February 13, 2005

Toll from avalanches, cold in Afghanistan rises above 80
Sat Feb 12, 6:41 AM ET
KHOST, Afghanistan (AFP) - Fifteen more people have died in freezing weather and avalanches in Afghanistan, raising the death toll in a winter cold snap to more than 82, officials said.

Six people died when they became trapped in their vehicle after an avalanche struck the highway between the capital, Kabul, and the main northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif, public health minister Mohammad Amin Fatemi told AFP.

Further fatalities occurred in southeastern Paktia region. Four people, including two infants, died from cold while five were killed when their vehicle slipped off a road late Friday, police officer Hay Gul Slimankhil told AFP.

On Friday Fatemi told AFP that more than 67 Afghans have died from freezing conditions as the war-battered country faces its coldest winter after years of droughts.

Many of the victims were children in rural areas or in refugee camps in the capital Kabul where people have lived in severe poverty since returning from neighbouring countries after the fall of the hardline Taliban regime in late 2001, Fatemi said.

He said the health ministry was preparing an emergency operation to take medicines and other supplies to the affected areas, some of which were inaccessible by road.

"We don't have enough medicines in our hospital to treat people," a doctor in Paktia's government-run hospital told AFP.

Slimankhil said all roads to Gardez, the capital of Paktia, were blocked after heavy snow fall over the past several weeks, hampering missions to take medicines to the area.

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Preferential trade with Afghanistan proposed
* Delegation to visit Kabul
Daily Times (Pakistan) - February 12, 2005
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has proposed a preferential trade agreement with Afghanistan and shown keen interest in setting up industrial zones between Kandahar and Jalalabad, once security issues are resolved, said Humayun Akhtar Khan, Pakistan’s commerce minister.

Mr Khan said this on Friday during his meeting with Dr Anwarul Haq Ahadi, Afghanistan’s finance minister, who is in Pakistan to attend the Pak-Afghan Joint Ministerial Commission (JMC). The commerce minister also proposed to work out a preferential trade agreement (PTA) leading to a free trade agreement (FTA) between the two countries. Both sides agreed to enhance economic and trade cooperation with each other.

Dr Ahadi said Pakistan was Afghanistan’s major trade partner and his country attached a lot of importance to Pakistan’s valuable assistance for rebuilding Afghanistan. He said there was tremendous potential for trade between the two countries. “Our trade volume is rising rapidly and much needs to be done to increase it further,” he said.

The commerce minister apprised Dr Haq of his recent meeting with the Afghan commerce minister who was leading a delegation at Expo 2005 in Karachi.

Khan said both countries should form a group to study each other’s tariff regimes as well as the complementarities of the two economies so their businessmen could make informed business decisions.

Mr Khan told the Afghan minister that a high profile delegation comprising the commerce secretary and the chairman of the Central Board of revenue would visit Afghanistan soon to discuss various trade issues including the six remaining items on the Afghan Transit Trade negative list.

Bilateral trade with Afghanistan has increased from $192 million (2001-2002) to $540 million (2003-04) and is expected to increase substantially during the fiscal year 2004-05. Since Afghanistan is a landlocked country, the Ministry of Commerce has taken a number of steps to facilitate Afghan Transit Trade.

These include reducing the negative list for Afghan Transit Trade from 24 to only six items, authorising the National Logistic Cell (NLC) to transport rehabilitation goods, adding Port Qasim and Ghulam Khan Killi to the transit routes agreed in the Afghan Transit Trade Agreement 1965 and occasionally allowing items on the negative list to be transit to Afghanistan such as vegetable oil for ghee factories.

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Natwar Singh to visit to Pak, Afghanistan to bolster peace, trade
Deepika, India
New Delhi, Feb 13 (UNI) External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh will leave here on Tuesday on a significant three-day visit to Afghanistan and Pakistan to bolster trade ties with Kabul and the nascent peace with Islamabad.

During his two-day visit to Pakistan, the first bilateral engagement between the two countries at the Foreign Minister's level since 1989, the External Affairs Minister is expected to announce steps to infuse greater momentum into the fledgling peace process.

Peace will top the agenda of the External Affairs Minister's meetings with the leadership in Pakistan while in Afghanistan, talks on trade and economic development will dominate.

Mr Singh who will first visit Afghanistan on February 15 for a day, will meet President Hamid Karzai and Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah before flying to Pakistan the same evening.

Mr Singh said his decision to fly to Kabul was not ''sudden'' and India had historic relations with Afghanistan where the new government assumed office recently.

India has been helping Afghanistan develop infrastructure, civil aviation, transport, industry, health and education facilities after the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

India is also building a Dam near Herat and is laying power transmission lines from the northern city of Pul-e-Khumri to Kabul and constructing a road near the Iran-Afghanistan border. So far India has given 400 million aid to Afghanistan to rebuild its damaged infrastructure.

There are also reports that during visits to both countrries, Mr Singh will take up the issue of transit facilities for Indian goods to Afghanistan through Pakistan, which currently are transported through Iran. The transit, would give a big boost to India-Afghanistan trade which is currently at about 200 million dollars.

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Rockets fired at US, Afghan bases in southeast Afghanistan
KHOST, Afghanistan, Feb 12 (AFP) - Anti government militants fired several rockets at a US military outpost and an Afghan army unit in restive southeastern Afghanistan but there were no casualties, officials said Saturday.

Three rockets landed near a US-led military base in Khost province on Friday, a US military spokesman said, while three more were fired at the Afghan troops in the same region on Saturday.

Khost's police commander, Mohammad Ayoob, said the attack on the Afghan military base also did not cause any damage.

Short- and medium-range rockets are the weapons of choice for the ousted Taliban militia but they are inaccurate and rarely cause any damage.

Three years after the Taliban regime was toppled, loyalists still carry out attacks on the US and Afghan military, mainly in their former power base of southern and southeastern Afghanistan.

Some 18,000 US-led troops are based in Afghanistan to root out remnants of the Islamic hardliners, who oppose the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.

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Coalition Secures Afghan Weapons Caches, Renders Aid
By Samantha Quigley American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Feb. 12, 2005 – In the last 13 days, coalition forces have discovered 33 weapons caches throughout Afghanistan, said Maj. Steve Wollman, Combined Forces Command Afghanistan spokesman, today.

"Local officials and security forces aided in the discovery of three of the caches, and local citizens assisted with the discovery of nine (caches)," Wollman said during a press conference in the country's capital of Kabul.

He said the caches included 41 mortar rounds, 144 recoilless rifle rounds, and eight rocket-propelled grenade rounds in Uruzgan province, as well as 56 mortar rounds, 82 tank rounds and 100 RPG rounds found in Helmand province.

"A citizen in Paktika Province reported a cache site that contained a ZPU antiaircraft weapon, 20 mines, five machine guns, 10 RPG rounds, and thousands of rounds of small-arms ammunition," Wollman said.

Coalition forces secured the weapons for destruction or redistribution to the Afghan National Army.

Also, Wollman reported on coalition efforts to assist citizens affected by harsh winter conditions.

That help included medical-assistance visits from the Parwan provincial reconstruction team to the Camp Chamin-e Barbak and Camp Huzuri displaced- persons camps near Kabul to deliver much needed winter clothing and medicine to more than 2,500 people.

"Two days ago, a coalition C-130 transport plane flew … from Karshi-Khanabad, Uzbekistan, to airdrop supplies to the village of Shinkay in the Zabul province," Wollman said. "The plane dropped eight packages of humanitarian assistance supplies to a coalition civil affairs team waiting on the ground below."

The packages, he said, contained 3,000 kilograms of beans, 3,000 kilograms of rice and 400 blankets. Village elders identified the neediest families in the village to receive the items.

Coalition members also assisted motorists by rendering medical attention; providing food, fuel and warming tents; and by clearing a snow-covered stretch of the Jalalabad roadway.

Many motorists were also helped as they encountered icy conditions on the road between Qalat and Ghazni.

"Two days ago, coalition forces evacuated 27 motorists to hospitals on Bagram Airfield after a multi-vehicle accident on Kabul road," he said.

"These efforts show the commitment of the Coalition to assist the Afghan people as they continue to secure a peaceful future," Wollman noted.

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Afghan boy OK’d for visa
He will receive treatment at St. Joseph Hospital for severe burns
By Kevin Kilbane kkilbane@news-sentinel.com Sat, Feb. 12, 2005
A badly burned Afghan boy has received visa and security approval to travel to St. Joseph Hospital for treatment.

When the boy arrives, however, depends on how quickly U.S. government officials process the visa and security-clearance paperwork for the boy’s father and possibly an interpreter, said Dr. Lorinda Browning of Decatur.

That is the latest news from Browning’s husband, Capt. Brad Boyle, a member of the Indiana Army National Guard’s 113th Support Battalion now serving in Afghanistan.

Boyle has been working since about September to find treatment for the boy, who is about 5 years old as best as can be determined.

The child, Zia Urrahman, was badly burned on his back and arms several months ago when the propane fuel tank for his family’s stove apparently exploded, Boyle said in November. The blast apparently also killed two of the boy’s siblings and four extended family members.

Boyle and 113th Support Battalion personnel met Zia when his family sought medical care for him at the U.S. Army’s Camp Phoenix military base near Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul.

Weblike scar tissue from Zia’s burns restricts the movement of his arms, Boyle said. The boy needs surgery to snip the strands of scar tissue. Otherwise, his arm movements will be increasingly restricted as his body grows larger.

Boyle did some investigating and quickly found Afghanistan has no place with the technology or expertise to treat Zia. That’s when Boyle came up with the idea of flying Zia here so he can be treated in St. Joseph Hospital’s burn unit.

The hospital and surgeons, physicians and other staff all agreed to donate their services. The goal is to provide the care at no cost to the boy’s family, which has little income, said Scott McAlister, a representative of the Northeast Indiana Burn Council who has helped coordinate local preparations for the trip.

Soldiers then had to see if they could raise the money to fly the boy, his father and an interpreter to Fort Wayne. The family doesn’t speak English.

Donations have surpassed $13,000, McAlister said. Most of the money has come from the Fort Wayne area, McAlister said. But the burn council also has received money from people around the country who read about the project.

Based on her conversations with Boyle, it appears to take an average of about 45 days for adults to get visas and security clearance to go from Afghanistan to the United States, Browning said. That timetable would have the boy and his father arriving here in early March.

U.S. military officials are attempting to speed up the visa approval process, however, McAlister said.