Afghanistan News January 26, 2005

January 26, 2005

Taliban kill two Afghan police in ambush
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Fighters from Afghanistan's ousted Taliban militia killed two policemen and wounded a district police chief in an ambush in the south of the country, a local official said on Tuesday.

Three years after U.S. forces toppled the Taliban for harbouring al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, their fighters are still battling U.S. and Afghan forces mainly in the south and southeast of the country, vowing to expel foreign troops.

Azim Jan, the police chief of Ghorak district in Kandahar province, was travelling with his bodyguards from the city of Kandahar to Ghorak on Monday evening when Taliban militants attacked his convoy, the district governor Easa Jan told Reuters.

Two of the bodyguards were killed and the police chief was wounded in the ensuing firefight, Easa Jan said. "We have launched an operation to arrest the attackers and bring them to justice," he said.

Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi said the militia had killed seven police in the attack and had possibly killed their commander. Two Taliban fighters were also killed, he told Reuters by satellite telephone. Another district police chief and three others were killed in the neighbouring province of Uruzgan on Saturday.

Nearly 1,100 people including civilians and militants have been killed in suspected Taliban raids since August 2003, mostly in southern and eastern Afghanistan where the Taliban and their allies are mostly active. Some 18,000 U.S. troops are in Afghanistan hunting for Taliban and al Qaeda fighters thought to be mostly along the mountainous border with Pakistan.

Pak rupee no longer legal tender in Afghanistan
Islamabad, Jan 25 (ANI): The Hamid Karzai regime has in an effort to promote the Afghani, disallowed the use of Pakistani currency as the medium of exchange in Afghanistan.

According to The News, although the Pakistan government had taken up the issue with Afghanistan, subsequently the Afghanistan Central Bank decided against using the Pakistani rupee as the medium of exchange.

However, though Kabul has said that Pakistani rupee should not be used, the fact remains that it is still widely used in places like Jalalabad, Kandahar and other areas bordering Pakistan.

The move its understood is likely to affect the National Bank of Pakistan, the worst as not only was NBP the first foreign bank to open its operations in Afghanistan, but also has plans to open more branches across Pakistan, something NBP believes would be very difficult in the present circumstances. (ANI)

Foreign Minister Khurshid M. Kasuri requests for assistance from the UNHCR in repatriation of the Afghan refugees
Source: Government of Pakistan 11 Jan 2005
Foreign Minister Khurshid M. Kasuri requested for assistance from the UNHCR in repatriation of the Afghan refugees back to Afghanistan when Mr. Ruud Lubbers, UN High Commissioner for Refugees and ex-Prime Minister of Netherlands, met the Foreign Minister in his office today.

Mr. Lubbers extolled Pakistans contribution so far in providing assistance to refugees for their long stay in Pakistan. The Foreign Minister said that Pakistan hoped that now that the reconstruction process was in full swing in Afghanistan, Afghan refugees would be encouraged to go back to their country and help take part in the reconstruction process. Foreign Minister Kasuri said that recently signed MOU between UNHCR and Pakistan regarding census and registration of Afghan refugees living in Pakistan would be helpful to determine the approximate number of refugees still in Pakistan.

The Foreign Minister further stated that UNHCR should evolve a mechanism to facilitate the return of the Afghan refugees. Sustained involvement of the international community is essential to deal with such an arduous task. Pakistan has accepted millions of war-stricken Afghan brethren seeking refuge on its soil for the last quarter of a century. Millions of Afghans still reside in Pakistan. Mission-oriented and not time-oriented approach is, therefore, required on the part of UNHCR.

Mr. Rudd Lubbers stated that the UNHCR would remain engaged in matters of Afghan refugees beyond the expiry of the Tripartite Agreement in March 2006. He expressed the hope that the census and registration process that has already been initiated would give a detailed database about the type and number of Afghan refugees. This process, he said, will facilitate in determining the required assistance to Afghan refugees.

Crop spraying draws controversy in Afghan drug fight
The US may scrap or divert $152 million earmarked for aerial poppy eradication in Afghanistan this year.
By Halima Kazem | The Christian Science Monitor from the January 25, 2005 edition
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN - Shortly after becoming Afghanistan's first democratically elected president, Hamid Karzai declared war on one of his country's most lucrative exports: opium. Three months on, the president has won an early skirmish over tactics by prevailing upon the US to shelve plans for aerial spraying of Afghan poppy crops.

Crop spraying is a major part of Washington's war on drugs in Latin America. But in Afghanistan, where income from the crop is crucial to many farmers, spraying has proved controversial.

Last November, the Karzai government protested when, without its knowledge, fields in two Afghan provinces were sprayed with a "mysterious substance." Both the US and British governments denied any involvement, but Afghan government officials say the US military controls that airspace.

The US had earmarked $780 million this year for Afghanistan's drug fight, including $300 million for eradication and $152 million for aerial spraying due to start in March. Now, the US State Department is reportedly reworking the budget proposal, possibly removing funds for spraying.

"We don't know the side effects of spraying. Also, Afghans are not used to seeing this kind of thing [spraying], it could be seen as an attack on the people not just the poppy crops. That is a dangerous road to take," says Gen. Mohammed Daud, Head of the Anti-Narcotics Department at the Ministry of Interior.

By ruling out crop spraying, the government has removed one of the few quick methods of combating the opium trade. But many analysts say that development efforts, such as finding alternatives for farmers, are more likely to succeed in the long run.

"[Spraying] is a ridiculous and shameful misallocation of resources, reflecting the political agenda of a few people in Washington," says Barnett Rubin, a professor at New York University and former adviser to the UN in Afghanistan. "Fortunately, faced with the united opposition of the Afghan government and the severe doubts of much of the US government and all US allies, they are now backing off and may reprogram funding for aerial eradication to alternative livelihoods."

According to a recent UN report, Afghanistan pumps out 87 percent of the world's opium and its heroin derivatives. The drug is planted in all 34 provinces of the country and can bring in 10 times the income of other crops. The trade in 2004 reaped $2.8 billion, up more than 20 percent from the previous year, and now makes up an estimated 60 percent of Afghanistan's legal economy.

Drug trafficking has also become a major source of income for Al Qaeda and the Taliban, a fact that has deepened US concerns.

"Virtually anything in Afghanistan that is funded by something other than foreign aid is funded by drug profits. According to reports, drug income in the south is sometimes split among various tribes, with a portion going to local Taliban," says Mr. Rubin.

The US military has so far shied away from playing a more active role in combating drugs in Afghanistan. Analysts say that US military involvement could overly tax its forces, and prove more expensive and time-consuming than mobilizing the Afghan government to tackle the problem.

Afghanistan currently has 1,000 trained and active counternarcotics personnel, about 600 of whom are in the provinces, burning and destroying poppy fields on the ground.

But officials say at least 4,000 officers are needed to actively monitor and destroy poppy farms, and another 5,000 to control the country's porous borders.

While ruling out crop spraying, Karzai is advocating another controversial tactic. In a recent press conference Karzai told reporters that he was considering offering amnesty to former drug traffickers with the hopes that they will lead the Afghan government to the bigger drug lords.

"We are discussing the amnesty issue. We need to make sure that the plan doesn't backfire on us and the big drug lords slip out of our hands," says General Daud.

However, in a country without any kind of formal national identification system, verifying drug traffickers and the identities of drug lords will be a major challenge. And with some 2.3 million Afghans involved in the drug trade the task becomes harder.

Some members of Karzai's Cabinet suggest a "bottom up" approach to the poppy dilemma. Afghanistan's newly appointed counternarcotics minister, Habibullah Qaderi, believes that subsidies and cash incentives should be given to encourage farmers to drop poppies and plant other cash crops.

Qaderi has suggested that the Afghan government pay the farmers involved in cultivating opium at least double the market price for crops such as rice, wheat, and cotton. But subsidies could cost upward of $1 billion for one year, more than has been promised by the US government for the entire antinarcotics effort over three years.

"We can't really beat a $2 to $3 billion-a-year industry with this type of money," said Omar Zakhilwal, chief policy adviser at the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development.

Afghanistan's long drought compounds the difficulty of finding alternative crops. Poppies require very little water to thrive.

Rubin also warns against eradicating poppy farms too quickly or before taking out the traffickers and the drug lords, as many farmers are still financially indebted to their "bosses" and could revolt against the Karzai government.

"You cannot eliminate 40 percent of the total economy [60 percent of the legal economy] in one of the poorest countries in the world through law enforcement," Rubin says. "And you also cannot do it in one year, or in five years. Economic shrinkage is one of the surest predictors of instability and conflict."

The Afghan government is especially concerned about maintaining security going into parliamentary elections that are scheduled for this spring.

New appeal court heads appointed in several Afghan provinces
Afghanistan Television 01/24/2005
Kabul - In accordance with the proposal of the Supreme Court and with the approval of the president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, some appointments have been made. They are as follows:

Mohammad Ataollah has been appointed as head of the Appeal Court of Ghowr Province, Mohammad Jan has been appointed as head of the Appeal Court of Urozgan Province, Mahbub Elahi has been appointed as head of the Appeal Court of Khost Province and Mawlawi Mohammad Hakim has been appointed as head of the Appeal Court of Paktia Province.

Meanwhile, in accordance with another proposal of the Supreme Court and with the approval of the president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Dr Abdol Malek Kamawi has been appointed as head of the Judicial Authority of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

Laghman governor says poppy growing will restart unless aid arrives
By Zubair Babakarkhil
KATAL, Laghman Province, Jan 24 (Pajhwok Afghan News) - The Governor of Laghman says his province now does not have a single poppy growing, yet it has not received any assistance from the central government. In an interview with Pajhwok news agency Shah Mahmoud Safi warned that if help was not forthcoming, the province would grow poppy again next year.

The governor of this eastern province said the poppy crop in his area had been increasing in recent years. Last year, he said, around 27,000 acres of land had been cultivated with poppy. This year however, due to the order of the government, the farmers had desisted from planting poppy. Residents however wanted assistance from the government in return for not growing poppy, and had threatened to restart cultivation if that help did not arrive.

Standing in a field of wheat, 55-year-old local resident Niaz Mohammad said: "In this field last year, I cultivated poppy, not wheat." If the government did not provide aid, he would again grow poppy he said.
"Our bridges and roads have been destroyed, we have faced food shortages. They should provide us with seeds and chemical fertilizers – otherwise we are obliged to cultivate poppies."

The governor said that residents had decided to eradicate their poppy fields voluntarily. "In the current year, 1200 acres of poppy crops had been cultivated," he said. But after pressure from tribal elders, even these had been destroyed by the farmers themselves. He said the people should be provided with aid in the form of rice, purified seeds and chemical fertilisers.

Mohammad Shirin, aged 65, of Kala Shahnoor village, said he used to cultivate poppy each year, and earned a lot of money as a result. If the government did not assist them, then he would cultivate "things which are useful to me".

Atiqullah Khan, a tribal elder of Katal village, said the residents of their area had obeyed every order of the government. He pointed out that more poppy had been cultivated last year than previously, "The cause was the poverty of the people."

Some Afghan Farmers Trade Poppy for Wheat
STEPHEN GRAHAM Associated Press
SURKH ROD, Afghanistan - The top U.N. drug official is heading to Afghanistan to check out reports that farmers are heeding government calls for a "holy war" on the rampant drug trade by slashing opium cultivation.

Foreign and Afghan officials are forecasting a drop of between 30 percent and 70 percent in this year's crop, as once verdant expanses of poppies are being sown with wheat instead.

In eastern Nangarhar province and southern Helmand, poppy production could be down by more than three-quarters this year, the officials said, though reliable statistics are not yet available.

The reports suggest at least an initial response to President Hamid Karzai's U.S.-sponsored campaign against the illegal Afghan narcotics industry, which last year supplied an estimated 87 percent of the world's opium, the raw material for heroin.

"I want to see it with my own eyes," said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the Vienna, Austria-based U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, as he departed Tuesday on a five-day mission to Afghanistan.

The drop in poppy cultivation - seen in one traditional opium-producing region toured by The Associated Press last week - is increasing pressure on the international community to deliver hundreds of millions of dollars in aid for impoverished Afghans who have survived until now by growing opium poppies, but are cooperating with authorities in switching to other crops.

"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. "The risks are now too high for (the farmers), and they hope the government will protect them and help them."

Skeptics say drought, disease and falling opium prices - not Karzai's eradication program - are responsible for the drop in cultivation.

Costa, who will meet with Karzai and other senior government ministers, cautioned this week that it could take a "generation or more" to solve the opium problem.

Poppy production soared after the U.S. invasion in 2001 that ousted the Taliban militia, which had curtailed the flourishing drug trade.

The United Nations said that although bad weather and plant disease significantly reduced the opium yield last year, the total output was about 4,200 tons. It valued the trade at $2.8 billion, or more than 60 percent of the country's 2003 gross domestic product, and warned that Afghanistan was turning into a "narco-state."

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

Foreign diplomats give some of the credit to Mohammed Daoud, a former militia commander and the government's top anti-narcotics cop. Daoud, a deputy interior minister, summoned provincial police chiefs to Kabul and told them they would be fired if they didn't halt poppy cultivation.

Daoud said in an interview he expected cultivation to fall by 50 percent to 70 percent this year.

A Western official involved in counternarcotics was more cautious, saying the decrease could be 30 percent or more.

Costa's representative in Afghanistan, Doris Buddenburg, said there seemed to be a reduction, but cautioned that production might also have shifted. Farmers in colder regions have yet to plant their fields at all, she added.

The U.S. government is paying thousands of people in Helmand and Nangarhar $3 a day to clean irrigation ditches and repair roads instead of planting poppy.

Atmar, the rural development minister, said he expected about $1 billion in aid this year from the United States and the European Union.

A drive last week around Nangarhar province found terraced fields planted with knee-high wheat or vegetables. Provincial officials said poppies were being grown only in remote valleys near the Pakistani border and insisted they would destroy the fields.

Farmers in two traditional growing areas of Nangarhar told an AP reporter they stopped planting poppies 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.

"If we get help, maybe it's gone for good. If not, we'll plant again."

Experts wary of comparing Iraqi and Afghan polls
By Victoria Burnett in Kabul and Peter Spiegel in London
A week before the Afghan presidential elections, the provincial capital of Khost, a small town close to the unsettled Pakistani border, was clogged with militiamen. Clad in mismatched uniforms, armed with AK-47s, the men wandered the streets in small bands, glaring menacingly at passing US Marines on patrol.

But in spite of their threatening appearance, the armed Afghans were loyal to a local Pashtun strongman, General Khial Baz, who had formed an alliance with senior American officers in the region. They were relying on the greying commander to provide security in the province.

When election day came, in spite of Khost's proximity to Pakistan and ominous warnings from nearby Taliban fighters, there was almost no serious violence anywhere in the province or in Afghanistan as a whole. In recent weeks, both Pentagon and White House officials, including President George W. Bush himself, have compared the dire warnings about potential violence in this weekend's Iraqi elections to similar jitters ahead of the Afghan vote, implying that Sunday's election will go equally smoothly.

"It was hard leading up to the Afghan elections, as you remember," Mr Bush said earlier this month, in answer to a question about Iraqi security concerns. "There was a lot of talk about how somebody was going to get killed, and they couldn't vote. And sure enough, when people were given a chance, millions of people showed up."

But election organisers and security experts argue that the comparison is misleading, given the level of violence in Iraq and the US's inability to rely on men such as Gen Baz: credible local commanders who can provide an "inner cordon" of security on election day.

"While we had concerns about security [in Afghanistan], it doesn't even begin to compare with what's going on in Iraq," said one expert who helped organise the Afghan election and is now working on the Iraqi poll. "If you look at the number of people killed in Iraq in relation to elections, it's on a much higher scale."

US security planning in Iraq mirrors many of the precautions taken in Afghanistan. As with the Afghan poll, coalition officials in Iraq are planning to lock down large cities by using multiple checkpoints, prohibitions on vehicles, closing airports and sealing borders.

Perhaps as importantly, they are leaving protection of the polling centres to Iraqis, with US and other foreign forces patrolling the outskirts of towns and villages and held in reserve as "rapid reaction forces" if trouble arises. Part of the reason for this stand-off approach is simple arithmetic: even with the substantially larger troop presence in Iraq, there are not enough coalition soldiers to man the approximately 6,000 voting centres across the country.

But US commanders cite a more pressing concern for the move. They would like the elections to be seen to be organised and secured by local institutions. "We, the coalition, have every plan not to be anywhere close to a polling site, because it's not our election," said General Thomas Metz, commander of all coalition ground forces in Iraq. But the high levels of violence in the Sunni heartland and the poor performance of Iraqi security forces makes this strategy much more fraught with potential problems than it was in Afghanistan.

Indeed, in many areas, commanders and election officials are not planning to disclose the location of voting centres until the last minute in an effort to thwart insurgent plotters, a strategy not seriously considered in Afghanistan. And, given the complicated logistics chains involved in distributing ballots, conducting the vote and gathering returns for counting, election workers will be extremely vulnerable to attack for weeks to come.

Iraq is a more urbanised country with a better infrastructure than Afghanistan, making it easier to focus security efforts and move around dangerous areas quickly. But there will still be hundreds of remote voting centres that may only get cursory patrols from coalition forces.

The risks are so great that most international election monitors are staying away from the Iraqi vote. Such groups made similar calculations ahead of the Afghan elections, where local party apparatchiks were the only monitors to make their way to most polling places.

But some analysts warn against judging the value of the vote by such shortcomings. Afghans may have voted along tribal lines or under pressure from a local militia leader, they argue, but they nonetheless had a say in who runs the country for the first time in decades.

Regional commands to boost security
KABUL, 25 January (IRIN) - Mohammad Mossa, 38, a newly trained Afghan National Army (ANA) officer, looked confident after graduating from the French-supported ANA staff training college in the capital, Kabul on Tuesday. The former militia leader was trained by French military experts in management and intelligence gathering on the two-month training course.

"Now I am fighter, a computer operator, a manager and a good planner," Mossa said, as he received his diploma. He is one of nearly 300 ANA senior officers that have been trained in the centre. He will be posted to a new regional command in charge of some of the 20,000 troops that comprise the new army. The force is expected to reach a strength of 70,000 troops by 2006, an official at the Ministry of Defence (MoD) told IRIN.

Afghanistan desperately needs a well-trained and well-led army to promote law and order, provide security and take on private militia groups run by powerful regional warlords. "The ANA's capacity and quality has significantly increased and with its new regional divisions, it will be deployed in major Afghan cities," Baz Mohammad Jauhari, Deputy Defence Minister, told IRIN.

Attempts to increase the number of soldiers in the fledgling force have been hampered by a lack of suitable recruits and poor pay and conditions. But Jauhari said there was now more enthusiasm to join up, as ANA recruits currently enjoyed better pay and privileges than Afghan civil servants.

Jauhari said prior to the new regional commands, troops and units from the ANA's central corps, located in the Kabul region, were frequently deployed wherever needed around the country. They also carried out combat operations alongside US-led Coalition forces in the east and south.

"Now the ANA has new regional commands in the north, southeast and west of the country, there are command and control headquarters in each region of Afghanistan, as well as troops assigned to carry them out," he said.

While the process of disarming ex-combatants is under way, MoD officials said they would also start dismantling the irregular militias and individual armed groups who are currently a major security problem outside the Kabul. "The creation of the new Afghan army means that all private militias have to be banned," Jauhari added.

According to the defence ministry, more than half of all militia troops in Afghanistan have been assisted by the UN-backed Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) programme, while another 30,000 are expected to put down their weapons permanently in 2005.

In a further boost to security, Kabul is also trying to have a trained Afghan national police (ANP) force by the end of 2005 consisting of 50,000 officers. Led by Germany, over 35,000 police have been trained since last year, according to the interior ministry.

In addition to the ANA and ANP there are more than 6,000 NATO-led international peacekeepers and nearly 20,000 US-led Coalition forces in Afghanistan. But the NATO-led force stays in the capital and Coalition troops spend most of their time hunting renegade Taliban and Al-Qaeda groups rather than ensuring general security.

Greek MP calls for measures against heroin production in Afghanistan
ATHENS, Jan. 24 (Xinhua) -- Greek Second Parliamentary vice President Giorgos Sourlas called for an immediate activation on the part of Parliaments all over the world for measures to be taken against the production and trafficking of heroin in Afghanistan, semi-official Athens News Agency reported Monday.

In a letter addressed to the members of the inter-party committee for handling the problem of drugs, Sourlas notes that the production of opium in Afghanistan has increased from 185 tons in 2001 (when the Taliban were in power) to 4,500 tons in 2004 ( two years after their downfall), while the opium economy, amounting to 2.8 billion dollars, now equals 60 percent of Afghanistan's GDP. He added that all this is taking place at a time when about 20, 000 US and NATO military forces, including 150 Greek soldiers, are in the country.

Mass Guantanamo suicide protest
Tuesday, 25 January, 2005 BBC News
Twenty-three prisoners tried to hang or strangle themselves during a mass protest at Guantanamo Bay in 2003, the US military has revealed.

The action took place during a period of several days in August that year, the military said in a statement.

A spokesman said the incidents were "gestures" aimed at getting attention, and only two of the prisoners were considered suicidal.

Officials would not say why they had not previously reported the incident.

The detention centre at the US base in Cuba currently holds about 550 detainees.

They are mostly suspected Taleban and al-Qaeda fighters captured during the war in Afghanistan, many of whom have been held for more than three years without charge or access to lawyers.

The last four British men held at Guantanamo Bay are expected back in the UK on Tuesday, after almost three years in US custody.

Moazzam Begg, Martin Mubanga, Richard Belmar and Feroz Abbasi are expected to be questioned under UK anti-terror laws after their return.

The US agreed the men could be released after "complex" talks with the UK.

Transferred

A total of 23 prisoners tried to hang or strangle themselves in their cells from 18 to 26 August 2003, the US Southern Command in Miami, which covers Guantanamo, said in a statement on Monday.

There were 10 such cases on 22 August alone, the military said. However, only two of the 23 prisoners were considered to be attempting suicide.

Of those 23 prisoners, 16 are still at Guantanamo Bay while seven have been transferred to other countries.

The military has reported 34 suicide attempts at Guantanamo Bay since January 2002.

In 2003, there were 350 incidents of self-harm, including 120 "hanging gestures", army spokesman Lt Col Sumpter told the Associated Press news agency.

Army Gen Jay Hood, in command of Guantanamo, has said that the number of such incidents has gone down since a psychiatric ward was set up at the camp in 2003.

Last year, there were 110 incidents of self-harm, Lt Col Sumpter said.

Human rights

The US government argues that detainees held at Guantanamo Bay are "enemy combatants" outside the jurisdiction of American civilian courts.

However, lawyers' groups and human rights activists say the detainees are being denied their legal rights under the US constitution.

Amnesty International and other groups have also alleged that prisoners have been ill-treated at the detention centre.

The US Supreme Court ruled in July last year that civilian courts did have the right to consider challenges to the legality of foreign nationals captured abroad and held at Guantanamo Bay.

Though the military base is on rented land, the US had "complete jurisdiction and control" at Guantanamo Bay and therefore the courts had jurisdiction, a majority of the judges decided.

One of Kabul's Last Remaining Jews Dies
Tue Jan 25,11:36 AM ET By STEPHEN GRAHAM, Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan - The caretaker of Afghanistan's only functioning synagogue and one of the last remaining Jews in Kabul has died. But the man now believed to be the sole survivor of this once-thriving Jewish community, who feuded bitterly for years with the deceased, said Tuesday he was not sad to see him go.

Ishaq Levin, about 80, died apparently of natural causes about a week ago in his quarters in the small synagogue in the Afghan capital, according to his 45-year-old Jewish neighbor Zebulon Simentov. The two lived for years in quarters at separate ends of the same synagogue.

"He was a very bad man who tried to get me killed," Simentov said, grinning as he warmed his feet on a diesel-burning stove in his run-down living room. "Now I am the Jew here, I am the boss."

The feud between Simentov and Levin began before the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 when the strict Islamic regime of the Taliban was still in place. Simentov blames Levin for the loss of the synagogue's most sacred treasure — a Torah confiscated by the Taliban sometime around 1999. Simentov says Levin wanted to sell the holy scroll, and provoked the Taliban into taking it by telling Muslim women their fortunes.

Both men said they had been jailed and beaten by the Taliban and each blamed the other for it.

Levin had made his living by telling Muslim women their fortunes and prescribing medicine and love potions for them, a practice that once landed him in a Taliban jail.

Simentov says he was jailed after Levin told the Taliban he was an Israeli spy.

Levin, speaking to reporters in 2002, denounced Simentov for claiming he had converted to Islam in a bid to take possession of the synagogue.

The heart of the argument appears to have been control of the synagogue, which includes the two men's quarters as well as a bare prayer room where the prized Torah was kept.

On Tuesday, Simentov produced what he said was a letter from Afghan Jews living in Israel ordering Levin several years ago to take care of the premises.

Police have said the scroll was in the hands of a former Taliban minister now believed to be in the American military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Simentov said Tuesday that he had asked the U.S. Embassy in Kabul to help recover it.

Afghanistan's Jewish community numbered as many as 40,000 in the late 19th century, after Persian Jews fled forced conversion in neighboring Iran. But by the mid-20th century, only about 5,000 remained, and most emigrated after Israel's creation in 1948.

According to Simentov, the last eight or nine families left following the 1979 Soviet invasion. But Levin — the synagogue's shamash, or caretaker — stayed on, even through the repressive rule of the Taliban.

Simentov said he took up residence in the synagogue, built around a courtyard in the center of the city, after returning from Turkmenistan in 1992 to deal in carpets. But he quickly fell out with the older man.

Interior Ministry spokesman Latfullah Mashal said Tuesday Levin's body would be flown to Uzbekistan. Simentov said it would then be brought to Israel for burial. Israel and Afghanistan have no diplomatic relations.

US allocates 3.5m dollars to northern Afghan oil and gas exploration project
Jowzjan TV 01/24/2005
Sheberghan - Roz Mohammad Nur, the governor of Jowzjan Province, had a meeting with a number of gas, oil and geology experts from the United States of America and a US diplomat attached to the PRT [Provincial Reconstruction Team] based in Mazar-e Sharif [the provincial capital of Balkh Province].

Bakhtar Information Agency reports that the meeting was held in a friendly atmosphere. In a briefing to explain the objectives of the visit by the US gas, oil and geology experts to Sheberghan [the provincial capital of Jowzjan Province], the head of the delegation said: We came here to carry out surveys and initial research into the gas and oil fields in Sheberghan and to determine their capacity in order to attract the attention of countries that are interested in this market. The USA has allocated 3.5m dollars for the survey of the gas and oil fields. It will supply this sum of money to the Ministry of Mines and Industries of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to survey and study the gas and oil fields.

Afterwards, the governor of Jowzjan Province said in welcoming the guests: I am grateful for your actions because you have started to study and survey the gas and oil fields. We appreciate this and it is very important. You know that the Northern Gas and Oil Exploration Project is one of the big economic ventures of the country. In the past some 4,000 workers worked on this project. We want this project to get started once again and its equipment to be replaced and modernized. This project is in desperate need of rehabilitation. We are sure that better research and exploration can be carried out and the project can be active once we gain access to modern technology. The Jowzjan Administration will not just support and express appreciation of such important actions. It will spare no effort to ensure its success.

Later on, Ms (?Pat Rishen), the US diplomat attached to the Mazar-e Sharif-based PRT expressed her deep condolences regarding the assassination attempt [on Gen Abdorrashid Dostum] committed yesterday. She reassured the governor of her country's cooperation in this regard. They also exchanged views on ways to speed up reconstruction in Jowzjan Province and emphasized the importance of this issue.

The meeting was also attended by Engineer Amirzadah and Engineer Nazar Mohammad, the technical assistants of the Northern Gas and Petroleum Exploration Project. The meeting ended amicably. Via BBC Monitoring

US ambassador in Kabul says US not "occupying force"
Al-Sharq al-Awsat 01/24/2005
London - US Ambassador in Kabul Zalmay Khalilzad has said that the "grave mistake" the Americans made in Afghanistan after the Russians' withdrawal will not be repeated, and added that the end of June will mark the end of the age of mojahedin militias, for some 50,000 to 60,000 militiamen will be disbanded and reintroduced into society.

He said that the USA hoped to establish a 70,000-strong national army and an effective police force to help the country to guarantee its own security, and pointed out that after the presidential elections, "we told the Afghans that they should learn fishing by themselves instead of getting the fish supplied to them". The following is excerpt from report on an interview with US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad in Kabul by Muhammad al-Shafi'i; date not given: "Khalilzad: Our Departure After the Expulsion of Russians Was a Grave Mistake that Will Not Be Repeated; Bin Ladin Is Most Likely on the Pakistani Side of the Border", published by London-based newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat on 22 January:

[passage omitted] We met US Ambassador in Kabul Zalmay Khalilzad at the US Embassy auditorium. That was his first meeting of its kind with a number of Arab press representatives in the presence of some advisers, who took notes of the dialogue. The US ambassador began the meeting by welcoming the Arab press representatives, indicating that he graduated from the American University of Beirut and that he still has friendships with many of his former Arab colleagues.

Responding to a question by Al-Sharq al-Awsat, he said he does not run Afghanistan in spite of his strong friendship with Afghan President Hamid Karzai for over 20 years. He indicated that the US Administration's commitments in Afghanistan have increased rather than decreased after the US forces' entry into Iraq. He said Osamah Bin-Ladin is most likely on the Pakistani side of the border, adding that it is difficult for an army or large forces to hunt for a person in the mountains.

He stressed that the mistake the Americans made in Afghanistan will not be repeated. He was referring to US negligence of the Afghan file after expelling the Russians from Afghanistan. He said: "We made a mistake in the early 1980s when we left Afghanistan after the departure of the Russians. The Americans were supposed to support the Afghans so that they could stand on their legs." He described that as a grave mistake that will not be repeated. [passage omitted]

[Question] How do the Afghans view you as a US envoy?

[Khalilzad] The people are fed up with war. They knew nothing in 23 years except hunger, pain, poverty, and disease. We seek to make the mojahedin and militia leaders surrender their weapons in return for financial compensation. This is not an easy thing to do, but it is essential in order to further boost the security situation. About 93 per cent of the heavy weapons in the possession of the mojahedin leaders have been collected thus far. I can say that the end of June will mark the end of the age of mojahedin militias. Some 50,000 to 60,000 militiamen will be disbanded and merged with society. This is another problem, but we are determined to continue until the end of the road. [passage omitted]

More than 3 million Afghan refugees have returned home from neighbouring countries during the past three years. There are today 5 million children, including 2 million girls, who have returned to school. Some schools do three shifts daily. Another important event this country has witnessed for the first time in decades was the holding of presidential elections, in which 10 million voters registered their names. More than 40 per cent of them were women. [passage omitted]
The important step taken by the Afghans was training regular forces to protect the borders and impose security and stability in the country. They all graduated from the Kabul Military Training Centre in Pul-e-Charkhi. Thus far, 18,000 soldiers and officers have been trained. We hope to establish a 70,000-strong army. As for the police, the target is to establish a 60,000-strong police force. [passage omitted]

[Question] What are the priorities of the next stage in Afghanistan?

[Khalilzad] Establishing security and eliminating the armed militias. Therefore, we seek to train Afghan forces that can undertake this task. We hope to finish training the army next year. We are not occupation forces. After the elections, we told the Afghans they should learn fishing by themselves instead of getting the fish supplied to them. Via BBC Monitoring

Energy Minister Ismael Khan allocates $10 million to Herat
By Khalida Khursand and Mustafa Basharat
KABUL and HERAT, Jan. 24, (Pajhwok Afghan News) -- Minister of Energy and former governor of Herat province Ismael Khan has allocated $10 million to Herat province for expansion of power lines in western Herat province. Experts believe that there is less need for such projects in Herat than in other provinces since Herat boasts of one of the best power supplies in the entire country.

Khan who was the Governor of Herat till he was removed in September said during his visit to Herat that the money was to be spent on improvement of electricity networks in that province.

Herat is considered to be an energy-rich city, with greater availability of power than the capital city Kabul or Kandahar and Nangarhar all of which have their separate hydroelectric plants.

Engineer Ghulam Jailani Rabbani, who heads planning in the Ministry of Energy said this allocation had been proposed in the cabinet meeting. He added that two neighboring countries, Turkmenistan and Iran, had also extended power lines to the gates of Herat and that this would provide electricity for the rural areas of Heart. The $10-million budget would be spent on extending power throughout the city.

Provincial officials in Herat however say almost complete electrification of the city has already taken place and that the money allocated now would be on extending power to districts. "But we haven’t got the money so far," Abdul Rahman Safeed Ravani, deputy head of the power department in Herat told Pajhwok.

In his speech, Ismail Khan did not elaborate on how the money would help extend the networks but promised it would provide the people of Herat with more than enough electricity.

Despite the provision of electricity from Iran and Turkmenistan to Herat, there are several districts, like Ghorian and Zinda Jan, which have not yet got power. 500 families in these districts are scheduled to get electricity within a week and as many as 30,000 more families will follow soon. Provincial officials also said that Ismail Khan will go back to Herat on Wednesday to open the second power sub-station there.

Afghan girl winner of WFP 2004 painting competition
IRNA 01/24/2005
Tehran - An Afghan teenage girl residing in Iran received the prize of the UN World Food Program (WFP) 2004 painting contest, said the UN body`s office here on Monday.

Sakineh Afzali, Afghan refugee in the city of Semnan, was awarded the prize by the UN WFP representative in Iran Marius De Gaay Fortman, according to the report releases by the WFP office.

Out of two million contestants, 15 other finalists from 19 countries were also awarded prizes. The UN WFP is to publish the selected paintings on its 2005 calendars.
The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) sent its emergency help following December`s 2003 earthquake in Bam, southeast Iran, to the quake victims who left destitute and hungry by the enormous devastation. WFP`s first-ever emergency operation was to assist victims of the 1962 earthquake in the area of Boein Zahra, Iran.

Restoring Poetry to Afghanistan
by Steve Coll NPR
Steve Coll is the author of Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001.

Khalilullah Khalili's Poetry
Below is a sample poem from An Assembly of Moths, a new collection of works by Afghan poet Khalilullah Khalili:

"Way to Reedbed"

A Cry is locked
In my heart.
Where's my reed flute?
Home's become a cage.
Which way to the desert?
First suffering occupied me by day,
Then grief from evening to dawn.
Where is your face like a flower, Saaqi?
Where are the cries of the drunks?

For more information on An Assembly of Moths, please address inquiries to Sayhoon22@yahoo.com.

All Things Considered, January 24, 2005 · As Iraqis prepare to go to the polls, commentator Steve Coll reflects on Afghanistan, which held elections for the first time a few months ago. In part because of the success of those elections, Coll says, Afghanistan once again has room for much more than war and politics. One Afghan poet, Masood Khalili, has used the return to democracy as an opportunity to revive his country's poetic tradition.

About the Poetry in This Commentary

On Sept. 9, 2001, Afghan poet Masood Khalili was sitting beside legendary Afghan guerilla leader Ahmed Shah Massoud when two al Qaeda suicide bombers posing as journalists detonated themselves. Massoud was killed, and Khalili was severely injured. As Khalili recovered, his country did also, and as elections approached, he began work on a collection of poems written by his father, Khalilullah Khalili, a former Afghan poet laureate. Those poems appear in a new collection titled An Assembly of Moths, which is being published in India. An excerpt from the introduction to that work appears below:

Book Excerpt: From the Introduction to An Assembly of Moths

Great poets speak to universals. Their words resonate beyond specifics of time and space. And yet their day-to-day lives, like all of ours, occur within three dimensions: culture, current history, and their own singular sensibilities.

For Khalilullah Khalili (1905-1987) this interplay involved deep cross-currents. His culture -- the venerable, word-resonant, Persian-speaking culture of Central Asia --foregrounds poetry among all art forms. Nowhere on earth are poets more honored. But Khalili's historical circumstances -- the turmoil of 20th century, Afghanistan's struggle for self definition -- turned life for all Afghans, Khalili included, into unpredictable series of fortune swings. Assassinations, regime changes, wholesale emigration, utter devastation: These were the bookends that encompassed his life.

How to be a poet in the midst of chaos?....

Afghanistan remains mostly illiterate, overwhelmingly so outside the cities. Rather than read, people store material in memory and, if literary, recite it by heart. And poetry, because of rhyme and rhythm, is much easier to memorize than prose… Many Afghans internalize segments off the great Persian classical poets, philosopher-mystics whose verse rises above daily hustle and bustle.

The result is something no longer valued in the modern, literate West: a memorized reservoir of poetic wisdom. Inherited from the great poets and internalized from early childhood onwards, this material serves Afghans as psycho-spiritual ballast -- a buffer against misfortune, and a reminder, when times are good, the luck seldom lasts…

The importance of shared poetic legacy is evident in day-to-day conversations across Afghanistan. People use the prefix 'Sha'er mega' ("The poet says") to substantiate argument. An Afghan provided this example: "If you go to a strange village and say, 'Two plus two equals four,' the villagers will challenge your authority. But tell them that 'The poet says' that two plus two equals five, and they'll accept what you say immediately."

Afghanistan Liberty Moves Ahead in Only 3 Years
By J. Grant Swank Magic City Morning Star Jan 25, 2005, 20:24
It’s amazing. But liberal press seems to treat the marvel as ho-hum or nonexistent. Typical. That’s why so many Americans turned against the entrenched liberal reportage, voting down anti-Bush anchors in mainstream media to return George W. Bush to the White House.
So we daily go to the Bush news releases to find the truth about Afghanistan, for instance. There we read the words of one despised by the liberals — press and politic. He’s Donald H. Rumsfeld, US Defense Secretary. He’s the one, after all, who led us to victory in a three-week-win war: Iraqi Freedom Operation. Yet now that Dems have lost so as to be near graveside, they want to trash Rumsfeld, the liberal reportage giving them all the ammunition they want.

However, Mr. Bush highly regards Rumsfeld, honoring him with accolades and of course keeping him as an integral part of his cabinet. Hurrah for the sane and fair moves of the present administration. Three cheers for the Red States that back up a reasonable executive branch of government.

Therefore, when scanning detail regarding Afghanistan advancements, who better to hear out than Rumsfeld: "A little over three years ago, al Qaeda was already a growing danger. The leader, Osama bin Laden, was safe and sheltered in Afghanistan. His network was dispersed throughout the world and had been attacking American interests for much of the 1990s.

"Three years later, more than three-quarters of al Qaeda's key members and associates have been detained or killed. Osama bin Laden is on the run, many of his key associates are behind bars or dead, his financial lines have been reduced.

"Once controlled by extremists, Afghanistan today is led by Hamid Karzai, a moderate leader who opposes terrorism and supports democracy. Soccer stadiums once used for public executions under the Taliban are today used ... for soccer.

"Over 10 million Afghans, 40 percent of them women, have registered to vote in the country's first national election on Oct. 9."

The Afghan presidential ballot tally in itself was one major dimension of the nation’s come-upon to democracy planting. The citizenry, not used to casting votes, cast their votes. So they themselves elected their own president. They withstood the threats of Muslim murderers global in order to see through their own liberties. Freedom is an alluring bait — legitimate at that.

Therefore, killers are thinking twice, thrice before loading up their guns for another slaying. Gradually, freedom will supplant them so that that bloody history will fade into a dim past. More than 10 million Afghans registered to vote in free elections. That’s a miracle first class.

The Afghan militia and police saw through the protection of their own people. Turning against Taliban, they turned in favor of their own families. Coalition troops stood at the ready to assist locals. Put them all together for victory in elections reality: Joint Electoral Management Body, the International Security and Assistance Force and coalition forces.

"There are so many election day anecdotes demonstrating the Afghan people's commitment to peace, whether it was people across the country wearing their best clothes to vote, or the women of Konduz who refused to move when a rocket landed 200 meters from where they were waiting to vote," one official stated to media. "To leave, they said, would mean the rockets, and the people who fired them, would win. These women would defeat them by staying and voting."

That’s the tenacity of the Afghans who thirst for liberty more than anything else. They will not soon take their newfound freedoms for granted.

If only the Americans discouraging democracy plantings in Afghanistan and New Iraq would realize how hungry those citizens are for the liberties realized daily in North America. If only Democrats who fought the President would understand that patriotism only has its worth when shared with counties once overruled by dictators.

"Witnesses saw elderly people walking and being ferried in goat carts, amputees on crutches in droves moving towards the polling booths and then, late in the evening, more elderly adults running to beat the poll closing deadline to cast their vote.

"It is clear that the Afghan people are winning the struggle against the extremists, and that the promise for Afghanistan's future is bright," Rumsfeld told media.