Declaration marked the "moment when Afghanistan has become a real player in bringing peace and stability to this region," Howells said.

It was also "an important sign to the whole world that there is great determination here not only to help Afghanistan as a nation, a country that has gone though the most terrible recent history", but also that it had become an "integral part of a fast-growing region," he said.

Afghan killed as bomber attacks foreign troops
Mon Dec 5,11:28 AM ET
KABUL (Reuters) - An Afghan civilian was killed on Sunday when a suicide bomber blew himself up near a convoy of U.S.-led troops in the southern province of Kandahar, a police official said.

None of the foreign troops was hurt when the attacker, who apparently had explosives strapped to his body, blew himself up as the convoy passed, said Kandahar police chief Mohammad Hakim.

The United States leads a multinational force of about 20,000 troops hunting Taliban and allied militants in south and southeast Afghanistan.

The nationality of the soldiers attacked was not immediately known but most members of the U.S.-led force are American.

U.S. military officials were not immediately available to comment.

In separate incidents on Sunday, five U.S. troops and an Afghan soldier were injured when their helicopters made hard landings during combat operations in different parts of the country, the U.S. military said.

CH-47 Chinook helicopters were involved in both incidents. None of the injuries was serious and the reasons for the hard landings were being investigated, the U.S. military said in a statement.

Five U.S. soldiers were hurt and their helicopter suffered severe damage when it landed hard to the north of the southern city of Kandahar, it said.

A Taliban spokesman said Taliban fighters had attacked a U.S. helicopter in Kandahar as it dropped off soldiers.

"We shot it as it was landing," the spokesman, Qari Mohammad Yousuf, said by telephone from an undisclosed location.

In a separate incident, the Afghan soldier was hurt in Uruzgan province, to the northwest of Kandahar, the U.S. military said.

Four Chinooks have crashed in Afghanistan in the past six months, killing 56 people, most of them U.S. personnel.

This year has been the bloodiest year for U.S. forces in Afghanistan since they overthrew the Taliban in late 2001 for refusing to give up al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Nearly 60 U.S. troops have been killed in hostile action this year. Among them were 17 soldiers killed in Kunar province in the east in June when their helicopter was downed by Taliban insurgents.

'Enemy fire' forced down US helicopters in Afghanistan
Mon Dec 5, 2:43 PM ET
KABUL (AFP) - Hostile fire forced two US helicopters to make emergency landings in volatile southern     Afghanistan, injuring five US soldiers and an Afghan, the US military said as three Afghan troops were wounded by a remote-controlled bomb.

Another improvised bomb exploded between a patrol of Dutch peacekeepers in the northern province of Baghland but none was hurt while a civilian mine clearer was killed removing an explosive at the military airport in Kabul, the     NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said.

The bomb that wounded the three Afghan soldiers was detonated in volatile southern Zabul province as their patrol passed on the way to investigate a tip-off about a hideout of Taliban militants, provincial spokesman Gulab Shaha Alikhil said.

Meanwhile the US military said two of its Chinook heavy-lift choppers that were forced to make emergency landings in the insurgency-hit south on Sunday had both "received enemy fire".

The choppers were involved in US-led coalition operations against Taliban rebels and other Islamic militants.

The coalition was investigating what kind of weapons were used against the helicopters, Lieutenant Colonel Laurent Fox, a spokesman for the 20,000 strong coalition, told reporters Monday.

The first helicopter landed at a forward operating base in Uruzgan province, wounding an Afghan soldier, and the second in neighbouring Kandahar, slightly injuring five US soldiers, Fox said.

Both areas are hotbeds for attacks by militants loyal to the Taliban regime ousted in a US-led invasion in 2001. Purported Taliban spokesmen have recently claimed the hardliners have received new anti-aircraft missiles.

A man claiming to be a spokesman for the Taliban said in a telephone call to AFP Sunday that the militia had shot down the helicopter near Kandahar. His links to the fundamentalist group could not be independently verified.

Since being toppled in a US-led operations in November 2001 for sheltering     Osama bin Laden, the Taliban have taken up an increasingly bloody insurgency against the new US-backed government and its allies.

A suicide bomber blew himself up near a US-led military convoy in volatile Kandahar on Sunday, killing a civilian and wounding a coalition soldier. The Canadian defence ministry confirmed a Canadian soldier was wounded lightly in a suicide attack in Kandahar Sunday.

It was the eighth suicide attack in Afghanistan in just over two months, several of them targeted at coalition troops and those with ISAF.

Also Sunday, three US troops were wounded when an improvised bomb exploded near their convoy in Zabul. They were in a stable condition, the coalition said.

Afghan and coalition forces had meanwhile since Friday broken up two cells that were assembling and planting such improvised bombs, and arrested five suspects, the coalition said in a statement.

Explosives and bomb-making materials were also confiscated, it said.

Violence linked to the insurgency has claimed about 1,500 lives this year, including several militants killed in clashes with security forces.

There has also been a string of military chopper crashes which have claimed nearly 60 lives this year, with some of the aircraft downed in attacks.

On June 28, a US Chinook was shot down by suspected Taliban fighters in the restive eastern province of Kunar, killing all 16 servicemen on board. Three US commandos whom it was trying to rescue were later shot dead by insurgents.

Knots in the carpet count misery of Afghan weavers
Mon Dec 5,11:37 PM ET
KABUL (AFP) - The sun rises and sets, weeks and months pass, and 12-year-old Shamta's bony fingers tie knot after knot to countless strings that will eventually mesh into a soft carpet.
She is one of thousands of Afghan girls and women who pass much of their lives working in often-squalid home-based "factories" to create the luxurious carpets that Afghanistan is famous for and adorn well-to-do homes across the world.

The colourful carpets can fetch thousands of dollars, but they bring the women who weave them just enough to get by -- and a lot of hardship.

"I start at dawn and stop by sunset -- yes, it's hard work," Shamta says at her loom under a tarpaulin in one of the poorest areas of Kabul. But, she adds, "I'm used to it."

The girl, who has never been to school, works with her 16-year-old sister, Fauzia, and two younger brothers on carpets that measure 24 square metres (80 square feet), each one taking about three months to finish.

Carpet-weaving is an ancient tradition in Afghanistan and one of the war-ravaged country's few exports. For Shamta's family of 12, it is their only income.

"We earn some 15,000 to 20,000 Afghanis (300 to 400 dollars) a month. It's not enough," says Shamta's father, Waheedullah, who like many other Afghans uses only one name.

Waheedullah taught his children the skill that was passed onto him by his own father. The family is employed by a dealer to make the carpets, which can each fetch about 3,000 dollars.

Shamta admits the job of tying tiny knots has taken a toll on her young body. "My eyes sometimes itch," she says. "My spine also hurts."

The plight of Shamta and thousands of others like her has alarmed rights activist Nilofar Sayar, who this year spent months with about 300 carpetweavers in northern Afghanistan, the country's top carpet-producing area.

"They're the unpaid slaves of their male relatives," she says in a booklet on her findings released last week.

"It's fortunate that carpets can provide businessmen annual profit in Afghanistan but have you ever thought of who is behind producing these carpets?" Sayar asks.

The women and girls, some as young as 11, spend up to 18 hours at work in "dusty, dark and wet rooms", she says. The conditions often lead to tuberculosis.

The minute and dusty work often causes eye problems among the weavers, while constant contact with dyes and wool can cause reactions to their skin. Their legs, backs and shoulders are strained by hours of sitting in the same position, often on the floor.

"They suffer from diseases but are still weaving carpets -- they're being used as machines by their husbands but no one cares about them," Sayar says.

To cope, and to keep their babies still while they are at work, many women resort to taking opium which is easy to come by in Afghanistan, the world's biggest supplier of the drug.

Sayar's report quotes a carpet weaver saying, "I have to give opium (to my baby). If I don't, who would weave carpets?"

"If a girl wants to weave carpets and wants not to be tired, she would use a little opium," the woman says.

The carpet weavers are often prevented from going to school by their families, or are poor students because they have no time to spend on their studies, according to Sayar's research.

And many become spinsters because potential husbands cannot afford the dowry a family demands for one of its key earners.

"Those who are married off should work hard to make the money which her husband has paid for her father as dowry," she says. "They're like hostages who work for their freedom."

Sayar, who works for the non-governmental group Rabia Balkhi Management of Skills Support and Improvement group, called on the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai to end the "misery of Afghan women".

While the conditions back in the capital might be better than in the remote north, the knots and strings that occupy young Shamta are the same.

"Green on green, red on red and purple on purple -- you've got to be careful," the girl says.

"Can you count the knots ... They make up a carpet," she says with a little smile.

AFGHANISTAN: Displaced and former refugees face miserable winter
05 Dec 2005 20:17:14 GMT
KABUL, 5 December (IRIN) - As the Afghan winter approaches rapidly, conditions for some 2,300 internally displaced persons (IDPs) and former refugees in the Afghan capital, Kabul, remain miserable.

"My children are shivering of cold all night. I don't have warm clothes to protect them," Qudsia, a 35-year-old widow sitting in the shell of Kabul's technical college, in the west of the capital, told IRIN. "I am worried, snow would kill my children," the mother of seven said, calling on the government to provide them with shelters, clothes, blankets and foodstuffs.

Qudsia is living with 390 IDP families in very poor conditions in the Chaman Huzuri IDP camp, which was established in the central part of the capital in 2004.

Most families interviewed by IRIN pointed to a severe lack of winter clothing, fuel, drinking water and access to healthcare as the main problems.

Zakia, 40, has five children with her in the settlement. She returned from Iran three years ago and has had no proper shelter since. "I have sold all I had in my home. I even sold my jewelry to save the life of my children."

Mohammad Asker, 25, an inhabitant of the site said government and relief agencies were unable to fulfill their promises and they had neglected them.

Lack of shelter, poverty and unemployment are huge issues in Afghanistan among millions of returned refugees and IDPs. More than 3.5 million Afghans have returned home from Pakistan and Iran since the collapse of the Taliban regime in late 2001, but most still face huge challenges.

Hafiz Nadem, spokesman for the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation said the government was busy assisting some of the families living in extreme conditions.

"We are currently transporting families living in tents to houses borrowed by the ministry to protect them from cold," Nadem explained, adding the government was planning to move all 390 families to safe locations, but those living under tents would be given priority.

"We have transported at least 150 families to safe locations only in the capital," Nadem noted, adding the whole process would end in next few weeks.

There are still around 150,000 IDPs across the country. The government plans to relocate most of them to their place of origin or to better IDP facilities over the next year, according to the refugee ministry.

The ministry said it would be trying to meet the chronic need of the displaced to find land on which to build.

Afghanistan: Displaced and former refugees face miserable winter
KABUL, 5 December (IRIN) - As the Afghan winter approaches rapidly, conditions for some 2,300 internally displaced persons (IDPs) and former refugees in the Afghan capital, Kabul, remain miserable.

"My children are shivering of cold all night. I don't have warm clothes to protect them," Qudsia, a 35-year-old widow sitting in the shell of Kabul's technical college, in the west of the capital, told IRIN. "I am worried, snow would kill my children," the mother of seven said, calling on the government to provide them with shelters, clothes, blankets and foodstuffs.

Qudsia is living with 390 IDP families in very poor conditions in the Chaman Huzuri IDP camp, which was established in the central part of the capital in 2004.

Most families interviewed by IRIN pointed to a severe lack of winter clothing, fuel, drinking water and access to healthcare as the main problems.

Zakia, 40, has five children with her in the settlement. She returned from Iran three years ago and has had no proper shelter since. "I have sold all I had in my home. I even sold my jewelry to save the life of my children."

Mohammad Asker, 25, an inhabitant of the site said government and relief agencies were unable to fulfill their promises and they had neglected them.

Lack of shelter, poverty and unemployment are huge issues in Afghanistan among millions of returned refugees and IDPs. More than 3.5 million Afghans have returned home from Pakistan and Iran since the collapse of the Taliban regime in late 2001, but most still face huge challenges.

Hafiz Nadem, spokesman for the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation said the government was busy assisting some of the families living in extreme conditions.

"We are currently transporting families living in tents to houses borrowed by the ministry to protect them from cold," Nadem explained, adding the government was planning to move all 390 families to safe locations, but those living under tents would be given priority.

"We have transported at least 150 families to safe locations only in the capital," Nadem noted, adding the whole process would end in next few weeks.

There are still around 150,000 IDPs across the country. The government plans to relocate most of them to their place of origin or to better IDP facilities over the next year, according to the refugee ministry.

The ministry said it would be trying to meet the chronic need of the displaced to find land on which to build.

Pave My Road and You'll Get Your School
By CARLOTTA GALL - The New York Times December 4, 2005
KABUL, Afghanistan - AFTER two and a half tortured decades - Russian invasion, civil war, Taliban rule, a hunt for members of Al Qaeda and a war to oust the Taliban - Afghanistan is finally getting a glimpse of what representative national rule will look like.

The results of elections held in September are now in. The winners are the same broad and often bickering array of forces, largely inspired by Islam and often led by men who were called warlords, who fought the Soviet invasion in the 1980's, with a sprinkling of former Communists thrown in.

Their large egos, divisions, rivalries and clan and ethnic interests survive and promise new clashes. But this time the hope is that the quarrels can be contained in the halls of Afghanistan's first nationally elected legislature, which is scheduled to convene on Dec. 18, rather than spilling onto the battlefield in yet another round of civil war.

Still, President Hamid Karzai will have his work cut out for him as broker in chief. There are several ways to think about the rifts within this Parliament. If one were to look for a principal division, it would be territorial, roughly between north and south - with the half a dozen ethnicities of the center and the north more or less united in competition against the largest single ethnic group, the Pashtuns, in the south and east.

If there is a primary ideological division, it is between those who fought the Soviets and those who collaborated with them or sat out that war in exile.

Many commanders who resisted the Soviets and later the Taliban took on the roles of warlords in their districts, with their militias exerting control in the absence of a strong central government. Many amassed wealth and power virtually unchecked, as smuggling and poppy cultivation flourished. Now, many militias have been disarmed, with their leaders put in offices like police chief or governor.

While their inclusion in Parliament now offers a chance to integrate in a system based on central authority, it also poses a challenge to that system: one big point of contention is expected to involve efforts to call some commanders to account for past war crimes, and in some areas armed groups continue to sow fear.

A third division is between those formally allied with Mr. Karzai and those in opposition. There will also be competition among local districts for favors, power and funds. There are already demands for roads, schools and clinics and calls for help for farmers willing to change how they use their land - a crucial factor in eradicating the cultivation of opium poppies.
The ethnic division goes back to the founding of the Afghan state by a Pashtun in 1747. Except for two turbulent periods, Pashtuns have ruled. The Taliban was a predominantly Pashtun movement, and although it had Pashtun enemies, too, it was battling primarily Hazara, Uzbek and Tajik forces in the north when the United States helped overthrow it in 2001. Now, those tribes want a share of central power.

In fact, the main opposition to Mr. Karzai is expected to center around three colorful characters: Muhammad Yunous Qanooni, a Tajik; Muhammad Mohaqeq, a Hazara Shiite, and Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, who did not run for Parliament, but is the unrivalled leader of the Uzbeks and Turkmens and is expected to influence their representatives.

Those three command an estimated 60 to 80 seats in the 249-member lower house. They are expected to stand together on matters involving the amount of services and representation their minorities get.

Mr. Karzai's fellow Pashtuns number 118, nearly half the house. But they are a varied group. Political analysts say that Mr. Karzai's true loyalists hold only about 65 seats.

The largest grouping is the 100 free agents aligned neither with Mr. Karzai nor the opposition. They include some 20 ex- Communists, as well as tribal and religious leaders, businessmen and many of the 68 women elected as representatives. For his economic agenda, Mr. Karzai may have to bargain hard with them as individuals.

If ethnicity is not considered, the politics can be divided between parties and people who date to the anti-Soviet resistance and represent almost half of the house, and those who do not. This split will matter on issues of religion and culture - since many resistance members are conservative Islamists - and prosecution of war crimes.

Where are the likeliest bargains to be made? Yet another pattern comes to mind: the old habit of forming alliances of convenience, on the basis of who can offer the best deal, or pay the highest bribe, on any given day. Already rumors are swirling about large sums of money being offered in the race for speaker of the Parliament.

Provincial governors and police chiefs will continue to wield enormous power locally, and groups outside the government, including drug traffickers and Taliban insurgents, will remain at large.

If the legislators really want to seek out figures operating at or beyond the margins of the law, they may not have far to look: One Western diplomat, who spoke anonymously for fear of antagonizing the government, estimated that there are 17 drug traffickers and 24 people with criminal links among the members of Parliament themselves - a reminder, at the very least, of how deep into Afghanistan's government such influences have reached in the past.

Afghanistan to open "glorious" parliament
AFP 12/04/2005
KABUL - Afghanistan is preparing a 'glorious' ceremony for the opening this month of its first post-conflict parliament, an official said on Sunday.

President Hamid Karzai will be joined at the ceremony by dignitaries from various foreign countries, Defence Ministry spokesman Mohammad Zahir Azimi said. He would not give a date for the first sitting but another official said it would be on December 19.

"Ordered by ... President Hamid Karzai a commission has been established to prepare for a glorious opening ceremony for the national assembly," he told reporters without provide details.

The parliament will be Afghanistan's first after more than three decades of war, conflict and internal strife. The 249-member lower house, dominated by former anti-Taliban warlords and drug barons, was elected on September 18 in a key step in a transition to democracy. Two-thirds of the upper house seats have been filled and Karzai is due to announce his choices for the remaining seats in the coming days. Rights groups have accused many of the new MPs, some of whom lead private armies in their regions and ignore Karzai's authority outside the capital, of war crimes during the country's years of conflict.

Ahamed meets Karzai; says N Delhi committed to assist Kabul
KABUL, DEC 4 (PTI)
Minister of State for External Affairs E Ahamed today met Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah and reaffirmed India's commitment to assist Afghanistan in its reconstruction efforts.

Ahamed's visit comes close on the heels of the abduction and killing of Maniappan Raman Kutty, a BRO employee, by the Taliban in western Afghanistan last month.

Earlier, addressing the Regional Economic Cooperation Conference here, he said New Delhi was fully committed to working with the people and the Afghan government to re-build the country following devastation caused by three decades of conflict.

"Our partnership today embraces a multi-dimensional cooperation programme, including education, health, telecommunication, transport, civil aviation, agriculture and irrigation, industry, power generation and transmission, human resource development and many other areas", he said.

Referring to Afghanistan's entry into SAARC, Ahamed said as SAARC moves forward to developing a free trade area and other shared economic activities, Afghanistan would stand to gain considerably.

Notwithstanding the enormous political developments that have taken place in Afghanistan, he said the problem posed by narcotics, terrorism and insecurity in certain regions in the South and the South Eastern parts of Afghanistan not only undermine the security of the country but also hinder prospects for economic development.

"Dealing with such challenges is a collective responsibility of all the countries of the region and those that are interested in ensuring the long-term stability of Afghanistan as a plural society", he said.

Observing that Afghanistan was a land-locked country, Ahamed said it was necessary to work together both bilaterally and regionally on the transport network so as to bring about a gradual opening up of the markets. Measures also needed to be taken to facilitate trade and cross-border movement of goods and services, minimise transaction costs and harmonies practices, he said.

Referring to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's vision for a ten per cent growth rate in two to three years, he said "our vision of prosperity, however, is not limited to India but encompasses our region.