Afghanistan News February 19, 2006

February 19, 2006

Afghan President Warns Against Meddling
By KATHY GANNON, Associated Press Writer Sat Feb 18, 1:23 PM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - President Hamid Karzai has a pointed warning for neighboring nations: Stop meddling in Afghan affairs, or risk seeing chaos spread from a destabilized Afghanistan across the region.

Speaking sharply during an interview with The Associated Press, Karzai said Afghans have had enough of conflict and foreign interference — the war against occupying Soviet troops in the 1980s, a civil war in the '90s, the insurgency following the U.S.-led campaign that toppled the Taliban and chased out al-Qaida training camps after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

He promised that further interference in his homeland will not go unchallenged and warned that Iran, Pakistan and others are not fooling anyone.

"We know (interference) is going on. We know that money is being brought into Afghanistan. It will not have the impact that they want it to have — not for Afghanistan and not for themselves — so they had better stop," Karzai said.

"If they don't stop, the consequences will be exactly what I said earlier. The consequences will be that this region will suffer with us, equally, as we suffer. In the past we suffered alone. This time everybody will suffer with us."

Karzai said he felt a sense of contentment with the progress his country has made since the collapse of the Taliban regime at the end of 2001. But he spoke with concern about outside attempts to manipulate Afghanistan's ethnic and religious groups and the dangers of encouraging discord in tumultuous south-central Asia.

"Any effort to divide Afghanistan ethnically or weaken it will create exactly the same things in the neighboring countries. All the countries in this neighborhood have the same ethnic groups that we have, so they should know that it is a different ball game this time," he said.

"We are bloody determined. It is not going to be Pakistan playing the Pashtun, non-Pashtun game in Afghanistan. It is not going to be Iran playing this or that game or any other country. We can play the same game with a lot more historical power, with a lot more power in our history than others can. They should know that very well."

Reflecting on Afghanistan's recent violence, and the manipulations of its neighbors, the president said his people are stronger now and know better how to face up to foreign interference.

"It won't work this time. Afghanistan has an ownership. I told you we will not be refugees again. We own this country. Afghanistan has a voice now," Karzai said.

"The past is gone. We were unaware: The Soviets came, invaded us and we went out of Afghanistan to defend our country. We defended our country and that was right, but we made a mistake by leaving our country. It was one of the biggest mistakes we made, leaving the country."

Talking without aides at his side, sitting alone at a long, heavy table in a cavernous room at the presidential palace, Karzai was passionate about Afghanistan's future and his determination to protect his country.

"The United States, Pakistan, Iran and everybody should know that this time Afghans will not become refugees. I would be one of those Afghans who would not become a refugee again," he said.

"It has to be very, very clear. That is why I am talking so clear. This is my conscience speaking, the conscience of an Afghan person."

Afghan president expects action by Pakistan on Taliban list
Sat Feb 18, 8:31 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he hoped Pakistan would take action on a list of names and addresses of Taliban leaders that was presented to Islamabad during his visit last week.

The list included "detailed information" about members of the ousted Taliban government, he said on Saturday.

Afghan officials believe Taliban leaders are sheltering in Pakistan and directing a four-year-old insurgency in Afghanistan.

"A series of very detailed information on individuals, their locations and other issues was given and we hope that steps will be taken," Karzai said at a media briefing about his three-day visit which ended Friday.

Asked if those on the list were Taliban leaders, the president said, "This includes anyone who harms Afghanistan, leaders and non-leaders."

He denied reports there were 150 names on the list but would not say how many there were.

An intelligence official said separately that the list included the addresses and details of Taliban operatives in the areas of Quetta, Peshawar and Karachi, near the Afghan border.

Much of the information was not new to Pakistan, he said on condition of anonymity.

It "was detailed accurate information even in some cases with house addresses attached. They already knew and ignored it and I am not very optimistic they will crackdown on them now," he said.

Afghan officials have repeatedly accused Pakistan of turning a blind eye to Taliban training facilities on its soil and also alleged that some circles in Pakistan support and finance Islamic radicals behind the insurgency in Afghanistan. Pakistan denies all the charges.

Islamabad has for about two years had thousands of troops near its border with Afghanistan to root out militants, including from Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network.

Despite this, and the nearly 30,000 foreign troops helping Afghan security forces on the other side of the border, key Taliban and Al-Qaeda leaders have escaped capture.

Karzai's visit to Pakistan, his sixth since he took the helm after the Taliban were toppled in a US-led invasion in late 2001, was focused on the insurgency which has showed no signs of abating.

It included two-hour talks with President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on boosting cross-border security and finding ways to deal with remnants of the Taliban.

Pakistan was the main backer of the Taliban regime before the September 11, 2001 attacks blamed on Al-Qaeda. Islamabad afterwards turned its back on the hardliners and supported the US-led invasion that ousted the regime.

On claims from Pakistan that weapons are being smuggled into its troubled Baluchistan province from Afghanistan, Karzai said it was likely and showed the need to "fight terrorism in strongest terms."

Afghan writers say Iran bribes, threatens them
Sunday, February 19, 2006 Kathy Gannon ASSOCIATED PRESS
HERAT, Afghanistan — Reporters and writers in Afghanistan say Iran tries to recruit them to craft reports painting the U.S. presence in the worst light and threatens some who have criticized Iran.

A journalist with Afghanistan’s first commercial television station, Mohammed Reza Shirmohmadi, said Iran tried to recruit him to get inside U.S. bases to report on the activity of military personnel.

"They said we can make you the boss of a filmmaking company that we will set up in Herat. They told me you can make a reality film from the American base, from any foreign base, and show what they are doing in this area and what they are doing in other areas," Shirmohmadi said.

"I said to them, ‘It is right (what you say) that our country right now is in the hands of foreigners, but we are getting benefits from them,’ and then they left me alone."

Iranian television, which disparages the United States and its policies, is widely watched in western Afghanistan, where people speak Persian, the language of Iran.

"Iranian television programs say Afghanistan is being controlled by America, and it shows programs about the mistakes that Americans are making with people, searching women. Iranian television says that the constitution you made was an American constitution and against the Quran," Shirmohmadi said.

"The programs tell us that if Iranian soldiers were in Afghanistan, they would not behave like American soldiers."

Nasser Ahmed Raha, head of Enlightened Youth of Afghanistan, a group of young people in Herat dedicated to building a civil society, said he received death threats after writing editorials warning of Iranian interference in western Afghanistan.

In early January, the phone rang at his home in Herat, and on the other end of the line was a senior Afghan intelligence official, Raha said. "He warned me: ‘Don’t go against Iran. They will kill you."’

The threat came after two editorials were published in his organization’s newsletter.

One editorial, written last June, warned that the election of conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iran’s new president could reverberate in the region and particularly in Afghanistan in the form of increased interference.

Raha’s second editorial, published in December, accused Ahmadinejad of stirring international unrest with his statements against Israel.

"Calling for a country, recognized by others, to be wiped off the map is the kind of talk that comes from a general or a government at war with another. It should not come from the mouth of a president when the world is trying to put an end to these old enmities," Raha wrote.

Shirmohmadi said he was barraged by telephone calls from Shiite Muslim clerics after a televised debate on Ahmadinejad’s comments.

Iran seen stretching its tentacles into western Afghanistan
Sunday February 19, 2006 (0027 PST) PakTribune.com, Pakistan
KABUL: Sitting in a grimy office at the end of a dank hallway, Police Chief Syed Ahmed Ansari tells of finding caches of explosives and hunting spies in his corner of western Afghanistan, far from the main haunts of Taliban rebels.

He says his biggest worry isn’t the Taliban - it’s Iran.

"Iran is a dangerous neighbor. We know that terrorists are being trained in both Iran and in Pakistan, and we are in the middle," says Ansari, whose town is in a southeastern swath of Herat Province that borders Iran and Pakistan.

Iran’s foreign ministry has repeatedly rejected the accusations of interference in Afghanistan as "baseless."

But all along Afghanistan’s sparsely peopled frontier with Iran, Afghan officials and Western diplomats say Tehran’s hard-line Islamic regime is encouraging unrest in its neighbor while striving to increase its own influence.

They say Iranians are using cutthroat business practices to gain an edge in Afghan commerce, recruiting supporters among Afghanistan’s Shiite Muslim minority and using popular TV serials to sway public opinion against Western allies, depicting them as anathema to Islamic traditions and tenets.

The Iranian push here and elsewhere in the region seeks to take advantage of the shifts in power and relationships that have followed the U.S.-led ouster of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq - wars that left large numbers of American troops on both sides of anti-Western Iran.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai warns that interference from Iran and other neighbors is a dangerous game, saying an unstable Afghanistan will bring chaos to the region.

"The consequences will be that this region will suffer with us, equally, as we suffer. In the past we suffered alone. This time everybody will suffer with us," Karzai told The Associated Press in Kabul, the capital.

The 936-kilometer border that Afghanistan shares with Iran runs along three Afghan provinces. There are no big towns, and Afghan forces make few patrols, making it easy for people to sneak into the nearly empty region of scruffy plains, treeless hills and the foothills of the Bakharz mountains in the north.

Security is a major concern for Ansari. His town of sun-baked mud houses may have the look of centuries past, but Shindand plays a strategic role for the U.S.-led international coalition as home to Afghanistan’s only major military air base aside from Bagram, near Kabul.

Yet his force has only 65 officers, two cars and no communications equipment to patrol an area the size of Manhattan island that is roughly 400 kilometers from Iran.

In an interview with AP, Ansari said Afghan authorities had collected disturbing intelligence about Iranian activities in the frontier regions.

"From Iran they are bringing explosive material to Afghanistan. They don’t want Afghanistan to be at peace because they are at war with the United States. One hundred percent, Iran is working against Afghanistan’s safety," he said.

Ansari said the intelligence indicated Iran is sending in spies and trying to stir up opposition to Karzai’s government.

"We conduct searches for explosive materials and we find stockpiles of weapons in areas around here, yet we don’t have strong Taliban commanders from here, so where is this coming from? We know it is coming from Iran. But it is not an easy thing to stop," he said.

Some experts say it’s not surprising Iran would try to gain influence in its neighbors. Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, sees Iran’s regional policy as "mostly defensive."

"At one time, Iran sought the export of its revolution, but the failure of that policy has largely tempered such ambitions," Takeyh said.

Iran, a predominantly Shiite Muslim nation, welcomed the toppling of Afghanistan’s largely Sunni Taliban regime after the September 11 terror attacks on the United States. Tehran also was happy at the defeat of Saddam, a longtime enemy.

Yet those wars expanded the U.S. presence in the region, a trend opposed by Iran.

Some 19,000 U.S. soldiers buttress Karzai’s government in Afghanistan, while 136,000 are in Iraq, joining the already strong U.S. Navy presence in the Persian Gulf. Washington’s ties with Saudi Arabia are solid and there is now a U.S. alliance with Pakistan’s military rulers.

Iran has built more security posts along the border with Afghanistan, and Afghan officials say it even has put up a fence that encroaches 200 meters (yards) inside Afghan territory.

But officials said Iranian activities go far beyond guarding against incursions.

Before leaving Afghanistan last year for his new post in Iraq, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad accused Iran of sending the Al Quds Division of its Revolutionary Guards across the border to incite unrest and cause trouble for Western troops.

A senior Afghan defense ministry official, who would not allow his name to be used because of the sensitivity of his country’s relations with Iran, told AP in Kabul that recent intelligence revealed the Revolutionary Guards have camps along the border.

He also warned of a nexus of interests emerging between Iran, Russia, Taliban remnants and renegade Afghan militia leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, saying they all want to see Afghanistan destabilized.

"Russia is not happy with what is going on here, with the U.S. presence here. Russia wants Central Asia to be dependent on them and Iran wants Afghanistan as a buffer for them and as a place to make trouble for the United States," the official said.

Mohammed Zaman, acting manager of customs operations at Islam Kala, western Afghanistan’s busiest border crossing with Iran, said the Tehran regime is infiltrating loyalists recruited among the hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees living in Iran, some since 1979 when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.

"They have their own friends among the refugees and some of these refugees are now in the government," Zaman told AP in a chilly, makeshift office within sight of the border and Iran guards.

Graffiti scribbled on the wall of a housing complex for junior police officers 120 kilometers away in the provincial capital, Herat, attest to the support Iran has in western Afghanistan. The graffiti reads: "Long live Ahmadinejad," referring to Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad elected last June.

Zaman also said both the Iranians and Americans are active in gathering intelligence along the frontier. When the topic turned to the U.S. activity, Zaman’s voice dropped to a whisper. His information was sketchy, he said.

"The American soldiers come once or twice a week. They come and they search. We don’t know what they are searching for or what they are looking for. They come in their own cars and do their searches without talking to us," Zaman said.

A news report last year said U.S. troops had slipped into Iran from Afghanistan to hunt for evidence of secret installations used in Tehran’s suspect nuclear activities - a program that has been put before the U.N. Security Council for consideration of whether Tehran is trying to build atomic weapons.

Since the ouster of the Taliban, Washington has sought to improve controls along the border by training Afghanistan’s customs police and building a customs complex.

The effort has been largely unsuccessful because of corruption, said a Western diplomat, who insisted on speaking anonymously because he feared for his personal safety in a region where he said he is vulnerable to Afghan insurgents and Iranian agents.

His job in western Afghanistan is to keep an eye on Iranian activity, particularly in business.

"This is less sexy but vitally important because Iran is using predatory trade practices, subsidized input and smuggled goods to undercut Herat businesses," the envoy said. "What Iran is trying to do is colonize western Afghanistan by making sure they are not strong competitors able to build a strong, independent economy."

Al Haj Toryalai Ghawsi, an official at the Industrial Union in the provincial capital of Herat, agreed.

"Iran is overrunning our economy in western Afghanistan. Iran is looking at western Afghanistan to have influence throughout our economy. They worry because they look at Afghanistan and see Afghanistan as part of America, and to have control they want to control our economy," he said.

Abdul Ahad, a 50-year-old shopkeeper in Herat, also sees the Iranian encroachment. "Everything we have is from Iran. Look inside my shop, the biscuits, the tea, the sweets - it is all from Iran," he said.

He said he worries about Iranian intentions, although he also is suspicious of the United States.

Others are more comfortable with Iran’s influence.

"We are Muslims. I don’t want the American kind of freedom," said Gul Ahmed, a 50-year-old laborer. "We have our religion and our culture. There is no difference between our culture and Iran’s culture."

Just as the Tehran regime has been accused of using religious ties with Iraq’s Shiite Muslim majority to undermine Iraqi unity, Iran allegedly relies on bonds with Afghanistan’s Shiite minority - about 30 percent of the population - to work against Karzai’s government

Mohakik Nasab, an Afghan Shiite cleric who studied in the Iranian holy city of Qom, found himself jailed and condemned to death when Afghanistan’s Shiite clerics council charged him with insulting Islam. He was freed after three months and the death sentence was lifted.

He blamed Iranian pressure on the cleric council for his jailing, which came after Nasab argued in Women’s Rights magazine that women are equal to men under Islam and that civil courts don’t have the right to impose the death penalty on a Muslim who converts to another religion.

"But what really got me into trouble was that I wrote that Iran was interfering too much in Afghanistan among the Shiite Muslims in Afghanistan to make them answerable to Iran. They want to use Shiite Muslims here for their political purposes like in Lebanon against Israel," Nasab said.

"They are doing this in many ways. They give money. They train spies. You ask me what is my proof? I am in the community. I can see with my own eyes," he added.

Naseer Ahmed Raha, who heads a youth group dedicated to developing civil society in Herat, also sees Iranian machinations in Afghanistan.

"Iran never said it was against democracy in Afghanistan, but in these days Iran has promoted insecurity, has taken over our businesses, has encouraged mullahs in Afghanistan to talk for the benefit of Iran, mullahs to speak out against the American influence," he said.

In Kabul, Karzai told AP last month that interference by Afghanistan’s neighbors has been the bane of his country’s existence, but he is determined to fight efforts to play his country’s ethnic groups against one another.

"We are bloody determined," Karzai said. "It is not going to be Pakistan playing the Pashtun, non-Pashtun game in Afghanistan. It is not going to be Iran playing this or that game, or any other country."

Kabul, Islamabad to share information on Taliban
2.18.06 Daily Times (Pakistan) - Abdullah says Al Qaeda has no base in Afghanistan ‘Our relations with India are very important’
By Umer Farooq - ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and Afghanistan will share intelligence about the whereabouts of Taliban and Al Qaeda activists inside Pakistan and are devising a mechanism to ensure that subversive elements were firmly dealt with, the Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said. Talking to Daily Times, the Afghan foreign minister said that there were no two opinions about the presence of Taliban on Pakistani soil.

The issue, he said, was how to deal with the threat and how to fight the “common enemy”, he said, adding that the issue had been discussed by Pakistani and Afghan leaders during the current round of talks. He said that security remained the main focus of the talks between President Hamid Karzai and President Pervez Musharraf. “I think this visit provided the best opportunity to find solutions to these issues,” he said. Abdullah said that Pakistan had raised the issue of border incursions during the talks and it was also discussed in detail. He rejected Pakistan’s proposal to fence the border between the two countries as a way of curtailing cross-border incursions.

“A fence or wall is something which separates nations. We are living in an age where we need to build bridges, not walls,” he said. On Thursday, President Karzai addressed the National Defence College, where he was asked about this proposal by one of the participants,” he said. “Al Qaeda doesn’t have a base in Afghanistan anymore,” he said, adding, “Although there are groups linked to Al Qaeda carrying out suicide attacks in Afghanistan, they don’t have a base there anymore,” he said.

He said Afghanistan was a global base of operations for Al Qaeda before September 11, and they controlled almost 90 percent of the country. “However, the situation has completely changed now,” he said.

The Afghan minister said that his government was in the process of developing close relations with all countries in the region, including India and Pakistan. “Our relations with India are very important to us,” he said. “Expanding our relations with Pakistan, India and Iran and the rest of the world is our number one priority,” he said. He rejected a comparison with Iraq, saying that there was a clear-cut difference between the situation of the two countries. “Of course, the situation in Afghanistan is different, and calling it ‘occupation’ would be incorrect,” he said. “The presence of international forces in Afghanistan has helped its people rebuild their homeland,” he said.

In response to a question about Afghanistan acting as a channel between energy-rich Central Asia and South Asia, the Afghan foreign minister said that things had changed and now there was enough stability in Afghanistan to make trade with other countries in the region possible.

EDITORIAL: Karzai is walking a regional tightrope
February 18, 2006 – Daily Times (Pakistan)
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is a beleaguered man. He has an onerous task in front of him — to build his country from scratch. But he is unhappy with both Pakistan and Iran because they aren’t making life easy for him. In a speech at the National Defence College in Islamabad, Mr Karzai chose his words carefully. But the frustration came through clearly in the interview to a wire news service when he pointedly told Pakistan and Iran to stop meddling in Afghanistan’s affairs since the insecurity that their actions might generate in Afghanistan could likely engulf the entire region.

But Mr Karzai also told a media panel that “We will not allow any country, any government with whom Afghanistan has relations, to interfere in our relations with Pakistan or use our soil against Pakistan. We know the consequences of that for Afghanistan ... We will not allow that primarily for Afghan interests as well as those of Pakistan.”

There are two references to the regional situation here. One, Mr Karzai has denied that his government is allowing a third country (read, India) to use Afghanistan’s soil to destabilise Pakistan; and two, he has asked Pakistan to do the same, viz, not allow the hard-line Taliban elements to use Pakistani soil as a place from where to foray into Afghanistan and spread terror. The first was obvious when Mr Karzai fielded a question about the recent killings of three Chinese engineers at Hub in Balochistan and the Indian hand in that province. He said that his government was “keeping an eye” on such elements.

At NDC, Mr Karzai was equally circumspect on the issue of Iran’s nuclear weapons. He said that while he supported Iran’s right to nuclear energy, he was against weapons, especially nuclear weapons, though sovereign nations had a right to “the direction they want to take”. Mr Karzai is scheduled to visit Iran in the coming weeks and evidently would not have said anything that could create ill will ahead of the visit.

No one should envy Mr Karzai. He is caught in the vortex of international and regional power games on the one hand and internal strife and factionalism on the other. He has to live with Iran even as he cannot survive without American support. He cannot wish Pakistan away even as a liberal Afghanistan has more in common with India than Pakistan. Mr Karzai could even have thrown Uzbekistan into the equation since Tashkent is seeking the same kind of influence in the northern provinces and with the Uzbek population of Afghanistan as Pakistan does in relation to the Pashtun and Iran does in the southwest, especially in Herat.

The conflicting requirements create confusion. For instance, while Mr Karzai is concerned about cross-border movement that can generate violence, he is opposed to fencing as suggested by Pakistan, even though fencing is an eminently sensible device for two reasons: it would establish the Durand Line once and for all and by doing so remove one of the basic points of contention between Pakistan and Afghanistan; two, fencing would make it difficult for terrorist elements to move back and forth. We tend to see in the same light Mr Karzai’s proposal to remove visa requirements between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Indeed, until Mr Karzai can bring some semblance of normalcy to Afghanistan, the visa should stay and free movement across the line should be discouraged. Over time, however, it will be good to move in the direction suggested by Mr Karzai and do away with the visa. Until then we need both the fence and a visa regime in tandem with other administrative measures on the ground to ensure that neither side is trying to hurt the other’s interests.

Mr Karzai’s insistence that fencing of the Pak-Afghan border is against the concept of “closeness” — “Fencing is separation”, as he put it — is misplaced in the current context. Greater trade and other ties are not related to fencing. The two sides can be close despite a clear delineation and demarcation of the Durand Line. As Mr Karzai himself noted, Pakistani exports to Afghanistan have gone up to $1.2 billion from $25 million during the Taliban era. This is real closeness. And fencing, far from separating the two sides, will bring them closer by ensuring that trade can take place only through approved channels and no unsavoury elements can cross over to do mischief on either side.

Pakistan’s concern that India may be using its consulates is real in so far as Pakistani intelligence agencies claim they have traced the insurgency in Balochistan back to Afghanistan. Mr Karzai says he can trace the Taliban activity back to Pakistan. If both sides are correct even by half, both have a duty to perform. Pakistan must leash elements within its security establishment that might still be pinning hopes on a Taliban revival and Mr Karzai has to ensure that India does not exceed the bounds of diplomatic behaviour through its consulate staff. Mr Karzai is right when he says that good relations with Pakistan are in Afghanistan’s own interest. Let this realisation be translated into concrete action on the ground.

As for Iran, Mr Karzai has his task cut out for him when he goes to Tehran. Interestingly, nuclear weapons would be the last thing on his mind. He is likely to be more interested in Tehran’s outreach into his country’s southwest region. In Pakistan, Mr Karzai walked the tightrope as best as a man in his position and circumstances can; he will have to do more of the same when he goes to Iran.

Clash leaves 3 police dead in S. Afghanistan
KABUL, Feb. 19 (Xinhuanet) -- Three Afghan police were killed Saturday night as Taliban operatives raided their post in southern Helmand province, a local official said Sunday.

"Armed Taliban stormed a police checkpoint in Marja area of Nadali district last night, killing three policemen," the deputy governor of Halmand, Hajji Mohidin, told Xinhua.

He also added that the Taliban militants made their good escape.

Meanwhile, Taliban's purported spokesman claimed the radical movement's fighters conducted the raid and executed three policemen.

Helmand and the neighboring provinces of Kandahar, Zabul and Uruzgan, commonly known as the heartland of Taliban, have been the scene of increasing insurgency since last year.

Six Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers were injured Thursday evening in a remote control bomb explosion on the way from Grishk to Sangin district of Helmand, and their vehicle was also damaged.

Taliban-led militancy left over 1,500 people dead in 2005, while the militants' activities have claimed the lives of over 100 dead including four American soldiers since early January this year.

Afghanistan seeking Pak permission for imports via Pak-India border
Islamabad, Feb 18, IRNA
Afghanistan has urged Pakistan to allow its imports from India via the Pak-India Wahga border, which it believes would reduce the cost of its products.

According to `Dawn' newspaper here on Saturday, Afghan Commerce Minister Hedayat Amin Arsala, who was part of President Hamid Karzai's entourage during his visit to Pakistan last week, said on Friday that Kabul had already conveyed the proposal among others to Islamabad for consideration.

Under the Afghan Transit Trade Treaty, Afghanistan could import goods from any country through the sea port of Pakistan. However, the land route was not mentioned in the treaty that was signed in 1965, the daily said.

The minister, the daily contended, pointed out that goods imported from India by sea were costlier owing to high freight charges as against goods transported via the Wahga border.

Two million Afghans still in Pakistan
By Irfan Ghauri / Daily Times (Pakistan) / February 18, 2006
ISLAMABAD: The number of Afghan refugees residing in Pakistan is 2,607,220 out of which 28,887 are still living in Islamabad, whose presence there has reduced the job opportunities for the Pakistani labour.

States and Frontier Minister Sardar Yar Mohammad Rind provided the National Assembly the statistics on Friday. In a written reply to a question, the minister told the house that as per the March 2005 census of Afghan refugees, 3,049,269 were living in different parts of the country. 442,049 had been repatriated since. The repatriation ratio remained only 14.5 percent 2005 despite the incentives given by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), he said.

He said the census showed 45,259 refugees living in Islamabad, out of which 16,372 had repatriated to their homeland voluntarily so far.

The minister informed the house that 53.3 percent refugees were working on daily wages, 10 percent were dependent, 8.1 percent were employed, 19.2 percent were self- employed and 9.4 per cent had other means of income.

He said the government would close the Kacha Ghair and Jallozi camps in 2006 as that land was required for the expansion of Peshawar city. He said the total population of these two camps was 163,069. The tripartite agreement between Pakistan, Afghanistan and the UNHCR will expire on December 31.

There is a plan to send back as many Afghan refugees to their homeland as possible during the final year of the agreement, the minister said.

To a question, Science Minister Chaudhry Nauraiz Shakoor informed the house that 10 officials of over 60 years of age, including a retired lieutenant general, were serving in various departments attached to the Science and Technology Ministry.

60 Afghan teachers imparted professional training
QUETTA, Feb 19 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The Ockendon International (OI), a UK-sponsored non-governmental organisation, Sunday awarded course completion certificates to 60 Afghan teachers.

The 24-day training, attended by 30 male and an equal number of female refugee teachers, was aimed at imparting professional training to them in teaching techniques.

Huma Siraj, an OI employee, told Pajhwok Afghan News she was working with the NGO for the last two years. It had had trained hundreds of Afghan teachers in modern teaching techniques during that period.

Describing the training programme as beneficial for Afghan teachers, Huma said: "Majority of schoolteachers are untrained and they need professional training to properly educate their students."

Siddiqa Popal, a teacher in Quetta's Rabia Balkhi School and a participant of the training course, said she had learned a lot of new teaching methods during the 24-day course.

Abdul Hadi, a teacher at the Habibur Rahman High School, said majority of trained teachers had shifted to Afghanistan during the past few years. This is why the refugees' schools need well-trained teachers.

The OI is planning to train 362 more teachers till August 2006. Noman, regional chief of the NGO, told Pajhwok Afghan News OI had trained 561 Afghan male and female teachers since its inception in the 2000.

Reported by Bashir Ahmad Nadim & translated by Daud

Two passengers injured in police firing
JALALABAD, Feb 18 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Two passengers sustained injuries when highway police opened fire at a vehicle on Nanagarhar - Kunar Highway on Saturday.

Spokesman for the provincial police headquarters Colonel Abdul Ghafoor told Pajhwok Afghan News a constable opened fire after exchange of harsh words with the passengers.

He said the incident happened near the Bengah area of the Behsud district. He added the injured had been shifted to the Nangarhar Civil Hospital for treatment.

Hafizul Haq, eyewitness and resident of the area, told this scribe the police signaled the vehicle but it did not stop and they opened fire which resulted in injuries to two passengers.

Colonel Ghafoor said the constables had been taken into custody and shifted to the police headquarters for investigations.

Reported by Ezatullah Zawab & translated by Daud

`Afghan people want us here'
Ex-envoy makes case for Canada But others expect only body bags
Feb. 18, 2006. 07:47 AM The Toronto Star (Canada) / MITCH POTTER
KANDAHAR—It is a difficult mission, a noble mission, a winnable mission. And if it subjects Canadian soldiers more directly to terror's bite than ever before — still the price will be worth it.

Afghanistan will be saved, and the region that continues to harbour Osama bin Laden will tilt slowly but decisively toward stability, thanks in no small part to the 2,200 Canadian troops landing this month in the troubled southern province of Kandahar.

That is the sunny prognosis of what Canada is up against in Afghanistan. Optimists who like their storylines clean and tidy are advised to stop reading now.

Because there is a competing version of the daunting task Canada is about to take on, together with aggressive new deployments of British, Australian, Dutch and Romanian soldiers.

The project's harshest critics anticipate a quagmire of no measurable gain — only the gradual outflow of body bags, loaded by the resurgent Taliban and their narcotics-dealing partners, until such time as Canada and its NATO partners decide they have had enough.

Left behind, the critics say, will be a country every bit as broken as before, its brief, altogether unrealistic dalliance with democracy just a bitter memory for Afghans and the international community alike.

How to reconcile these two disparate visions, on the eve of the highest-risk Canadian military operation most of us have ever known? You can begin by familiarizing yourself with the unbiased facts.

Real answers, however, could be many months, if not years, away. Among the optimists, none is more persuasive than Christopher Alexander, Canada's former ambassador to Kabul, who comes with the added advantage of having put his own career on the line for the people of this landlocked Asian country whose backbone is the Hindu Kush mountain range.

At 37, Alexander opted not to take the safe career move, which would have entailed running for the hills last fall at the end of his requisite two-year-term as Canada's lead diplomat to Afghanistan. Instead, this rising star of foreign affairs took a leave of absence from the Canadian government and remained in Kabul, signing on as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's main political operative on the ground.

It is a big job, arguably much bigger than that of Canadian ambassador, and it places him as one of the primary protagonists for the international effort to put Afghanistan back on its feet.

"When I finished at the embassy, I just felt there was unfinished business. Some things (postwar reconstruction projects) were just getting off the ground and I was very keen to stay," Alexander said in an interview this week in Kabul.

"Some people think if you want to stay, you are crazy ... I realize that from the outside, things can appear murky. But we're all duty-bound to try and see the situation clearly and to understand its deeper dynamic.

"And for those of us who are here — military commanders, diplomats, Afghan leaders — it is very clear what needs to be done. When the resources are brought to bear it gets done."

Alexander does not soft-pedal the more sobering facts. He acknowledges that today, more than four years after the former Taliban regime was ousted by dint of Afghan and U.S.-led allies' efforts in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, a pro-Taliban insurgency is spreading across the nation's southern provinces.

"But let's not exaggerate the strength of the threat. Right now three-quarters of this country is living more or less without insurgency. There are really only six provinces out of 34 that are regularly the scene of insurgency-related violence," he said.

"That adds up to a thousand deaths in the past year. It's a big problem, but it is not causing people to leave their homes. In the lives of most Afghans it is a major nuisance and a block to strengthening government authority, but most people aren't affected by it."

Alexander cringes when reminded that similarly sunny prognoses were often spoken about postwar Iraq. Much of the confusion about Afghanistan, he admits, may stem from the fact that in the minds of some, the two conflicts are blurring together. But Afghanistan, by any measure, is decidedly not Iraq, he says. "God help us, the worst ones are the people who want to apply the lessons of Iraq to Afghanistan."

The biggest difference, he says, is that Afghanistan was not conquered by U.S. forces, but rather, the Taliban was ousted by Afghans themselves, with U.S. air support.

"The truth is the Afghan people want us here: They want the international community, they want troops from Canada and other countries.

"The Taliban is dramatically unpopular here," he said. "They will find support in a village cut off from the rest of society and with no choice when these guys show up with cash and guns and say, `We're staying here.'

"But that support is only skin deep. It is based on fear. And given the Afghan police to protect them, the Afghan national army to protect them — backed by NATO — they will embrace that much more attractive future. That's the way they see their future. The Taliban truly was defeated (in 2001) and only exists as a structure in exile."

Ironically, one of Operation Archer's sharpest critics agrees that Afghanistan is not Iraq — and that, in part, is the problem.

"At least with Iraq you are dealing with a fairly educated population and some degree of infrastructure," said Doug Ross, a political scientist at Simon Fraser University specializing in Afghanistan.

"My main criticism, my cautionary note, is that Afghanistan is so underdeveloped and unready to become a functioning semblance of a modern democratic state," said Ross.

"The literacy rate is just too low, the ethno-cleavages too real, the indigenous Afghan troops too weak and not all that committed. Add to that the looming problem of Afghan refugees in western Pakistan, many of whom are sympathetic to the Taliban.

"My sense is it's just going to get worse, in large part because I don't see the Americans and the international community all that interested in carrying on for the long haul."

Ross's worst-case scenario makes for difficult reading. He worries that with Muhammad cartoon rage sweeping the region and the looming risk of American- and/or Israeli-led attacks to defuse Iran's nuclear ambitions, the Canadian troops are arriving on the cusp of potentially deepening instability.

"The fear is our people will be stuck out on a long, thin branch that could just snap off. I don't think people in Ottawa are thinking this through. Or if they are, they are just biting their nails and hoping nothing goes wrong," he said.

Alexander and Ross alike point to last month's vaunted London conference, which saw the drafting of the Afghanistan Compact, a document that commits the international community to $10.4 billion (U.S.) in aid over the next five years, all the while committing the fledgling government of President Hamid Karzai to deadline-driven reforms toward clean, transparent governance. Predictably, the two come away with half-empty, half-full analyses.

Alexander sees London as a dramatic affirmation of respect for Afghan recovery. "We had 23 foreign ministers around the table talking about a single country," he said. "That doesn't happen often."

Ross notes the aid pledges amounted to about half of what the Afghan government was seeking. Canada is on line for $600 million of those aid dollars, making Afghanistan the single largest benefactor of Canadian foreign aid in the coming years. But Ross suggests even such a whopping sum may prove far too little in the face of an emerging narcotics-driven economy, which now accounts for an estimated 40 per cent of Afghan GDP.

"I agree it is a noble cause — but only if you provide the resources to win it. And that means getting Afghanistan off opium. And about the only way to do that is to spend huge money promoting subsidized agriculture. I don't believe that money, or the international will, is really there," Ross said.

Where these two polar opposites of the Afghan file converge is on the question of Pakistan, where an extremist network is almost universally believed to be seeding insurgent attacks in Afghanistan.

Afghan officials, in fact, are unabashed in blaming elements within Pakistan's spy service for motivating, training and equipping the revived insurgency as a cross-border operation. The strategic interest is for Pakistan to reaffirm control over its northern neighbour, much in the way it first funded the Taliban before officially renouncing ties in the wake of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Said Alexander: "This is the one issue where the Canadian press and others have not quite grasped what is happening. Yes, we need a military victory and with the Canadians and others arriving, I believe we're in good shape.

"But we need a political victory as well, to deal with the sources of the insurgency. It's not just about Afghanistan. It is also a regional challenge and a cross-border challenge."

Ross's worry is that without a strategy to contain insurgents in Pakistan, where an estimated 2.6 million ethnic Pashtuns remain in exile — essentially the cousins and brothers of the men Canadian troops will face in Kandahar — the mission will be endless.

Alexander acknowledges Pakistani co-operation is critical. Earlier this week, Karzai spent three days in Pakistan pressing the issue with President Pervez Musharraf. Little appeared to come of the encounter other than lip service in carefully measured sound bites.

Given the vagaries of the region, Alexander could not offer a concise answer when asked if he saw the possibility of Canadian troops in Afghanistan 10 years from now.

"That would mean things had not gone according to plan," he said. "But it is quite possible NATO or someone would still have forces here. This is a region; this is a world with a lot of uncertainty and volatility. One would be crazy to try to predict what it will look like. Of course everyone's preparing for a long stay if necessary."

But the former ambassador is quick with reasons why such a scenario is unlikely: In the four years since the fall of the Taliban, the average Afghan income has nearly doubled. However, many narco-dollars are intertwined in that wealth, life is undeniably improving, he says.

"To the outside world, to Canadians, the change in Afghan income, $180 to $330 a year, is almost not intelligible. You are in abject poverty at both ends," he said. "But it is real for Afghans, and let's take it on their terms.

"If there are more people who have 10 goats in their yard instead of two, let's share their pride. That is a real result. That's how you make their lives better.

"People say Afghanistan was always at war," Alexander continued. "That's not true. This is a place that developed civilizations, a source of some of the greatest scholarship and learning in the history of Islam.

"That deserves to be recovered and remembered and rebuilt, not for the sake of Afghans but for the sake of the whole world. That is why Canada is here, in part: To help a country recover its dignity after having suffered for longer than almost anyone else."

Injured soldier, widow win $102.6 million judgment for Afghanistan attack
By The Associated Press Sunday, February 19, 2006
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - A soldier wounded in Afghanistan and the widow of his slain comrade were awarded a $102.6 million judgment from the estate of a suspected al-Qaida financier.

U.S. District Judge Paul Cassell said the lawsuit may be the first filed by an American soldier against terrorists under the Patriot Act.

But Sgt. Layne Morris, of West Jordan, and the family of medic Christopher Speer, could have a difficult time collecting their award, because the assets of the suspected financier are unknown.

Other soldiers have difficulty identifying their attackers, making it difficult to hold individuals responsible.

Morris cited news reports — including interviews with his attacker's immediate family — indicating that Omar Khadr, then 15, had wounded him and killed Speer. The ruling, released Friday, cited similar evidence that the boy's father, suspected financier Ahmad Sa'id Khadr, was linked to al-Qaida and trained his son to attack American targets.

Morris and Speer, who served with the 19th Special Forces, were attacked with grenades and automatic weapons in a remote Afghanistan village. Shrapnel severed the optic nerve in Morris' right eye, blinding him.

Soldiers arrested the boy, who is being held at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay. The Canadian government has protested the boy's imprisonment, because he is a minor.

In November, the U.S. government charged the boy with murder, attempted murder, conspiracy and aiding the enemy.

The ruling said the younger Khadr was 4 years old when his family moved from Canada to Pakistan, where his father co-founded a humanitarian relief organization that supported al-Qaida terrorist training camps. The boy returned to Canada in 1994, where he attended school for a year while his father was imprisoned in Pakistan on charges of funding the bombing of the Egyptian Embassy in Pakistan, the court said.

The next year the family allegedly traveled throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan, meeting al-Qaida leaders including Osama bin Laden. It is believed the father was killed in a firefight in Pakistan.

Attorney Dennis Flynn said the U.S. and Canadian governments have frozen the assets of the elder Khadr.

Afghanistan win opener of Khaleej Cricket Tournament
KABUL, Feb 17 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Afghanistan's cricket team downed the Saudis by a huge margin of 94 runs in the opener of the five-nation Khaleej Cricket Tournament played in Kuwait City on Friday, an official said.

Electing to bat first, the Afghans rattled up 266 in the allotted 50 overs with Mohammad Nabi top-scoring with 65 runs, Afghanistan Cricket Federation's chief Taj Malook told Pajhwok Afghan News.

Speaking to this news agency by phone, he added Samiullah and Nawroz Mangal lent their side solid support by chipping in with 55 and 48 runs respectively.

Set a target of 267, the Saudi cricketers were skittled out for a paltry 166 in 40 overs, giving the opposition a virtual walkover. Hamidullah and Nawroz Mangal, exhibiting a lot of aggro, fast clip and penetration, claimed four wickets apiece to earn their line-up a well-deserved victory.

Nawroz Mangal, who gave a brilliant all-round performance, was adjudged Man of the Match. The Afghans take on the hosts Kuwait in their next encounter slated for Saturday.

The other four teams participating in the event are Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Bahrain. Taj Malook asserted the Afghan team was in high spirits and could lift the trophy at stake on their day.

The team comprises of Raees Ahmadzai, (skipper), Nawroz Mangal (vice captain), Daulat Khan Ahmadzai, Karim Sadiq, Mohammad Nabi, Hasti Gul, Jalat Khan Sher, Abdul Nasir, Asghar Ahmadzai, Rahmat Wali, Samiullah Shinwari, Hamid Hasan, Shahpur Zadran, Abdul Shakoor and Noor Ali.

Afghan parliament approves February 15 as holiday
Makia Monir
KABUL, Feb 16 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The Afghan Lower House Thursday decided to observe 15th February, the day when Red Army was expelled from Afghanistan, as a public holiday across the country.

Speaking on the occasion, chief of the Dawat-i-Islami Abdul Rab Rasul Sayaf highlighted the importance of the day in the history of Afghanistan. He urged upon all MPs to unanimously declare the day as a public holiday.

Almost all the members agreed to celebrate the day on official level but some of them opposed the proposal regarding its approval as a public holiday. Ahmad Behzad, MP from the western Herat province, said it should not be a holiday.

The parliament decided that the day would be celebrated with national enthusiasm and central as well as officials from provinces would attend functions arranged in connection with February 15.

Bay Area Afghans condemn cartoons of Muhammad
Muslims, Christians speak out against Western media at interfaith meeting
By Grace Rauh / InsideBayArea.com / February 17, 2006
FREMONT — Bay Area Afghans on Wednesday night condemned the publication of newspaper cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, saying they insult Muslims around the globe.

At a news conference held before an interfaith meeting of Afghan Muslims and Christians at Century House in Fremont, people of both faiths blasted the Western media for publishing the drawings and expressed sorrow for those killed in the angry riots against the cartoons.

Farid Younos, a professor of cultural anthropology at California State University, East Bay, said he gives little credence to Western arguments in favor of a free press because the press is not truly free. For example, he said, a European newspaper would not publish an anti-Semitic drawing or news article arguing that the Holocaust is a myth.

"You can't argue that in the paper," he said.

The controversial cartoons, one of which showed the Prophet Muhammad wearing a turban shaped like a bomb, were first published in a Danish newspaper in September. Other newspapers have reprinted them, and demonstrations against them have broken out around the globe.

At least 19 people have died in demonstrations and violence this month related to the cartoons, according to an Associated Press count. Eleven have died in Afghanistan, five in Pakistan and one each in Kenya, Lebanon and Somalia.

Younos condemned the violence. He added that he and other Muslims would be just as outraged had a newspaper published a cartoon mocking Jesus or the Virgin Mary.

"We get offended if anyone does this to any of the prophets of God," he said.

The news conference was sponsored by the Afghan Coalition, a nonprofit organization based in Fremont that works with Afghan refugees in the Bay Area, and Bridge Building, a consortium of local churches. Afghan Coalition Executive Director Rona Popal said when local Afghans upset by the cartoons told her they wanted to demonstrate against their publication, she thought a news conference might be a better venue for people to air grievances.

"Religion is a very sensitive issue for people," she said.

Pastor Bruce Green of Bridge Building opened the cartoon discussion, saying the controversy is a result of "free speech radicals (trying) to provoke Muslims." He said the cartoons' publication was an example of "free speech gone out of control," and he spoke of the need for Americans, especially, to learn about and respect the difference between free speech and responsible speech. "I think Afghanistan suffered the most in the rippling effect of this thing," he said. "I'm trying to avoid the radicals on both sides."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Rice urges wary Arabs to threaten to isolate Iran
By Saul Hudson / Fri Feb 17, 4:25 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged reluctant Arab nations on Friday to threaten to isolate Iran unless it bows to international pressure to curb its suspected nuclear weapons programs.

Her appeal to Iran's neighbors came before she visits Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates next week to lobby them to join a U.S. campaign against Iran, which has won increasing support from Europe, Russia and China.

"I would hope that those states that are worried about this ... are prepared to really say to the Iranians: 'You are going to be isolated from us too if you continue down this road,"' Rice said in an interview with Arab-based media about her planned talks on the trip.

"There is really now an obligation to let the Iranians know in no uncertain terms that this isolation is going to be complete," she added.

As part of a strategy to woo Arab nations with a message she hopes resonates with them, Rice also highlighted U.S. concerns Iran is destabilizing the region by backing militant groups in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.

Arab governments have expressed concern about Iran's nuclear ambitions.

But they are generally wary of giving explicit support to any U.S. policies when many in the region are angry at what they see as anti-Muslim American policies because of the Iraq war and perceived pro- Israel stances against Palestinians.

Against the backdrop of chaos in Iraq, the governments are especially reluctant to back American pressure against another neighbor.

"Most countries in the Gulf do not have to be persuaded that a nuclear Iran is a threat to them," said Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank. "But they ask if the cure is worse than the disease."

"There is a certain Arab reluctance to embrace American solutions that could destabilize the politics in Iran, especially when they look at Iraq," he added.

Nile Gardiner of the Heritage Foundation, who supports a strategy against Iran that also includes a credible threat of military strikes, called Rice's appeal "a hard sell."

"It's worth a try but we should be under no illusion just how difficult it will be to get Arab nations to isolate Iran," he said."

MILITARY BACKS DIPLOMACY
The United States has sought to play down fears that behind its diplomacy is a push for military strikes on the Islamic republic.

"I believe that the international community has many, many, many diplomatic, economic, other opportunities to influence Iran," Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters. "Not only the United States, but all the international community can influence the way that Iran is acting."

"From where I sit, we are a long way away from needing a military option," he added.

And Rice was upbeat that international diplomatic pressure would prevent a nuclear-armed Iran, which although it says its programs are peaceful has failed for years to allay the West's suspicions it is pursuing a nuclear bomb.

"I think they will run out of time because the world will get more and more insistent, measures will get tougher and tougher and I don't believe Iran is a state that can afford real isolation," she said.

(Additional reporting by Andrea Shalal-Esa)

Russia illegal drug trade worth $15 billion a year
Reuters 02/17/2006 By Guy Faulconbridge
MOSCOW - Russia's illegal drugs trade has topped $15 billion a year as criminal groups flood the country with heroin from Afghanistan, a senior official from the national drugs control agency said on Thursday.

Drug use has soared since the fall of the Soviet Union, with Russians becoming major consumers of illegal drugs trafficked by well-organised gangs, including synthetic drugs from Europe as well as heroin from Afghanistan.

"In Russia the narcotics business is estimated to be worth $15 billion a year: some say more, some say less, but it is actually likely to be bigger," Vladimir Zubrin, deputy director of the Federal Drugs Control Service, told a news conference.

The estimate, one of the highest yet from a Russian drugs official, means the illicit drug trade is probably bigger than the profit made by the country's biggest company, Gazprom, whose 9-month profit was about $8 billion.

Criminal groups launder the drug money through banks and financial instruments and then invest in a variety of assets at home and abroad, Zubrin said.

Opium from the poppy fields of Afghanistan is refined into heroin and then smuggled through Central Asia to Russia, using the "northern route" through Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

"The biggest problem for us is the heroin coming from Afghanistan to Russia," Zubrin said. "Last year there was another good harvest of opium in Afghanistan ... and a significant part of that heroin came to Russia via the northern route."

He said the heroin flows had increased since Russian troops last year stopped patrolling the 1,340 km (835 mile) border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan, which asked Russia in 2004 to pull out its troops.

Russia started patrolling the border more than 100 years ago when Tajikistan was a colony of the Russian empire, and continued doing so after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Russia's drug agency will also open an office in Kabul this year, Zubrin said.

Widespread intravenous drug use in Russia has helped the spread of illnesses like HIV/AIDS and boosted crime rates, according to drug officials. The number of drug-related deaths is rising, with about 100,000 deaths from drugs last year, up from 70,000 the year before, he said.

"This is a scary figure," he said. "Over recent years the number of deaths from overdoses has sharply increased." Russia probably has 5-6 million drug users out of a population of 143.5 million, he said, though the figure could be larger.

In Afghanistan, one kg of raw opium could fetch $180 last year, while one kg of heroin costs about $60,000 on the streets of Moscow. Last year, the drugs agency seized about 1,600 tonnes of heroin, he said.