Afghanistan News February 15, 2005

February 15, 2005

First bodies recovered from Afghan jet crash
Tuesday February 15, 3:54 AM AFP
The first bodies from an Afghan plane which crashed and killed 104 people were recovered from a frozen mountainside where they have been lying for the past 11 days, Afghan officials said.

Bad weather had until now prevented troops from removing any corpses from the site east of the capital Kabul where the Kam Air Boeing 737 came down on February 3.

"As part of the ongoing safety operation, the Afghan National Army found several bodies and they have been carried out to Kabul airport," the defence ministry said in a statement.

"After the identities of the bodies have been established they will be handed over to their families," it added.

A source close to the investigation said that only two bodies had been found in a relatively intact state.

Investigators have found the flight data recorder and it has been sent to the United States for analysis, US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said at a press conference Monday.

"The data recorder has been recovered and it has been turned over to... the United States. It will be taken to the United States for the reading of the data. The voice recorder has not been recovered yet," he said.

The plane, on a domestic flight from the western city of Herat to Kabul, hit a 3,300-metre (9,900-feet) mountain and broke into fragments during a snowstorm.

The investigation committee declared last Tuesday that all 96 passengers and eight crew members died. Twenty-four of the victims were foreigners.

The first human remains were found by a Slovenian mountain rescue team attached to the International Security Assistance Force on Monday last week and the bodies were left at the site for examination by a medical team and investigators.

However they could not reach the site for days on end because foul weather grounded the NATO-led peacekeeping troops' helicopters.

Kam Air is Afghanistan's only private airline.

Body of Afghan Stewardess Recovered
Mon Feb 14, 2:35 PM ET By STEPHEN GRAHAM, Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan and NATO troops retrieved the first body from a crashed Afghan airliner Monday, a commander said, 11 days after the plane hit a mountain in a snowstorm, killing all 104 people aboard.

The body of one crew member was found at the crash site, 10,000 feet up a snow-covered peak about 20 miles east of Kabul, and brought to the capital by helicopter, Maj. Gen. Mohammed Moeen Faqir said.

Another army officer, Maj. Mohammed Bashir, said the body was that of an Afghan stewardess.

The Boeing 737 crashed into the mountaintop east of the capital, Kabul, on Feb. 3 after approaching from the western city of Herat. Authorities have declared all 96 passengers and eight crew dead, including more than 20 foreigners, in the country's worst air disaster.

Bad weather and deep snow meant the recovery operation began only on Sunday, and Faqir said helicopters were able to bring 90 Afghan soldiers as well as members of a commission investigating the crash to the mountaintop on Monday.

Dozens of coffins stand ready at a city hospital, though it is unclear how many of the bodies are intact. Afghan officials have warned that the recovery operation could take several weeks.

The Afghan Defense Ministry said Sunday the flight data recorder had been found, raising hopes that the cause of the crash can be established.

But U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said Monday that the voice recorder containing conversations involving the pilot was still missing.

The Afghan transport minister has said the plane disappeared from radar screens shortly after it was cleared to land in Kabul, though the private airline, Kam Air, says the pilot had turned away from the capital to seek an easier landing in Pakistan.

Khalilzad said the data recorder was being taken to the United States for evaluation. American investigators are also involved because the plane was manufactured in the United States.

Six Americans were among the passengers on the doomed plane.

U.S.: Taliban Ready for Reconciliation
Mon Feb 14, 4:19 PM ET By STEPHEN GRAHAM, Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan - Senior Taliban members have agreed to join a reconciliation process to be announced soon by the Afghan government, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan said Monday.

Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said there had been a "positive response" to overtures from American and Afghan officials, which have intensified in recent months.

"Quite a number of people associated with the Taliban have taken advantage of it already and are living in their areas, they've come in and some senior members have also come in," Khalilzad said at a news conference.

He declined to give details about the reconciliation program, but said there would likely be an announcement from the Afghan government in coming days.

Khalilzad and the U.S. military are pressing President Hamid Karzai to reach out to "non-criminal" Taliban, many of whom are believed to have taken refuge in neighboring Pakistan after a U.S. bombing campaign ousted the former militia following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

Officials hope such a program can help defuse the stubborn insurgency, which is hampering badly needed reconstruction and continues launching attacks against American soldiers.

American commanders and Afghan officials insist that many followers of the former ruling Taliban are growing disillusioned, but they have yet to produce evidence that figures with real influence among militant groups are ready to support the U.S.-backed government.

It also remains unclear how the offer to former Taliban relates to another proposed national reconciliation program which the United Nations and the main Afghan human rights group say should include the prosecution of war criminals from the country's long wars.

Khalilzad said the offer was also open to young Afghans "misguided" by former Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who has joined the Taliban in vowing to oust Karzai and drive out foreign troops.

Hekmatyar remained on the blacklist, he said.

Afghan president considers appointing woman as provincial governor
KABUL (AFP) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai is likely to appoint a woman as a provincial governor for the first time in the history of the male-dominated Muslim country, an official said.

Former minister Habiba Surabi is a leading candidate for the post of governor of the central province of Bamiyan, said Karzai's spokesman Jawed Ludin. Surabi, who belongs to the ethnic Hazara minority, was women's minister in Karzai's previous transitional government for three years.

"That is true ... President Karzai is considering appointing a female governor in Bamiyan," he said on Monday. Ludin said the new appointment, which is "very closed to be achieved", was part of ongoing administrative reforms to strength the role of Karzai's administration outside Kabul.

Surabi said she was "very delighted" at the prospect. "This is the first time in our history that a woman will be governor -- I'm very delighted -- we should change the old traditions," she told AFP.

Under the fundamentalist 1996-2001 Taliban regime, women were barred from receiving education or working outside their homes. After the ousting of the Taliban in US-led military operations in late 2001, schools reopened for girl students and many women took jobs in government offices. Karzai has three women ministers in his current cabinet.

Ludin said more governors will be replaced soon. On February 5 Karzai replaced six provincial heads, some of them linked to the regional warlords of northern and eastern provinces.

Karzai has been trying, with international backing, to reduce the power of warlords and extend his authority throughout the country after winning a landslide victory in the country's first presidential election last October.

Calls grow to tackle Afghan war crimes
Paul Anderson - BBC News, Kabul Monday, 14 February, 2005
In many countries affected by war, courts to try war crimes and crimes against humanity have been set up soon after the conflict.

In Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone... but not Afghanistan.

It is more than three years since the fall of the Taleban, but neither the international community nor the government of President Hamid Karzai have sought redress for the millions of Afghans with direct experience of atrocities.

The authorities thought it wisest not to start the process.

Stability first, the argument ran, justice second.

Now the tidal gates holding back years of accumulated grief look set to burst open.

Those who argue you do not get stability without justice have hit back with the recent publication of a survey revealing that most ordinary Afghans agree with them.

Torrent

Take Shukria Fazal and Hamida Ahmed. Shukria lost a staggering 183 members of her extended family to the communist forces running Afghanistan in 1978, just before the Soviet invasion.

The secret service of Afghanistan, Khad, did their KGB paymasters proud.

Shukria says its visits started off as a trickle - first an uncle, then a brother dragged out of bed in the middle of the night and whisked off to the vast Pul-e-Charkhi prison and torture centre on the outskirts of Kabul.

Then it turned into a steady flow of arrests of family members suspected of being anti-communist insurgents. Then it was a torrent.

The ground around Pul-e-Charkhi is peppered with the mass graves of thousands.

No war crimes investigator has ever visited them to gather evidence.

Shukria brought out some fading black and white photos of the men taken away.

Some young about to enter university. Others well advanced in years.

vShe trembles with grief as if the arrests were yesterday.

But this was 27 years ago. Even so, she is demanding that anyone connected to the regime then be brought to justice.

Insurrection

The Soviets and their communist Afghan puppets have plenty more to answer for, like the Kerala massacre, in Kunar province, in 1979.

A thousand men were dragged from their homes by communist forces and shot in cold blood on the streets.

It was a communist answer to an insurrection staged by mujahideen fighters in the province.

The next phase in the war crimes tally is in the early 1990s when different mujahideen factions were fighting among themselves for power.

Hamida Ahmed recalls one of the worst: the Afshar massacre and mass rape in 1993.

The forces of the Afghan national hero, Ahmed Shah Masood, struck a deal with another warlord to attack the Kabul neighbourhood of Afshar, headquarters for a rival faction from the ethnic Hazara minority.

After 24 hours of mortar bombardment from the hills, Masood's forces walked into the district and embarked on an orgy of killing, rape and looting.

"We will never forget it," says Hamida, "so many women, children and men killed."

Deeply political

The Taleban were well known for their zealous application of Islamic values, but less often identified with war crimes - scratch the surface and you will find plenty.

Like the scorched-earth operations in the Shomali plain outside the capital or the massacre of civilians at Mazar-e-Sharif in the north.

So where do the people who were victims of all this go for justice?

The first and almost only port of call is the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, which compiled the survey and for the first time since the end of the Taleban regime gave a voice to the people's demand for justice.

What it discovered was a suppressed anger shared across the country, that many warlords and militia commanders are not just free, but co-opted in the new political system.

The commission has recommended setting up a special prosecution office within two years and a war crimes court within five.

It has also demanded the vetting of anyone in public service so war crimes suspects do not slip through the net.

All these recommendations are deeply political and may never get off the ground.

The communists and the Taleban are not around any more or are on the run.

The easiest ones to catch are the warlords.

Since the Taleban's overthrow they have still been controlling some of Afghanistan's furthest corners, collecting their own taxes, extorting, seizing property, running their own private jails and armies.

But they are the most difficult politically to touch.

The theory is they are needed to help coalition forces hunt Taleban remnants or that their arrest would destabilise the country.

But many people are arguing that they are not so popular that thousands would rally behind them or that their arrests would have a destabilising effect.

If that is the case, these same people argue, then they say the time has come to open the tidal gates holding back the people's clamour for justice - that it is a healthy thing to do to flush out the system now and then.

Straw 'confident' Pakistan can handle nuke inquiry
Tuesday February 15, 12:19 AM AFP
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said he was confident Pakistan was properly investigating its disgraced nuclear hero Abdul Qadeer Khan despite refusing to let international bodies quiz him.

Straw said he also supports a diplomatic solution to a standoff between Iran and the United States over its uranium enrichment programme. Iran was one of three countries to which Khan admitted passing nuclear technology.

"I have not directly raised the matter with the Pakistanis but we have very substantial confidence in President Musharraf and the Pakistani government about the way in which they are dealing with the issue in the aftermath of Dr. Khan," he told a news conference in Islamabad.

Straw was speaking after meeting Pakistan's military ruler President Pervez Musharraf, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and his counterpart Khurshid Kasuri on the first day of a week-long tour of South Asia.

The talks concentrated on nuclear arms, counter-terrorism, the fragile peace process between Pakistan and India and the rebuilding of war-shattered Afghanistan, officials said.

General Musharraf has repeatedly refused to allow the United States or the International Atomic Energy Agency to question Khan, who in February 2004 confessed to passing nuclear know-how to Iran, North Korea and Libya.

Although Khan has been under effective house arrest ever since, Musharraf gave him a conditional pardon and said no government or military body was involved in the scandal.

Kasuri told the joint conference that Pakistan would continue to cooperate over the rogue scientist and had earned the international community's confidence.

"If our British and American friends bring forth more evidence we will confront A.Q. Khan and will convey the information again. That is a reflection of our commitment to non-proliferation," he said.

Musharraf also escaped British censure for keeping hold of his post as head of Pakistan's army, just three days after Commonwealth foreign ministers rebuked him for doing so.

Straw said Britain was "delighted" at the grouping's decision last year to readmit Pakistan, which had its membership suspended following Musharraf's seizure of power in a bloodless coup in 1999.

"It is a very good sign of Pakistan's maturing as a democracy and the recognition of the great leadership which President Musharraf has shown during a difficult time for the world," Straw told state-run television.

On Iran, the British minister said he believed there "can be and ought to be a diplomatic solution to the problem".

The United States accuses Iran of trying to obtain nuclear weapons under cover of developing a civilian atomic energy programme and has not ruled out a military option against it.

Britain, along with France and Germany is trying to persuade Iran it should dismantle its enrichment programme in return for economic and political rewards.

Straw said the peace process between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan, which has stalled in recent months on a number of key issues, had the "best chance in two generations" of succeeding.

Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh is due in Islamabad on Tuesday for a rare visit in a bid to push the fragile peace dialogue along.

Straw and Kasuri also discussed counter-terrorism. Both Islamabad and London are allies of Washington in its so-called war on terror and Pakistan has caught a number of key Al-Qaeda militants since 9/11.

Straw was due to deliver a lecture in the eastern city of Lahore later on Monday. He is scheduled to travel to the Afghan capital Kabul on Tuesday and then on to New Delhi later in the week.

Afghanistan missions to merge
International Herald Tribune 02/13/2005
Nice - NATO and the United States said Thursday that they would merge their separate missions in Afghanistan, giving NATO command of an operation that for the first time will combine counterterrorism and peacekeeping activities.

Once the merger is carried out, the 26-nation alliance expects to be in Afghanistan for a long time. "Let there be no doubt, NATO is committed for the long term," Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the NATO secretary general, said Thursday after a meeting of defense ministers in Nice.

Lieutenant General Jean-Louis Py, French commander of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, said there was a need for "efficiency, and there is agreement to have a unified command." Py ends his term in Afghanistan on Sunday, when the command of the 8,000-strong NATO forces will pass to Turkey.

It is not certain when the two missions would be merged, but de Hoop Scheffer said he wanted it "as soon as it was feasible." Officials said it would probably take place early next year and be led by Britain, which is scheduled to take over the command of the NATO force in Afghanistan.

The idea to combine both operations has been in the cards for some time, but until now the United States and other NATO countries have had substantial reservations over how the merged mission would function.

NATO diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States had reservations about merging the mission until it was sure NATO "was up to the job."

"If there is a need to carry out some counterterrorism operations, then the U.S. wants to be completely sure that NATO is up to dealing with it," one official said.

France has its own reservations as well. At one stage, it blocked NATO's involvement in Afghanistan, fearing it would become an extension of Washington's own security interests. Now Paris wants assurances from the United States that once the two missions are merged, the Unites States will not leave Afghanistan and hand over any counterterrorism operations to NATO.

"We want the American forces to stay in Afghanistan," the French defense minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, said in an interview. "NATO is not equipped to do counterterrorism missions."

The German defense minister, Peter Struck, supports the merger, but German officials said Berlin does not want to be dragged into conducting any counterterrorism missions. If that were to happen, they added, it would be difficult to obtain agreement - constitutionally required - from the German Bundestag, or Parliament, to extend the mission.

It is supposed to be a "soft" non-combat peacekeeping mission, in sharp distinction to the U.S. antiterrorism operation in Afghanistan. Given the differences inside NATO, officials said, once the merger takes place the command would be "double-hatted." One commander would deal with counterterrorism and another with security and peacekeeping operations. It would be up to countries to decide if they wanted to participate in counterterrorism missions.

The United States, which established its antiterrorism Operation Enduring Freedom soon after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, has since been conducting high-level counterterrorism missions in Afghanistan. Other countries, including Canada and France, have sent their special forces to work alongside the 10,000 U.S. forces.

The United States had at first concentrated on trying to capture Osama Bin Laden, responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, and other Al Qaeda members. In recent months, it has widened the scope to quashing terrorist groups seeking to destabilize the government in Kabul headed by President Hamid Karzai.

The NATO mission, established in Kabul in August 2003, is different. It is supposed to help train a new Afghan army and help with its reform and modernization. Its biggest task, however, is to extend security and stability outside Kabul to the provinces.

Over the past year, after months of wrangling over providing personnel, helicopters and even a medical hospital, NATO has created special Provincial Reconstruction Teams. These are small units of between 80 and 200 people in which the military and civilians work together to provide security to the reconstruction effort.

NATO has five Provincial Reconstruction Teams, two led by Germany in Konduz and Feyzabad in the north, two led by Britain in Maimana and Mazar-e-Sharif in the west and one led by the Netherlands in Baglan in the northeast.

De Hoop Scheffer said Thursday that NATO would create four more, with Spain, Italy and Lithuania taking part. The United States, which has 13 such teams working under the Operation Enduring Freedom mission, will place two of them under NATO command in the coming months. The country would then be divided into four zones, with Germany commanding the north, Italy and Spain the east, Britain the south and the United States the east.

Afghans returnees take first step towards self-sufficiency
BALKH, Afghanistan, Feb 14 (UNHCR) – Rahima is not sure of her age, but she thinks she has been weaving carpets since she was eight years old.

A single bulb lights the room where she and her two eldest daughters, both in their 20s, spend long hours knotting wool into intricate patterns. The yarn is stretched over a wooden frame made of roughly cut logs which fills the small space.

The women work quietly and methodically. It takes around three months to complete a two-metre carpet, for which they receive between US$250 and $300 from a dealer in the bazaar.

The money must support not only Rahima and her three daughters but also the family of her unemployed brother.

It is a big responsibility, but Rahima is grateful that she is able to fulfil her role as provider while continuing a tradition which has sustained the Turkmen and Uzbek communities of northern Afghanistan for generations.

It is a task that has been made easier through assistance from the UN refugee agency.

A widow for 15 years, Rahima, like most of the residents of the village of Andkhoy near the Turkmenistan border, fled with her children to Pakistan five years ago to escape Afghanistan's civil war. In 2002, following the defeat of the Taliban, she returned. She had the skills to provide for herself and her dependents but lacked the money and materials needed to resume her work as a carpet weaver.

Through the local village council, or shura, Rahima's precarious position as a single mother and sole source of income was brought to the attention of a UNHCR-funded organisation which is helping returnee families to earn a living.

The income-generation programme is aimed at families who are considered particularly vulnerable. Most recipients are returning refugees with large families and no means of supporting themselves. Many, such as Rahima's, are families headed by widows.

Those selected are given the wool and tools needed to make one carpet. The package, worth around $110, allows the weavers – who are almost exclusively women – to then use the sale of the finished carpet to purchase new supplies and continue the cycle while providing for their families.

"Without this help we would have had to borrow money," says Rahima. "It would have taken us a long time to get out of debt."

Similar income-generation projects are operating across Afghanistan, each tailored to meet the needs of individual returnee communities. They are part of UNHCR's ongoing work to assist Afghan refugees who have come home to settle back in their places of origin.

Maleka and her family returned to the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif in 2004. The city was the scene of some of the most intense fighting between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, which sent tens of thousands fleeing.

A relative provided Maleka and her family with a place to live when they returned from Iran, but her husband struggled to find work. With few jobs and no skills, the family faced an uncertain future.

Five months later, Maleka is providing for her family in a way she could not have previously imagined. The walled courtyard of her simple mud home is filled with pens holding chickens and turkeys.

Raising her voice to be heard over the noise of more than two dozen birds, Maleka admits she never saw herself raising poultry.

"I had no idea about how to raise chickens when I started," she says. "But with the help of Rasa I now feel confident and am able to run my own small business."

Rasa is an Afghan organisation supported by UNHCR, which through its income-generation programme, is providing returnee families with the equipment, training and support needed to begin small poultry farms.

"We provide women with an incubator, fertilised eggs, veterinary support and training to help them get started," says Rasa's Nihu Sayar. "The women are able to get a simple income by selling the chickens. They also learn a valuable skill which they can pass on to others."

Forty women have so far been selected for the programme in and around Mazar and are supported by a team of two female trainers. Many still require help with the cost of vaccinations and feed, but the objective is for each recipient to become self-sufficient.

For Maleka, who last year raised and sold more than 20 chickens, this unexpected opportunity has long-term appeal.

"Even when my husband does find work," she says, "I'll continue to raise these birds and continue to have my own income."

By Tim Irwin UNHCR Afghanistan

Afghan president meets new ISAF commander
Afghan radio on 12 February
President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan Hamed Karzai met Gen Jean-Louis Py, commander general of the ISAF forces, and Maj-Gen Ethem Erdagi, the new commander of ISAF forces, at the presidential headquarters this evening.

At the meeting, the president expressed thanks for the services that the ISAF forces and their commander had provided in establishing security in Afghanistan. He said that the Afghan people and the state valued the services of the ISAF forces, and hoped that they would expand their cooperation and activities in different parts of the country, thereby providing opportunities for complete security and greater reconstruction.

The country's president was also introduced to the new commander of ISAF forces and stressed the Afghan state's cooperation with him. French General Jean-Louis Py, whose term of service in Afghanistan has come to an end, took over the command of ISAF forces from Canadian General Rick Hillier six months ago. The new ISAF commander is reported to be a Turkish citizen.

Defence Minister Gen Abdorrahim Wardak, Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali, and security advisor for national security affairs, Dr Zalmay Rasul, were also present at the meeting.

AFGHANISTAN: Turkey takes over ISAF command
14 Feb 2005 16:01:07 GMT
ANKARA, 14 February (IRIN) - Turkey has assumed command of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, a multinational UN-mandated force to assist the Afghan government and the international community in maintaining security.

"NATO has held the command of ISAF for the last two years and yesterday was the change of command from Eurocorps, which is a NATO Rapid Deployable Force, to the Rapid Deployable Corps in Istanbul," Karen Tissot van Patot, an ISAF spokeswoman, told IRIN from the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Monday.

Her comments came a day after Turkish Lt-Gen Ethem Erdagi took command of ISAF from Lt-Gen Jean-Louis Py of France.

ISAF was created in accordance with the Bonn Conference, in December 2001, after the ousting of the Taliban regime. The force was established to provide a secure environment in and around Kabul and support the reconstruction of the country devastated by more than two decades of war and conflict. ISAF is not a UN force, but is a coalition of the willing deployed under the authority of UN Security Council resolutions (1386, 1413, 1444 and 1510).

Initially, individual nations volunteered to lead the ISAF mission every six months. The first ISAF mission was run by the UK. Turkey then assumed the lead of the second. The third mission, as of February 2003, was led by Germany and the Netherlands with support from NATO.

Since August 2003, ISAF has been supported and led by NATO, and financed by troop-contributing countries. The 26-member alliance is responsible for the command, coordination and planning of the force. This includes providing a force commander and headquarters on the ground in Afghanistan. The force currently numbers 8,000 troops from 47 NATO and non-NATO nations. Individual contributions by each country change on a regular basis due to the rotation of troops.

Meanwhile, the force, which was mainly operational in the capital and nine northern provinces, is set to expand its mission in the country, NATO defence ministers confirmed after an informal meeting in Nice, France, on 9-10 February.

"NATO will now proceed to further expand the ISAF into the west of Afghanistan," NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said in a recent statement, adding that the extended ISAF mission would provide security assistance in 50 percent of Afghanistan's territory.

According to NATO, the expansion to the west will establish a permanent ISAF presence in the form of four Provincial Reconstruction teams (PRT) and one Forward Support Base (FSB). There have been calls for ISAF to expand following several incidents in which relief and NGO workers were attacked over the past few years.

The NATO ministers also discussed in Nice a possible further expansion to the south and increasing synergies with the ongoing US-led Operation Enduring Freedom, operating mainly in the south and southeast of the country to rout out remnants of Taliban and al-Qaida.

WB to Give Financial Support to Pakistan for Gas Pipelines
Monday February 14, 8:44 AM Asia Pulse
ISLAMABAD, Feb 14 Asia Pulse - The World Bank has agreed to provide financial and technical support to Pakistan in importing gas through trans-national pipelines.

According to the report published in daily Dawn the World Bank has been requested to assist Pakistan in providing the benefits of its international experience in gas import through trans-national pipelines.

The World Bank would send a special mission to Pakistan in the third week of this month for discussing various aspects relating to import of gas. Pakistan was seriously pursuing the gas import options with a view to removing its shortage in the coming years.

The government of Turkmenistan would submit its international experts report about the certification of Dualatabad gas field for undertaking Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan gas pipeline project at a cost of about $3 billion.

Once the reservoir engineering certification report was available, Pakistan would convene a meeting of the steering committee through the Asian Development Bank (ADB) within four weeks to take up the issue.

They also said that Indian cabinet has finally given clearance to the Indian Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas to start bilateral and multilateral negotiations with Pakistan and other countries for laying trans-national pipelines for importing gas which was a "welcoming development".

Afghanistan to debut at South Asian Judo at Indore
Indo-Asian News Service
New Delhi, Feb 14 (IANS) Afghanistan, represented by two judokas, will make its debut at the 3rd South Asian Judo Championship beginning at Indore next week.
Besides India, which will field a 19-strong contingent, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are also in the fray in the championship starting Feb 26.

"It will be the first time that Afghanistan will be taking part in the meet," Judo Federation of India (JFI) secretary Mukesh Kumar told reporters here.

In all, 79 judokas from the six nations will slug it out for top honours in a championship that is being hosted by JFI under the aegis of the South Asian Judo Federation.

The championship will conclude Feb 28.

Male participants will compete in seven weight categories, from the 56 kg class to the open category, while females, who will also compete in seven categories, will vie from the 44 kg class to the open class.

During the championships, the Judo Union of Asia (JUA) will conduct a seminar for referees while the International Judo Federation (IJF) will conduct continental referees' examination for Asian judo referees.

A total of 25 Asian referees, including three Indians, will take the continental referee examination.

The purpose of organising the seminar, said Mukesh, was to educate the referees on the latest rules.

Judo experts from Japan, Taiwan and some other countries are also expected to attend.

Jagdish Tytler, the JFI president and the Minister of State for Non Resident Affairs, will be the chief guest at the opening ceremony at the Basketball Indoor Stadium, Indore, Feb 27.

Yoshinori Takeuchi, president of JUA, and Mahesh Joshi, president of the Madhya Pradesh Olympic Association, will be the guests of honour.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Babu Lal Gour will be the chief guest at the closing ceremony Feb 28.

Indian squad:

Men: Vikas Saini, Parwinder Singh, Bhupinder Singh, Ram Ashrey Yadav, Sahil Pathania, Mandeep Singh, Samunder Tokas.

Women: Thombi Devi, Archana, N. Gomti Chanu, L. Brojeshori Devi, Y. Landhoni Devi, Sangeeta Sharma and Jina Devi.

Coaches: Rameshwar Dutt, Virender Singh, Jiwan Sharma, Satpaul Rana and Surender Singh Sodi

Returning Afghans were promised a new life. They have misery and death
The Independent, UK 02/13/2005 By Nick Meo
Kabul - To Kabul's new rich, the suburb of Karte Sakhi is an unpleasant reminder of what Afghans did to themselves in the civil war, a place to move through swiftly in their four-wheel-drive cars. To the most destitute and desperate of the city's poor, it is home.

Like a latter-day version of the ruins of Dresden in 1945, the devastation is breathtaking. Once it was a pleasant tree-lined district. Now only the metal stumps of street lamps remain from rocket explosions which blew down buildings and scarred walls with shrapnel.

In the mud and snow of February the suburb is even more of a bleak, hellish place, to hurry through on the way to the city centre. But Karte Sakhi cannot be ignored. It has become a symbol of what has gone wrong in the new Afghanistan.

Inside the skeletons of buildings, under tarpaulins covered with snow, hundreds of families have crawled into the ruins to live a half-life as squatters. They have no electricity, no clean water, no sanitation, and no heating. There are no jobs for the men and little food for the children. For the women life is a grinding struggle to try to keep the family together, stop the roof leaking, and share the meagre handouts of food that keep their children alive but not nourished.

These people are not the victims of a war which ended years ago. They are some of the families who heeded Hamid Karzai's call to return from the refugee camps of Pakistan to a new Afghanistan. Instead of finding that longed-for new beginning, they have ended up in a nightmarish dumping ground, the losers in the dream of a new Afghanistan promised by Western leaders.

For the past fortnight the families of Karte Sakhi, who have endured three years of misery in the ruins, have shivered, coughed and died in Afghanistan's coldest winter for 20 years. Roia, 23, who has four children, came back from Pakistan because her husband, Qolam Sakhi, had heard things had got better in Kabul.

Two years later, they are still in the wrecked house that they found on their arrival. There are no permanent homes for families like them. There is nothing to warm the children except glowing coals and hot ashes which a nearby bakery sometimes lets them take them as charity after the bread is baked. The baby is constantly sick and there is no money for medicine. Power for the single electric light bulb comes from a car battery which they rarely have the money to recharge.

Roia pointed to condensation streaming down a plastic sheet over a window and admitted she feared whether her youngest would survive until spring. She said: "Sometimes the walls or the ceiling collapse. That's the biggest fear. We didn't think it would be like this in Kabul. President Karzai said there would be land and help but there's been nothing for us here." As she recounts her family's troubles matter of factly, her husband starts weeping, shamed by the humiliation of the misery they are reduced to.

There have been no new homes built for them in the massive reconstruction process. Social housing is not planned by anybody, although the city is covered with building sites, the tasteless mansions of the nouveau riche, those who have prospered on the drugs trade, and merchants who have done well from the influx of Westerners. In Kabul's distorted economic boom, fuelled by drugs and aid money, the price of land has rocketed while the city bulges at the seams with returnees putting an unbearable strain on its primitive infrastructure.

Near the city's sports stadium is a camp of improvised tents made by refugees from old sacking and tarpaulins. In here, a week ago, an infant froze to death. Twenty deaths from cold have been registered so far. The baby boy's grandfather, Rahmatullah, an unemployed labourer, said the family had tried to warm the child during the night but he died soon after dawn. He said: "I am near to despair. How can we go on like this? The animals in Kabul are better off than we are. We were happy to come back to Afghan-istan because this is our country, but now we wish we had stayed in Pakistan."

Dr Jawid Samadi runs a clinic for the returnees, funded by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. In the camps he visits, 1,500 to 2,000 people are sick with respiratory diseases, including pneumonia and bronchitis, especially children.

"For a doctor it is painful to see the condition these people have to live in," he said. "When you see the pledges the foreign countries made to help Afghanistan, then look at how these people are living, there is a big gap between the two. It makes me very angry."

Ambassador Khalilzad Opens American Corner at Kabul University
Announcement of English Language Training Center - U.S. Embassy Kabul
Kabul, Afghanistan - Saturday, February 12, U.S. Ambassador and Special Presidential Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and Chancellor of Kabul University Dr. Ghani opened the U.S. sponsored American Corner at Kabul University. Ambassador Khalilzad also announced the establishment of an English language-training program for Kabul University.

"Expanding the educational opportunities for Afghans and improving the quality of Afghan schools are key to Afghanistan's development. It is my hope that the American Corner and the English language training center will be a symbol of the enduring partnership between Afghans and Americans, and a testament to education and the pursuit of ideas," said U.S. Ambassador Khalilzad.

The English language-training program is an educational opportunity that will bring English teachers to Kabul University several times a week for 500 students wishing to improve their English language skills.

U.S. sponsored American Corners provide English-language materials on American history, culture, politics and economics as well as Internet resources, English language classes and seminars on topics related to the U.S. This is the second of five American Corners to be opened in Afghanistan. The other American Corners are in Mazar-e-Sharif, Jalalabad and Herat.

New Tests for Civil Servants
IWPR 02/13/2005 By Amanullah Nasrat
Screening programme designed to improve quality of government workers
Kabul - President Hamed Karzai's attempts to reform and streamline the country's government by weeding out incompetent or unqualified civil servants have met with mixed response from government employees.

Karzai last year set up a nine-member reform commission to screen all of the country's bureaucrats. Those who pass the screening test can keep their position. Those who fail are enrolled in a retraining programme and retested again after three months. If they fail again, they are dismissed.

According to commission members, such a review was necessary because, over the years, the civil-service system had become rooted in nepotism, corruption and incompetence.

Plans call for the testing programme to be expanded into the provinces after it is fully implemented in the capital. But while some government workers have applauded the review process, others have complained that the tests are unfair and the standards unrealistic.

And some contend that the tests give an unfair advantage to those who speak English or have computer skills. Engineer Kabir, 53, a construction engineer, said, "In the past, nobody knew anything about computers in Afghanistan but recently it has become common.

"I think it is a little offensive to professional people that if they don't know English or computers, they may lose their jobs."

Hayatullah, 57, an employee who lost his position in the planning department at the ministry of rural development and is currently enrolled in a retraining class, said the test fails to take into account the experience gained by long-time government workers.

"They asked me 'What does evaluation mean?' but I had to tell them I did not know," he said. He said he had been working for the government for 25 years and in the same ministry for 13. He graduated from high school 26 years ago but has no higher education.

Hayatullah says tough and complicated questions were the reason for his dismissal. "The commission asked me questions in English that I could not understand," he said. "Job experience wasn't considered. These questions for a 57-year-old made me out to be foolish and incompetent."

So far, 250 of the 8,100 people screened in ten ministries and six other governmental organisations have lost their jobs and are now in government-sponsored training programmes.

Mohammad Qasim, 38, who has a law degree and works in the accounting section of the foreign ministry, said he is pleased with the new screening process. "I am happy with the way the commission is working because in government offices qualified people are now rewarded and unqualified staff are dismissed," he said.

Mohammad Salim, personnel director at the rural development ministry, said 26 people in his ministry had failed the initial screening test and were placed on probation for three months.

"They could attend courses in computer studies, English or management," he said. "After three months, they are assessed and if they have made progress will be rehired. If not, they are dismissed."

Mohammad Salim said he believes the screening process will help improve the quality of government employees. "There were people in the ministry who were uneducated and unprofessional. Some did not know the difference between dispatching and receiving a letter. But now the jobs are going to professionals," he said.

"The type of people who have been dismissed are those who simply filled vacancies. They didn't know what to do or what their job entailed. I was always embarrassed by them but now I am relieved they are gone." Amanullah Nasrat is an IWPR staff reporter in Kabul.

Census of Afghan refugees to begin on 23rd
Dawn
KARACHI, Feb 13: The Census of Afghan refugees, with the cooperation of UNHCR, will start all over the country, including Karachi from Feb 23.

Giving details at a press conference, the District Coordination Officer, Fazlur Rehman, who has been appointed district officer census for Karachi said here on Saturday that in the city census will be carried out in four union councils of Orangi Town from Feb 14 as a pilot project.

He said in initial stages work for identification of Afghan localities and their houses was completed and with the help of this drill, census and registration of Afghan Refugees would be ensured.

He said that hopefully the task would be completed within two weeks for which services of 250 enumerators have been acquired. Initial estimates show that out of 178 UCs of the city, there are 118 UCs where Afghan refugees have taken abode.

Fazlur Rehman said that the reason of this census is to ascertain the accurate number of Afghan refugees living here. He said the city has been divided in various blocks and in each block 500 houses or 3000 residents have been included.

A two-member team of male and female workers would complete the census of a block in 10 days and there would be a supervisor over 10 teams. The teams from UNHCR and Federal Population Census Organisation will monitor all this process.

He said that training of staff and monitoring teams has already been started from Feb 10 while all other related arrangements have also been completed with the cooperation of federal government.

All Afghan Refugees who entered Pakistan after December 1, 1979, would be covered under census. The refugees who would not get themselves registered during census can face difficulties in preparation of documents with government of Pakistan and UNHCR.

The district officer census said that to make the drill successful, heavy responsibility lie on citizens, especially elected councillors, UC Nazims and Town administration. -APP