Afghanistan News January 24, 2005

January 24, 2005

28 Afghan children die in disease outbreaks
January 23, 2005
KABUL (Reuters) - At least 28 Afghan children have died from outbreaks of whooping cough and measles in central Afghanistan in the past week, the public health minister said on Sunday.

The public health ministry has rushed medical teams and equipment by road and air to prevent an epidemic of measles and whooping cough in Deh Rawud district of Uruzgan and in Gezab district of Dai Kundi provinces, he said.

Sayed Mohammad Amin Fatemi said 25 children had died from whooping cough in Gezab while three children had died of measles in Deh Rawud.

"The deaths have happened in a period of a week's time," Fatemi told a news conference.

Both Uruzgan and Dai Kundi are among the most remote and impoverished parts of war-torn Afghanistan.

Fatemi said the government was planning to launch a massive immunisation campaign in the two affected areas after assessing the extent of the disease outbreaks.

Police chief, three others, killed in roadside bombing in Afghanistan
Sunday January 23, 4:54 PM AFP
Four people including a local police chief have been killed by a roadside bomb blast in southern Afghanistan.

Wazir Mohammed, police chief of Char Chino district of Uruzgan province, was killed with his father, his brother and his bodyguard as he was driving from his home to his office on Saturday, interior ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal told AFP

"It is the work of enemies of peace and stability," Mashal said of the remote-control bombing on Saturday afternoon.

Provincial governor Jon Mohammad blamed remnants of the country's ousted Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regime.

"It is the work of the Taliban. They had planted the bomb for the police chief," Mohammad said.

Remnants of the Taliban are active in southern and southeastern provinces of Afghanistan, mainly along the border with Pakistan.

A US-led attack topped the Taliban in late 2001 after they refused to hand over Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.

In addition to Afghan forces there are 18,000 US-led foreign troops hunting Taliban and Al-Qaeda fugitives, mainly in the south, and around 8,000 NATO-led peacekeepers in big cities.

Afghanistan likely to delay parliamentary, local polls: analysts
Mon Jan 24, 1:35 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - Afghanistan looks likely to delay parliamentary, provincial and district elections scheduled for May, possibly until fall, analysts and diplomats say.

They say a deadline to announce electoral boundaries 120 days before the polls, slated to be held by May 20, passed last week.

"That is the first deadline that has to be looked at if we want the elections to take place in the month of Saur," UN spokeswoman Ariane Quentier told a press briefing last week, referring to the Afghan month which ends on May 20.

Electoral authorities announced in July that parliamentary polls -- initially intended to be organized with presidential elections won by Hamid Karzai in October -- would not be held before this spring.

The delay was meant to allow more time to register voters, decide the voting system and each province's number of seats, disarm militias and strengthen security forces.

The polls, involving thousands of candidates and being held without reliable population figures, are much more complex than presidential elections. Several experts, as well as senior diplomats in Kabul, have said they did not expect them to happen before the summer or fall.

The defense minister of Germany, which has about 2,000 troops helping to police war-torn Afghanistan, is one of those expecting a delay.

"There are indications that Afghan President Hamid Karzai considers postponing the elections until the fall," Peter Struck told a press conference in Berlin on Friday.

The interior ministry on Sunday confirmed that district boundaries had not yet been defined.

"We are currently working on the district boundaries. It has yet not been finished, it is not finalized," ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal told AFP.

He did not say when the boundaries would be announced or whether polls would be delayed, but analysts here agreed that the current timetable would not be met.

"It is not going to be possible in the April-May timeframe," Andrew Wilder, an electoral expert at Afghan Research and Evaluation Unit, told AFP.

"Many major decisions remain to be taken such as the district boundaries, the number of seats for each province or the voting system," Wilder added.

"They are giving the illusion that it is going to be on time but it is not going to be," another analyst said on condition of anonymity.

However, experts said it was better to delay polls than hold ill-prepared ones on time.

"A delayed election is better than a bad election. Such a delay is better if it means that we will then be able to meet international standards," Wilder said.

Another electoral expert familiar with the process said: "Good progress has been made for the determination of district boundaries and my understanding is that the Ministry of Interior will be able to do it very soon."

"Maybe the elections will be held a day or two or a week later but what we want is to have a good and credible election," added the expert, who did not want to be named.

Afghan opium crop set to drop sharply, officials say
Associated Press / January 23, 2005
The poppy fields that once crowded every scrap of farmland in this fertile corner of eastern Afghanistan have been supplanted _ by wheat. Farmers are slashing their cultivation of opium, government and foreign officials say, in a bright start for President Hamid Karzai's U.S.-sponsored campaign against the world's largest illegal narcotics industry.

Nationwide, officials forecast a drop of between 30 percent to 70 percent in this year's crop. In crucial growing areas such as eastern Nangarhar province and southern Helmand, it could be down more than three-quarters, they say, though reliable statistics are not yet available.

The surprise cutback in poppy growing is increasing pressure on the international community to deliver hundreds of millions in aid to prevent a potentially violent backlash by impoverished Afghans who have survived by growing opium.

"The first priority which we are supporting is self-restraint and self-eradication, and it is happening amazingly well," Rural Development Minister Haneef Atmar said in a recent interview. "The risks are now too high for (the farmers) and they hope the government will protect them and help them."

Afghan poppy cultivation jumped an estimated two-thirds to a record 131,000 hectares (323,701 acres) last year, and supplied 87 percent of the world's opium, the raw material for the heroin sold to young addicts on the streets of Western Europe and Russia.

The United Nations values the trade in Afghanistan at US$2.8 billion (Â€2.15 billion), or more than 60 percent of 2003 gross domestic product, and has warned that the country is turning into a "narco-state" three years after the fall of the Taliban.

Under belated pressure from the United States and Europe, Karzai has called for a "jihad," or holy war, against the industry, which is believed to benefit guerrillas, warlords and corrupt officials.

A drive last week around Nangarhar suggests there has been a good initial response. The terraced fields are full of knee-high wheat or vegetables. Provincial officials say there is poppy only in remote valleys near the Pakistani border and insist they will destroy it.

Skeptics say drought, disease and falling opium prices _ not Karzai's exhortations, or threats of eradication which proved hollow in the past _ are responsible for the drop in cultivation.

However, farmers in two traditional growing areas of Nangarhar told an Associated Press reporter they had plowed in their young poppy crop late last year because they were told to by powerful local landowners and security officials.

"It was good business, but they said we should stop, and wait and see," said Abdul Wahid, a bearded sharecropper resting under a stand of mulberry trees next to his fields in the district of Surkh Rod, or Red River.

"Some of us said we wanted to grow just a little, but they said no," Wahid said. "If we get help, maybe it's gone for good. If not, we'll plant again."

Foreign diplomats give some of the credit for the drop in poppy farming to Mohammed Daoud, a former militia commander _ now the government's top anti-narcotics cop.

Daoud, a deputy interior minister, summoned provincial police chiefs to Kabul and told them they will be fired if they don't halt cultivation. He says he plans to start arresting top smugglers by April and try them before special courts.

To keep farmers onside in the short term, the U.S. government is paying thousands of people in Helmand and Nangarhar US$3 a day to clean irrigation ditches and repair roads.

The plan should substitute part of the income lost to farmers, who claim they can earn 25 times more from poppy than wheat, until longer-term aid such as better seed, cold stores for vegetables and microcredit to restore long-lost orchards kicks in ahead of next fall's planting season.

Western officials say that is key to preventing farmers turning back to poppy, particularly if a drop in supply _ perhaps engineered by traders with ample stocks from the recent boom years _ revives opium prices.

"I expect that people really will see that there is a serious effort, that there are new opportunities," said Patrick Fine, head of the U.S. Agency of International Development.

However, Atmar, the rural development minister, said he was concerned that the pledges, amounting to about US$1 billion in American, British and European Union aid, should be honored quickly and spent sensibly.

With farmers already switching to legal crops, he said more money for development could also be drawn from funds earmarked for an eradication campaign _ to begin in February, just before harvest in the warmest provinces _ and interdiction.

Proponents of a crackdown on traffickers _ to be conducted by Afghan special forces trained by British and American experts _ say high-profile arrests are critical to fighting the drugs trade, but some Afghan officials are resisting strong-arm tactics.

Karzai's ministers are discussing a possible amnesty to traders and smugglers willing to turn over a new leaf and invest their wealth in the legal economy.

Atmar said a head-on collision with the drug mafias could push them into a closer alliance with Taliban-led militants with an unknown cost "for Afghanistan's stability and for the lives of the international soldiers in Afghanistan."

"They could use all of their money in order to protect themselves," he said. "Sometimes you really need to be pragmatic in a post-conflict situation."

US likely to double bounty for bin Laden to 50 million dollars: report
Monday January 24, 3:22 AM AFP
The administration of US President George W. Bush is likely to double the bounty on Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden to 50 million dollars.

The Bush administration has been hunting the Al-Qaeda chief since the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington with no success, despite US troops scouring Afghanistan's mountainous border with Pakistan where bin Laden is believed to be hiding.

Time magazine said Sunday the White House is likely to hike the bounty on bin Laden by the end of February acting on legislation passed in November by Congress, in a report to hit newsstands this week.

The report said the US State Department will also be mounting a new publicity blitz in a bid to snare the Saudi dissident.

Omar letter confirms position says Taliban spokesman
Abdul Qadeer Munsif
KABUL, Jan 23, (Pajhwok Afghan News)—Taliban spokesman Latifullah Hakimi has reiterated Taliban's refusal to negotiate with the Afghan government for the surrender of its forces. Speaking to Pazhwok news agency on Saturday Hakimi said the recent letter issued by Taliban leader Taliban leader Mullah Omar had reaffirmed his oft-stated position. "My statement has become clearer with the recent statements of Amirul Momineen (leader of Muslims)" he said.

A letter from Mullah Omar faxed to media organizations last week had dismissed suggestions that the Taliban were negotiating with the Afghan government and the US forces, terming the claims "baseless".

Reports of possible negotiations for the surrender of Taliban forces had emerged after the announcement of a conditional amnesty by the Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the US ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmai Khalilzad.

Paktia Governor Asadullah Wafa had also stated earlier this month that tribal leaders were mediating in the talks between the Afghan government and Taliban leaders to arrive at guarantees for the security of the Taliban members who wished to surrender.

In an interview with Pajhwok news agency a few days ago, senior Taliban leader, Mullah Abdul Salam Rocketi, had called on Taliban members to lay down their arms and adopt the path of peace.

The letter from Mullah Omar however stated that the Taliban would continue the jehad until all American forces were out of Afghanistan. Taliban spokesman Latifullah Hakimi said the letter confirmed the position he had been reiterating. Hakimi had rejected the suggestions of any ongoing negotiations several times earlier.
Though Hakimi said the Taliban forces were powerful, denying suggestions that the statements issued by Mullah Omar were aimed at building the morale of the forces, Taliban's limited capacity was evident in its failure to disrupt the presidential elections despite threats to the contrary.

Aziz talks to Karzai on phone
By Qudssia Akhlaque Dawn
ISLAMABAD, Jan 23: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz called Afghan President Hamid Karzai a couple of days before Eid and reiterated Pakistan's commitment to a stable Afghanistan , and discussed with him ways of improving trade ties between the two countries, it is learnt.

Mr Aziz conveyed to the Afghan president that the interests of the two countries were inter linked and both were co-dependent, sources close to the prime minister told Dawn.

He particularly underlined the importance of the Joint Economic Commission and in that context pointed to need for consolidating the improvement in relations between the two countries, the sources said.

The two leaders also reviewed other aspects of the bilateral relationship and looked at ways of increasing trade between the two countries, the sources added.

In another significant development on the Pakistan-Afghanistan front Islamabad has reportedly agreed to return the Afghan planes sent to it for protection during the Afghan war.

The Afghan defence ministry spokesman was quoted early this month as saying that a total of 19 planes were dispatched to Pakistan while another seven were sent to Uzbekistan.

Meanwhile, observers say despite strengthening of Karzai's hands, political instability continues in Afghanistan. Earlier, Mr Aziz had detailed telephone conversations with his counterparts from among the tsunami-hit countries, it is learnt. He assured the leaders that Pakistan would extend all possible help.

Bush's Iraq, Afghan, Tsunami Plan Due Next Week
By Adam Entous and Anna Willard
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House is finalizing an $80 billion to $100 billion package that will pay for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and could release details early next week, sources close to the deliberations said on Friday.

The package is expected to include funding to upgrade Army equipment, as well as up to $1 billion in aid to Asian nations devastating by last month's tsunami.

Sources said the package is close to completion, and a top Republican congressional aide said the White House could start releasing details as early as Tuesday. The package would push total U.S. funding for military operations and reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan to nearly $300 billion.

The White House declined to comment on the size of the package or when it would be unveiled. It was expected to be submitted to Congress for approval next month after President Bush sent up his fiscal 2006 budget on Feb. 7.

But the White House has not ruled out releasing the details earlier and incorporating the emergency spending into the budget's deficit projections for the first time.
Democrats have accused Bush of excluding Iraq-related costs from the budget in order to meet his deficit reduction goals, a charge the White House denies. Some Republican lawmakers have also been critical of the practice.

In addition to money for ongoing military operations, the package is expected to include as much as $1 billion to fund tsunami relief efforts, including the Pentagon (news - web sites)'s deployments in the region, sources said.

At least $780 million in the package would help combat the drug trade in Afghanistan. The administration is also considering including $1 billion to $2 billion to construct a new U.S. embassy complex in Baghdad, and up to $200 million in aid for the Palestinians to shore up newly-elected President Mahmoud Abbas.

Aid for Ukraine may also be included to bolster President-elect Viktor Yushchenko, congressional aides said. The new funding request comes as Bush faces calls from fellow Republicans to rein in the budget deficit, which reached a record $412.55 billion in 2004.

Bush has promised to halve the deficit by 2009 from an earlier 2004 deficit forecast of $512 billion. The White House has projected a budget deficit of $331 billion for the 2005 fiscal year, which began on Oct. 1, but that does not include the new funding request.

White House officials say Bush will still meet his deficit reduction goal despite rising war costs. The Congressional Budget Office will release its updated forecasts for the fiscal outlook on Tuesday. The numbers are expected to show an improvement in the deficit outlook, particularly since they will not include any costs of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Administration and congressional officials had initially expected the spending package, known as a supplemental, to total closer to $50 billion. But cost estimates skyrocketed to as much as $100 billion as the Iraq insurgency intensified and demand for more armored equipment increased. Another factor in the growing price-tag: rising fuel costs, caused in part by the turmoil in Iraq.

Several sources said the spending package is likely to be closer to $80 billion than to $100 billion. With 150,000 American troops deployed in Iraq at a cost estimated at nearly $1 billion a week, the funding package will cover not only day-to-day operations, but new equipment and armor for Army vehicles, sources said.
Critics have accused Bush and his top advisers of understating how much it would cost for the war and Iraq's reconstruction. Before the invasion, then-White House budget director Mitch Daniels predicted Iraq would be "an affordable endeavor," and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz assured Congress: "We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon."

Not including the new funding request, Congress has so far approved $120 billion for Iraq and another $60 billion for Afghanistan. Last year Congress also approved a $25 billion contingency fund for the Pentagon.

Yet only a fraction of the $18.4 billion set aside for rebuilding Iraq has been spent. The White House blames the insurgency for the slow pace of reconstruction.

New spy agency at Pentagon operating secretly in Iraq, Afghanistan: report
Sun Jan 23, 5:04 PM ET Mideast - AFP
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Pentagon has created a new spying agency that has already been operating secretly in Iraq and Afghanistan for two years.

The unit, called the Strategic Support Branch, has also been in operation in other places sources would not disclose, the Washington Post said, citing documents and interviews with participants.

A early planning memorandum to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, said the focus of the initiative was on "emerging target countries such as Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia, Philippines and Georgia," according to the Post.

The secret spying organization is designed to provide Rumsfeld with tools to conduct so-called human intelligence tasks, such as interrogation of prisoners and recruitment of foreign spies.

Recruited agents may include "notorious figures" whose association with the US government would be embarrassing if revealed, the Post said, citing a Pentagon memo.

Rumsfeld has been trying since October 2001 to provide the US military faster access to intelligence and new tools to penetrate terror groups such as Al-Qaeda.

But the Pentagon's initiative encroaches on the traditional territory of the CIA and gives Rumsfeld unprecedented authority over foreign spying at a time when Congress is trying to group an array of intelligence agencies under a new national intelligence director.

Rumsfeld for months opposed the creation of the new post and was instrumental in stalling passage of intelligence reform legislation recommended by the commission that investigated US intelligence failures prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks.