Afghanistan News February 13, 2006

February 13, 2006

Pakistan to raise border attack with Afghan president
Mon Feb 13, 3:59 AM ET
ISLAMABAD (AFP) - Pakistani leaders will discuss the latest in a series of deadly cross-border attacks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai when he visits the country this week, the foreign ministry said.

Two women from a nomad community were killed and four children were injured Saturday when a suspected US rocket fired from Afghanistan landed on their tents in the restive Pakistani tribal belt along the frontier.

Karzai will meet his Pakistani counterpart Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz during his three-day visit, which starts on Wednesday.

"We have seen reports of the attack. I think this issue will be discussed both with the Afghan president and the Tripartite Commission," foreign ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam told a weekly briefing on Monday.

The Tripartite Commission, which meets every two months, brings together military and diplomatic representatives from Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States.

The US-led coalition in Afghanistan confirmed on Sunday that it had fired artillery rounds in coordination with the Pakistani military in the area where the nomads died, but said it was not aware of casualties.

The incident came as Musharraf confirmed that a US air strike last month on another Pakistani tribal village had killed five militants including the son-in-law of Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The January 13 attack sparked protests in Pakistan after up to 18 civilians were also killed. Zawahiri himself was meant to be there but escaped, Musharraf said.

Clash in south Afghanistan leaves 3 police dead
www.chinaview.cn 2006-02-13 16:18:28
KABUL, Feb. 13 (Xinhuanet) -- Three police lost their lives when anti-government militants stormed their checkpoint in the southern Helmand province Sunday night, a local official said Monday.

"Clash and exchange of fire between enemies and policemen in Greshk district last night left three police dead," Hajji Khan Mohammad told Xinhua.

"The bloody incident took place in Gaz village where four other police have gone missing, he said, adding, " the attackers set on fire a police vehicle."

The official put the attack on the enemies of peace a term used against Taliban and said the enemies had left the area.

Meantime, Taliban's purported spokesman Qari Yusuf Ahmadi accepted responsibility and said the fundamentalist movement fighters executed nine policemen in the battle after that they left the area.

Helmand and the neighboring provinces of Zabul, Kandahar and Uruzgan the hotbed of Taliban has been the scene of violent security incident since early last year during which over 1,600 people have been killed.

Two Afghan Soldiers Killed, Six Missing In South
(RFE/RL)
13 February 2006 -- Two Afghan soldiers working for the U.S.-led coalition were killed and six more are missing after their militia convoy came under attack late on 12 February in southern Helmand Province.

A man claiming to represent the ousted Taliban regime said it was responsible for the attack in the provincial district of Girishk. He said all eight Afghan soldiers had been killed.

There are regular clashes in Helmand, which is Afghanistan's top opium-producing area.

More than 40 people were killed there earlier this month in a single day of clashes between suspected Taliban fighters and Afghan security forces.

More than 3,000 British troops are soon due to be based in Helmand Province as part of a plan to expand the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) from 9,000 to about 16,000 troops this summer.
(AFP, Reuters)

Afghanistan's ancient Bactrian gold in rare display
February 6, 2006 Middle East Times
KABUL -- Afghanistan put on display on Saturday part of its collection of the famed 2,000-year-old Bactrian gold, the first showing in 17 years of the ancient treasure that resurfaced in 2003 after fears that it had been destroyed in war.

Twenty-five items from the 2,000-piece collection were displayed for a few hours in the heavily fortified presidential palace in an exhibition that was closed to the public.

President Hamid Karzai, members of his cabinet, heads of diplomatic missions, the country's new parliamentarians and selected media were among those invited to see the items.

Saturday's short exhibition was intended to provide a glimpse of the collection before it is sent on a tour of Europe, perhaps this year.

"This exhibition is an important step in the introduction of Afghanistan's rich cultural heritage to the world," national museum director Omarakhan Massoudi said.

The last time that the collection was on display was in 1989 when the communist government presented a few items to foreign diplomats to prove that it had not been looted by the Russians as they retreated after a 10-year occupation.

Afghanistan collapsed into civil war three years later and the collection vanished.

Many feared that it had been plundered, and perhaps melted down, during the brutal civil war in which two-thirds of the objects in the national museum disappeared.

In 2003 when a measure of stability had returned to the country after the ouster of the Taliban regime in 2001, the central bank's vaults were opened to reveal the collection, which had been hidden there by a few museum staff.

The 25 relics displayed on Saturday, most of them dating to the first century BC, included a Bactrian Aphrodite, a intricate chained belt with buckles showing a man riding a lion, a solid gold plate, a dagger and sheath, and jewelry delicately inlaid with turquoise and garnets.

The items are still kept in the central bank vaults, as the refurbished Kabul museum is unable to display them because of inadequate facilities, including for security.

Poverty, drugs and corruption 'fuelling Afghan insurgency'
by Sardar Ahmad
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Feb 12, 2006 (AFP) - The bloody insurgency being waged in southern Afghanistan by loyalists of the ousted Taliban regime is being fuelled by poverty, drug money and corruption, according to analysts.

The violence that started months after the Taliban were toppled in late 2001 is focused on southern and eastern Afghanistan -- destitute areas where militants find some support among a population struggling to make ends meet.

The area along the border with Pakistan is also where the Taliban first surfaced in the early 1990s, earning some local allegiance by standing up to warlords who cultivated lawlessness as they slugged it out for dominance.

Four years after hardliners' fall from power -- once they had crushed Afghanistan with their ultraconservative doctrine -- many in their traditional support base have had no reason to switch loyalties because they have seen little of the new government's promised reconstruction.

"The people are severely poor in this region," analyst Abdul Qadar Noorzai of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission told AFP.

"The government has done nothing to improve peoples' lives -- instead, it fights their poppy crops which they rely on."

For two million Afghans, nearly nine percent of the population, opium from poppies is their main source of income, according to UN figures.

The top growing area is southern Helmand, which along with neighbouring Kandahar and Uruzgan, is a hotbed of an insurgency led by the Taliban.

The new government and the international donors on which it depends are determined to do away with the country's opium crop which makes up nearly 90 percent of the world total, and are cracking down.

But poppy farmers are reluctant to pull up the crop, which earns them a better living than conventional ones, and have found an ally with Taliban militants who can earn money protecting poppy fields.

"The government destroys their poppy crops but the Taliban encourages them to grow and promises them protection," said another Kandahar-based observer, requesting anonymity.

"Here, people simply slide to the Taliban side," he told AFP.

Taliban fighters offer to protect opium farmers against police for a tax of 10 percent of their harvest, an intelligence official said on condition of anonymity.

"The Taliban are everywhere. In my village they come and urge people to grow poppy," said driver Saleh Mohammad from Kandahar's Maiwand district, site of several Taliban attacks and a major poppy-producing region. "People help them. Why not?"

Noorzai alleged that buyers of the raw opium included former commanders who fought the Soviet occupation in the 1980s and now had jobs as high-ranking government officials.

"Corruption, drugs and militancy has formed a triangle in our region," he said.

Many groups have a vested interested in ensuring a level of instability remains, agreed Joanna Nathan, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group.

"It's not just the card-carrying Taliban, there are many different strands to the insurgency," she said.

These included the narcotics industry, tribal and regional grievances and dissatisfaction with local leadership, including "failed figures from the previous regime who are back in power", she said.

Insurgency-linked violence killed about 1,700 people -- many of them militants but also Afghan troops, civilians and even aid workers -- over the past year, the bloodiest since the ouster of the Taliban.

Nearly 70 US troops helping to hunt down militants were also killed last year.

The increasingly deadly insurgency has taken a vicious turn in the past months with a spate of suicide blasts and car bombs, a sign some say of the influence of Al-Qaeda, a long-time ally of the Taliban.

The authorities need to bring Afghan people onto their side if they are to beat back the unrest, Noorzai said.

"Unless the corruption is curbed and unless peoples' lives are improved, there will be no end to the militancy," he said.

"The people are the most effective weapon to defeat the Taliban."

Japan Grants Pakistan US$7 MLN for Afghan Refugees
Monday February 13, 8:28 AM
ISLAMABAD, Feb 13 Asia Pulse - Japan Saturday granted US$7 million to Pakistan for providing relief to Afghan refugees in the country.

Pakistan Minister for Refugees Sardar Muhammad Rind told Pajhwok Afghan News that US$3.5 million would be spent on providing potable water to Afghans in Frontier and Balochistan provinces, while other funds would be used for their repatriation.

Spokesman for United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Nadir Farhad said that nearly three million Afghans were living in Pakistan.
(Pajhwok Afghan News)

Etisalat plans to enter markets of Afghanistan and India
MENAFN - 13/02/2006
(MENAFN) Etisalat's chief said that the company is drawing up plans to enter Afghanistan and India as part of its ambitious expansion strategy to be among the top 10 telecom operators in the world, Gulf News reported.

The chief said that while Etisalat will continue to expand overseas, it has its strategy in place for the domestic market as its monopoly ends soon.

He said that his target is that Etisalat should be among the top 10 (or around it) telecom operators in the world by 2010 in terms of market cap, profits and so on.

He added that Etisalat is also keen to enter some North African and European markets, and the company have shown its interest in Tunisia's Tunisie Telecom as well as in Egypt where a third mobile license will be offered, and that Etisalat is also interested in Libya and Algeria and once opportunities come up we will go there.

AFGHANISTAN: ISAF PREPARES TO LEAVE BASE AT KABUL AIRPORT
Ahto Lobjakas 2/12/06 A EurasiaNet Partner Post from RFE/RL
ISAF, the NATO-led stabilization force in Afghanistan, is taking steps to release much of Kabul’s main airport to Afghan officials for civilian use. ISAF has had hundreds of troops based at Kabul Airport since late 2001 when the multinational force first deployed to Afghanistan under its UN mandate. But ISAF is building new facilities to the north of the main runway. It also is training Afghan staff to help Kabul take over buildings that house about 1,500 ISAF soldiers.

Although ISAF accounts for only some 40 of the 130 flights leaving or arriving at Kabul Airport every day, its impact on the facility has been far greater.

A sprawling complex of ISAF buildings and equipment takes up about half of the land along the 3-kilometer runway -- the only operational runway at the airport. For civilian air traffic during the last four years, Afghan officials have operated a separate terminal building at the south end of the runway.

Giving It Up
But that will soon change, according to Konstantinos Prionas, who heads security at ISAF’s part of the airport.

"For the military plans, hopefully, depending on the weather or some other constraints maybe we have by summer of [2007] all the works finished [in] the north part [and] we are ready after that to move to the north part of the airport."

Prionas says he expects demining operations to be completed within a few weeks. He says more construction will follow in the form of parking space for planes, a new taxiway, buildings, and other facilities.

Improved Infrastructure
Improvements at Kabul Airport -- as well as the airport in the western city of Herat -- have been listed by the Afghan government as top infrastructure priorities during the next five years.

"When all the plans will be [realized] and all the procedures [applied], [Kabul Airport] will be a real international airport with many flights."

Much work has been done in the four years since ISAF troops arrived. Most of the wreckage of Soviet and Afghan military aircraft destroyed during decades of war has been hauled away from along the runway. Deminers have located much of the unexploded ordnance and land mines there -- leaving behind red flags as warning markers. But officials say mines remain troublesome on some parts of the airport grounds.

Prionas says the airport will retain only a single operational runway.

He says ISAF has so far worked closely with Afghan civilians at the other part of the airport. The two sides share many facilities.

Hajj Help
ISAF played a significant part in supporting Muslim pilgrims who were traveling to Saudi Arabia this year for the hajj. Prionas says the NATO-led force helped some 25,000 pilgrims pass through Kabul Airport this year.

However, he says the civilian authorities increasingly want to draw distinctions between themselves and the foreign military authorities at Kabul Airport.

Prionas praises the Afghan airport authorities for making "major steps" towards being able to operate the airport independently.

ISAF is playing its part here, too. Prionas says that apart from other assistance, ISAF offers specialized training for crucial personnel.

"We have other training now [for Afghan air-traffic controllers]. Most of them, I can say, do very well. And maybe after eight months or 10 months [they] will be ready to take [over] the responsibilities [of] air-traffic controllers."

ISAF is currently also training Afghan meteorologists and firefighters.

Prionas says it will take years before Afghan civil-aviation authorities are able to run the airport independently of ISAF.

Afghanistan: Education crisis in the south with 200 schools closed
Monday February 13, 2006 (1145 PST) PakTribune.com, Pakistan
KANDAHAR, February 13(Online): Sitting in her windowless, smoke-blackened classroom, Zubaida, 15, a ninth grade student, is happy to attend school again after an arson attack destroyed her secondary school in southern Kandahar two weeks ago.

Education in the volatile region is in crisis as insurgents ruthlessly target schools, teachers and pupils, creating a climate of fear. "We go home by different routes every day because of threats and intimidation," Zubaida explained.

"All of our teachers are frightened. I used to leave school in the evening but now I leave at noon. I even have to disguise myself by wearing a turban," said Abdul Nazir, headmaster of the school that teaches 1,300 boys and girls.

"My family is trying to persuade me to leave the job, they are afraid I will be killed by militants," Nazir maintained.

Militants, battling US and government forces have recently launched numerous attacks on schools and teachers in Kandahar and Helmand provinces. Suspected Taliban guerillas set fire to three primary schools in the Nawa district of Helmand in January.

The siege on schools appears to be having the desired effect. "We have closed 50 schools where around 10,000 students were studying in Kandahar province due to insecurity and fear of attacks," said Hayat Allah Rafiqi, head of the education department in Kandahar, adding that more than 200 schools in total had been closed in southern Afghanistan due to the violence.

"Thousands of students are deprived of education and are sitting in their homes. The situation for education is getting worse day by day," Rafiqi noted, calling on the government to do more to ensure the safety of educational institutions.

Analysts Qasim Akhgar believes that the south is a vicious circle of insecurity feeding lack of development feeding support for militants, whose message, that Kabul has done nothing for local people and that things were better under the Taliban, is finding attentive ears.

"Slow rebuilding, poverty, unemployment, lack of alternative livelihoods to poppy cultivation are all feeding the ongoing attacks in southern and eastern Afghanistan," he said.

One of the new government’s main achievements has been the ability to offer education to far more young Afghans than in the past. The Taliban banned girls from attending school and ensured the curriculum for boys was largely religion-based.

Now the situation in the south threatens to unravel progress in education. "Two days after admitting my children - a boy and a girl - to school, I found a pamphlet hanging on the gate of my house warning me to stop sending them to school otherwise I would face serious consequences," a villager in the Arghandab district of Kandahar told IRIN, requesting anonymity.

In December, a suspected Taliban gunmen dragged a teacher from his classroom and shot him at the gates of his school after he ignored warnings to stop teaching boys and girls in a mixed class in the southern province of Helmand.

In a separate attack, also in December, gunmen shot and killed an 18-year-old male student and a guard at another school in Helmand. In Zabul province, also in the south, in another gruesome incident, a teacher was dragged from his home and beheaded in February.

Insecurity remains a key issue in post-Taliban Afghanistan. Despite the deployment of thousands of US and NATO forces, at least 1,600 people died in conflict-related violence in 2005. Ninety-one US troops died in combat or as a result of accidents in 2005 - more than double the total for 2004.

Afghan Province Prepares Five-Year Development Plan
Monday February 13, 8:51 AM
CHARIKAR, Feb 13 Asia Pulse - The government has prepared a five-year development plan to ensure the smooth implementation of uplift projects in the central Parwan province, officials said on Saturday.

Dubbing the plan as a development strategy, Governor of Parwan Abdul Jabar Taqwa told Pajhwok Afghan News a delegation comprising members of eight different organisations would carry out the uplift draft.

They would visit different districts and only implement the five-year reconstruction and development plan by getting first hand information about the uplift opportunities in the areas.

He said: "Earlier, the renovating works were conducted by different NGOs without any order, but now the uplift schemes would go ahead in an organized way as the plan elucidates."

Taqwa said Rural Rehabilitation and Agriculture Departments were included in the plan and had begun their work on Saturday.

Welcoming the uplift programme, a number of people said the schemes would improve their standard of life.

Following Parwan's development plan, NGOs stationed in the northern Badakhshan province have also designed a five-year development plan.

The establishment of the development plan through government organs was stimulated by the US$10 billion pledged aid for Afghanistan by donor countries in the recently concluded London Conference.

According to a national survey launched by Pajhwok Journalists, the people showed their dissatisfaction over the rebuilding efforts during the last four years. Afghans urged the rulers to direct the aid money through the government instead of NGOs.
(Pajhwok Afghan News)

Pilot of crashed plane in Afghanistan guessed route
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- The pilot of a plane that crashed in Afghanistan in 2004 killing a Connecticut soldier and five other men guessed when deciding which route to take over mountains, according to the plane's flight recorder.

Lieutenant Colonel Mike McMahon of West Hartford was among those killed.

Families of the men sued the plane's owner - Blackwater USA - allegeing pilots failed to plan a flight route.

Punishments don't fit crimes in abuses of Afghan inmates
By Tim Golden The New York Times February 13 2006
FORT BLISS, Texas · In the chronicle of abuses that has emerged from America's fight against terror, there may be no story more jarring than that of the two young men killed at a U.S. military detention center in Afghanistan in December 2002.

The two Afghans were found dead within days of each other, hanging by their shackled wrists in isolation cells at the prison in Bagram, north of Kabul. An Army investigation showed they were treated harshly by interrogators, deprived of sleep for days, and struck so often in the legs by guards that a coroner compared the injuries to being run over by a bus.

But more than a year after the Army began a major push to prosecute those responsible for the abuse of the two men and several other prisoners at Bagram, that effort has faltered badly.

Of 27 soldiers and officers against whom Army investigators had recommended criminal charges, 15 have been prosecuted. Five of those have pleaded guilty to assault and other crimes; the stiffest punishment any of them have received has been five months in a military prison. Only one soldier has been convicted at trial; he was not imprisoned at all.

While military lawyers said the pleas were negotiated in exchange for information or testimony against other soldiers, the prosecution has gained no evident momentum. Four former guards accused of assaulting detainees were acquitted in recent courts-martial. Charges against a fifth former guard were dropped.

In one of the prosecutors' most important tests, the Army last month abandoned its case against Capt. Christopher M. Beiring, the former military police commander at Bagram and one of the few American officers since 9-11 to face criminal charges related to the abuse of detainees by the officers' subordinates.

"If this case were to go to trial, it would be a big, ugly loser for the government," the Army judge who oversaw Beiring's pretrial inquiry, Lt. Col. Thomas S. Berg, wrote in a report on the evidence

More directly than any other episode since 9-11, the Bagram cases have exposed the uncertainty and confusion among military interrogators and guards about how they were required to treat terror suspects after President Bush decided in February 2002 that they would not be protected by the Geneva Conventions.

Although the administration issued a general order that detainees should be treated humanely, internal military files on the case show that officers and soldiers at Bagram differed over what specific guidelines, if any, applied. That ambiguity left prosecutors vacillating over strategy. It also gave accused soldiers a defense that has resonated with some military judges and jurors.

"The president of the United States doesn't know what the rules are!" said Capt. Joseph Owens, a lawyer for one of the accused interrogators, Pfc. Damien M. Corsetti, who is one of two former Bagram soldiers still facing court-martial. "The secretary of defense doesn't know what the rules are. But the government expects this Pfc. to know what the rules are?"

Vladimir Putin: Let’s solve Afghan debt
Russia / News from the Kremlin Source: Pravda - Feb 13 12:52 AM
Vladimir Putin has urged the international community to join the Russian Federation, Afghanistan’s largest creditor, in solving this country’s debt problem. The move from the Russian President follows Hamid Karzai’s plea on January 31st for debt relief.

Vladimir Putin declared that Afghanistan faces many challenges in its attempt to build a sustainable free-market economy and “one of these challenges is the heavy debt burden inherited by the democratic government”.

To help Afghanistan to develop and to free its economic resources for the building process, Vladimir Putin declared that “The Russian Federation being the largest creditor of Afghanistan intends to settle the debt Afghanistan owes to the Government of the Russian Federation, on a multilateral basis in the context of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative, through the Paris Club process and subject to our respective domestic legal requirements”.

If Afghanistan implements the conditions of the HIPC Initiative successfully, this “would result in a 100% cancellation of its debt towards the Russian Federation”, declared the Russian President.

For Vladimir Putin, the Government of Afghanistan could facilitate this process by “promoting trade and economic cooperation with the companies of creditor countries on a non-discriminatory basis”.

“The solution of the debt problem will strongly contribute to ever broader development of Afghanistan’s trade, economic and investment cooperation with its major creditors and with the rest of the world,” declared Vladimir Putin, adding that “We urge all other bilateral creditors to join us in this crucial effort”.

Women Enter Business Sector in Afghanistan
Despite many hurdles, female entrepreneurs find opportunities as the nation seeks to rebuild.
By Gayle Tzemach, Financial Times
KABUL, Afghanistan — When Shahla Nawabi arrived in Kabul to visit her father in 2002, she intended to stay for three months. Now, more than three years later, she is part of an emerging class of female entrepreneurs launching businesses in a nation where women were banned from work and study only five years ago.

"Coming back home and seeing the situation of the country, there was just so much to do here," Nawabi said of her decision to leave London, her home since 1966, for a city recovering from the destruction of 23 years of war.

Together with her business partner Ahmad Nawaz Baktyar, an engineer who worked with Ahmed Shah Massoud, the anti-Taliban leader, Nawabi formed Nawabi Construction. The 2-year-old company has completed nearly a dozen construction projects around the country, including a kindergarten in Kabul and a police station in Ghazni.

It is a far cry from Nawabi's previous career in the European fashion industry. Yet she credits her years learning the retail business and serving international clients with helping her take the leap to become an entrepreneur in the country she left at age 6. Nawabi handles most of the business side of her current enterprise and takes the lead negotiating contracts.

For those charged with developing Afghanistan's private sector, the work of Nawabi and others like her is crucial to leading the country out of its dependency on foreign aid and into the global economy.

"Our resources in Afghanistan are limited; we don't have a lot of things," said Hamidullah Farooqi, head of the Afghanistan International Chamber of Commerce, which claims 2,000 members worldwide. "Women are more than 50% of the society; if we don't give them a chance, this is a big loss."

For any aspiring entrepreneur, the challenges in rebuilding this society are many. Three decades of war destroyed Afghanistan's infrastructure, ravaging the country's roads and power grid. Security concerns make some regions difficult to reach. And skilled labor is in short supply, meaning companies such as Nawabi's often struggle to find enough workers. Most of the time they have to import skilled labor from neighboring Iran or Pakistan.

Capital, like electricity, is limited and expensive. A recent World Bank report on business climates ranked Afghanistan 153rd out of 154 when it came to securing credit.

Then there is the issue of gender. Afghanistan's new constitution guarantees all citizens "equal rights and duties" according to the law, but many women say that little has changed, especially for those in the provinces.

Six years of Taliban rule left women stripped of rights and confined to their homes. Education experts estimate the female illiteracy rate at 80% or more. A 2004 United Nations report said: "The impact of years of discrimination against women, coupled with prevailing poverty and insecurities, has meant that Afghan women have some of the worst social indicators in the world."

In this traditional society where women are more often seen tending to the home than the store, changing mind-sets is no easy task.

Nawabi remembers her workers initially doubting that she was serious about entering a typically male arena. "My crew thought that I was just passing my time, that I would realize that construction was really a tough job only for men," she said. "But I never really thought, 'Is this going to be a man's business or a woman's business?' I just thought it is going to be a good business to go into because there is a lot of construction going on."

Setting up a construction business may seem a particularly tough choice for a woman in a society such as this, but even for those in industries more traditionally associated with women's work, cultural challenges remain.

Sipping tea in her small Kabul storefront, Nasima Payman remembers the skepticism she faced from male colleagues when she arrived to sell her shawls at the bazaar for international troops.

"They were so surprised to see a woman bringing work to a men's gathering," she said, but over time their attitudes have changed. "Now they are all friendly and come up to say hello and ask if I need help. They are very welcoming."

It will take time for men's views to evolve, said Payman, but things are moving in the right direction. "Sure, it is quite sensitive for them that women are working, but gradually they are getting familiar with this and they are seeing that women can do business too," she said.

Around the corner from Payman, Sara Rahmani tends to her colorful clothing shop featuring her own designs. A corner mannequin displays a smart beige dress created from a burka.

Rahmani says opening her store marked the realization of a dream. "It is great. I am quite independent," she said of her ability to support herself.

She launched her business in August 2004 with the help of a $20,000 loan from her brother who lives in California. So far she has logged about the same amount in sales, and though the business is not yet in the black, she no longer needs her brother's help to pay her workers.

"My brother says: 'You are like a man in the way you work. I am really proud of you.' "

Uphill battle of the only skier in Afghanistan
The Sunday Times, UK Christina Lamb, Kabul 2/12/06
FOR 25 years, Mohammed Yusuf Kargar took out his skis and boots every day and dreamt of being able to use them again. Whenever fighting drove him from his home in Kabul — first the Russian invasion, then clashes between mujaheddin warlords and finally fleeing the Taliban — his skis were always among the few things he salvaged.

“My wife thought I was mad,” he said. “She had never seen skiing and could not understand why we had to lug these big boots and poles instead of pots and pans.”

But for Kargar, whose family set up Afghanistan’s first ski resort and who became national champion in 1978 at the age of 16, the skis were all that remained of his teenage ambition.

“I had been taking part in world championships in France and Japan and was hoping to compete in the Winter Olympics, then the following year the Russians came. After that I did not dare go out with my skis and sticks because I feared the troops would think they were a rifle and shoot me.”

Today Afghanistan’s former champion skier cuts a lonely figure on Maranjan mountain, part of the range circling the capital. With just four sets of skis and two pairs of boots, he is hoping to open a ski school and revive the sport single-handedly.

Ragged-clothed children from the mud shacks in the valley below watch intrigued as the 43-year-old in goggles performs skilful turns on his battered skis. “They think I am crazy,” he said. “No one knows skiing in Afghanistan any more but before the Russian invasion we had a resort with a ski-lift and world-class skiers.”

The makeshift piste is so short that it takes just 20 seconds for him to reach the bottom. “The problem is landmines,” he explained. “There are very good mountains all around Kabul but you have no idea what you are skiing over. This is one of the few slopes we know has been cleared.”

Afghanistan is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world. According to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, there are still about 80 victims a month in the country, many of them children. Kabul is full of people with missing legs or arms who remove artificial limbs as they kneel to pray.

Apart from landmines, Kargar worries about becoming a target for US forces. “They might think I’m Al-Qaeda, this man all alone high in the mountains above the city.”

As everywhere in Kabul, the mountains bear plenty of reminders of the years of war. Maranjan mountain was the stronghold of General Abdul Rashid Dostum in the 1990s, between Ahmad Shah Massoud’s forces to the north and those of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to the south, and overlooks a row of shelled-out buildings.

Just down the road is the National Olympic Committee where Kargar now works training the national football team, half of whom defected recently during a trip to Italy. His office overlooks the stadium where only a few years ago he watched Taliban hang people from the goalposts and cut off hands and legs before driving around town, waving the dismembered limbs to the people in the bazaar.

The photographs he takes out of men and women skiing together and enjoying après-ski drinks were shot 30 years ago but it is hard to believe that this is the same Afghanistan. Today’s Kabul is a place of burqas, barefoot street-children begging and men with beards.

The Kargar family’s interest in the sport came after his uncles saw a German skiing and started to copy him. His father went to Iran to buy skis and soon the whole family had learnt, including his sisters. With the backing of the tourism authority, they developed their resort at Argandhi, 45 minutes outside Kabul.

“Skiing became very popular,” Kargar said. “Kabul University had a ski club, the foreigners had a club, there was our club and many people would go to Argandhi at the weekends.”

But when the Red Army arrived in 1979, Argandhi found itself on the frontline between the communist forces and those of Hekmatyar. The ski resort was destroyed and the area around littered with mines. The young Kargar watched in tears, praying for the war to end. But as the fighting continued year after year and he grew older, he knew that he would never again compete against the world champions.

“Throughout all this wartime every winter when I saw snow I was dying to ski and I felt very sad. But the last years under the Taliban there was a drought and no snow anyway.”

Two years ago, Kargar finally put on his skis for the first time in a quarter of a century. “It was hard as I had become old and stiff but it came back,” he said.

Now Afghanistan’s only skier wants to open a ski school. Two weeks ago he listened to the news of the London conference on Afghanistan at which donors pledged £6 billion over the next five years. “I hope that the international community could use just a little bit of this to help de-mine mountains, provide equipment and rehabilitate slopes,” he said.

Some might question whether skiing is a priority in a country where only 6% have electricity and there are so few clinics that it is the world’s most dangerous place to have a baby. But Kargar insists: “Sport is important for reconciliation and keeping young people away from opium and fighting. Maybe I could even teach it to warlords.”

His solitary silhouette up in the mountains above the shattered city has attracted attention particularly among the affluent few with satellite television, which broadcasts Ski Sunday. “I’m getting many people asking if I will teach them, including girls,” he said.

The interest has made Kargar hopeful that with some help, Afghanistan might be ready to send a ski team to the 2010 Winter Olympics. “I will never go to the Winter Olympics now,” he said, “but maybe I can help others.”