Afghanistan News February 24, 2006

February 24, 2006

Four Afghan soldiers killed in Taliban attack
Fri Feb 24, 1:41 AM ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) - Suspected Taliban militants ambushed an Afghan National Army convoy, killing at least four soldiers and wounding one, officials said.

One rebel was also killed and five others were injured in the attack late Thursday in the restive southern province of Helmand, a local police commander said on Friday.

"Four soldiers were killed and one was injured. One Taliban was also killed and his body is still on the ground," said Khan Mohammed Khan, the police chief of Grishk district where the fighting took place.

Qari Mohammed Yousuf, who says he is a spokesman for the ousted Taliban militia, claimed responsibility for the attack but said only one of their fighters was injured during the fighting.

Remnants of the Taliban, who were toppled by a US-led offensive in late 2001 for failing to surrender Osama bin Laden, are still waging an insurgency against the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.

US soldiers shot dead a man in neighboring Kandahar province on Thursday when he slammed an explosives-laden car into their convoy in an apparent failed attempt at a suicide bombing.

An Afghan soldier was wounded in the incident but the man failed to explode his bombs hidden in his civilian car, according to US and Afghan officials.

At least 1,600 people were killed in the Taliban-led violence in 2005 while another 100 have died since the begining of this year.

Islamabad not to rename missiles as Pak-Afghan shares commonheroes:FO
Pakistani Newspaper - Feb 23 11:09 AM
ISLAMABAD, Feb 23 (Online): Pakistan has rejected the request of an Afghan Minister for the change of names of Pakistani missiles who cited the names to be that of former afghan rulers as reason.

Spokesperson of Pakistan Foreign Office Tasneem Aslam told BBC Thursday other day that Pakistan would not fulfill the request made as Pakistan and Afghanistan share a common history and hence common heroes.

As per details Afghan Information Minister Syed Makhdoom Raheen on Wednesday in a letter addressed to the Government of Pakistan requested the Pakistani government not to name its military missiles on Former Afghan Rulers’ names.

Education and culture disseminating institutes should be named after Afghan Leaders like Shahab-ud-Din Ghauri, Mehmood Ghaznavi and Ahmad Shah Abdali instead of naming destruction causing missiles after them, he said.

Three Pakistani missiles are named as Ghauri, Ghaznavi and Abdali.

Pakistan foreign office when reportedly contacted the Afghan foreign office regarding such letter the reply was told to be negative.

Tasneem Aslam said that everyone knows where the tombs of these heroes are located.

UN envoy to Afghanistan gives priority to human rights, capacity building
KABUL, Feb. 23 (Xinhuanet) -- The newly appointed envoy of the UN secretary general to Afghanistan said Thursday that human rights and capacity building would be his priorities during his mission in the post-war nation.

"I have a priority for human rights implementation and I thinkin the development field what is most needed is capacity development," Tom Koenigs said at Meet the Press program.

The former German diplomat also noted that he would work on theabove subjects to help the war-ravaged country's recovery.

"I would work to orient our action into these two directions, which does not mean that I would neglect anything else," he emphasized.

His remarks came amid increasing reports of women rights violation and Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission over the induction of former commanders and warlords in important government departments.

"We all want justice, the people want it and the internationalcommunity wants it," the former commissioner of human right policy in the German government said.

"Each and every donor, each and every organization who supporthuman rights and equality has to support women rights in Afghanistan," he told a questioner.

The Afghan government in its national development strategy for the next five years presented to London conference under Afghanistan Compact called for more international support.

The Afghanistan Compact is a framework for future partnership between the Afghan government and the international community to bolster the country's security, economic development and counter-narcotics efforts.

To achieve the goals of the Afghanistan Compact, the international community pledged 4.5 billion U.S. dollars to be disbursed over the next two years.

"Afghanistan Compact, which has been agreed between the international community and Afghan government, set priorities. These are in the field of human rights, in the field of security and in the field of development. These are my priorities too," Koenigs pointed out.

Koenigs, who assumed his new post early this month, said that Afghanistan would gradually recover from devastation and rebuild its economy.

"I am optimistic that Afghanistan comes out of the debt of wareconomy into a peace economy," he noted.

The veteran UN diplomat linked the economic recovery of the war-torn Afghanistan to establishing friendly relations with its neighbors.

"For the development of economy of Afghanistan being in the middle of six immediate neighbors, development of trade and relations to these neighbors is vital," he noted.

He also added that the United Nations would do everything to improve the relations between Afghanistan and its immediate and regional neighbors.

U.N. chief in Afghanistan wants militants to stop attacking schools
Pravda -Russia 02/23/2006
The new U.N. mission chief on Thursday appealed to militants "to leave Afghanistan's children alone," after a spate of attacks blamed on the Taliban targeted teachers and schools.

Tom Koenigs, the incoming U.N. special representative to Afghanistan, said the attacks amounted to a "denial of the human rights to education for Afghanistan's children."

"I can only appeal to those who apparently disagree with the development Afghanistan takes, 'Leave Afghanistan's children alone,"' he said in his first news conference.

Dozens of schools have been targeted by arsonists since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban in 2001, and hundreds more, particularly in volatile southern and eastern regions, are closed because of poor security.

Most of the attacks have come at night so children have not been injured, but some teachers have been targeted. In January, a headmaster of a coed high school was beheaded in southern Zabul province.

Koenigs, 62, who most recently worked as commissioner of human rights policy and humanitarian aid for the German government, said the security situation was one of the main obstacles to development in Afghanistan which is still recovering from a quarter century of conflict, reports the AP.

Afghanistan: Militants Are Targeting Schools
Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty By Golnaz Esfandiari
A school was set on fire by militants in Afghanistan's southern Helmand Province on 20 February, the most recent in a series of attacks on schools and educational institutions in the country. Afghan officials say the remnants of the Taliban are responsible for the attacks, which have bred insecurity and led to the closing of other schools. Many are concerned that the attacks could undermine the educational system in Afghanistan's southern provinces.

PRAGUE, 22 February 2006 (RFE/RL) -- It's a very worrying trend: in recent months more than a dozen schools have been set afire in southern Afghanistan, including some 10 schools in Helmand Province.

The latest torching took place on 20 February when unidentified perpetrators set fire to a boys' high school in the Zarghon village of the Nadali district in Helmand. All the books and furniture were destroyed but no one was hurt.

Burnings And Killings

In several other cases, however, schoolteachers have been killed, including a high school teacher who was beheaded in a school in Zabul Province in January.

In mid-December another teacher was dragged out of his classroom and shot dead outside of the gates of his school in Helmand. He had reportedly received threats and warnings to stop teaching boys and girls.

Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) has expressed serious concern over the attacks on schools and teachers.

AIHRC spokesman Nader Nadery tells RFE/RL that as a result of the violence, many schools in the southern provinces of Zabul, Kandahar, Helmand, and Uruzgan have closed. He says many parents are reluctant to send their children to school.

Closing Out Of Fear

"Unfortunately, in less than six months more than 300 schools have been burned or, for the major part, have been shut down," he said. "Most of the schools have been closed because of the fear of attacks by Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces. And, due to the insecurity that the people in the region [feel], parents are refusing to send their kids to schools."

The United Nations has said that incidents such as the burning of schools fly in the face of efforts to rebuild Afghanistan's shattered education system and the "desire among the Afghan people to see their children educated."

Afghan officials have condemned the attacks and blamed "the enemies of Afghanistan," a term used by Afghan leaders to refer to Taliban militants and other insurgent Islamist groups.

On 9 February, a leading Taliban commander, Mullah Dadullah, told the French news agency AFP that the group has burned down some schools. But he added that the militants only targeted those "where Christianity is being taught."

Taliban Proclaims Innocence

A purported Taliban spokesman, Mohammad Hanif, denied in an interview with the "Christian Science Monitor" that his group is behind the attacks and said that the Taliban supports education.

During the time when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, girls were banned from attending school and the emphasis in school curriculum was on religious subjects and the study of the Koran.

Vahid Mozhdeh, an Afghan writer and security expert based in Kabul, believes that militants consider schools a government target.

He believes schools are being attacked to force people to send their children to madrasahs.

"They want everybody to attend madrasahs and become a Talib [someone who seeks religious knowledge], religious madrasahs are a place where they can recruit," Mozhdeh said. "But in the main schools, pupils can be influenced by the government so that they burn schools to prevent that. When there won't be any schools in these areas, as there aren't any religious schools either, then families will have no other solution than to send their children to the other side of the border to study in religious schools that are a source of recruitment for the Taliban. [The torching of schools] can have only one reason: attracting young people from schools to attend religious schools."

Some observers believe that schools are being targeted because they are an easy target, others say the attacks on schools are aimed at undermining public trust in the government and creating fear.

Keeping Afghanistan Undeveloped

Nadery notes that by attacking schools, militants are targeting the country's future. "Education and learning make up one of the main pillars that can guarantee the future of Afghanistan as a democratic country that can solve its problems by itself," he said. "The Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces follow the policy of burning schools as a long-term strategy to preserve Afghanistan as an [undeveloped] country."

The AIHRC has called on the Afghan government to ensure the safety of teachers, pupils, and schools. The organization says the increasing number of international troops in the restive southern parts of Afghanistan can play a key role in getting the schools to reopen.

NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said on 9 February that the alliance is committed to expanding its security and reconstruction mission into southern Afghanistan.

He said the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) will be expanded this summer from 9,000 to about 16,000 troops.

Pakistan-Afghan camps Pakistan to close three Afghan refugee camps
Islamabad, Feb 23, IRNA
Pakistan has decided to close down three Afghan refugee camps in April, as part of the country's steps to shift refugees from urban areas, the U.N refuges agency said on Thursday.

Afghans living in the camps will be offered a choice of assisted voluntary repatriation to Afghanistan by United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) or relocation to selected existing camps in Pakistan, a UNHCR statement said.

The camps to be closed on April 30th are located in the North West Frontier Province and southwestern Balochistan province.

The UNHCR will stop all assistance in this camp on the same day, a UNHCR statement said.

The statement said the refugees will receive the same health, education, water and sanitation services as in camps in case they want to be relocated in Pakistan.

The government of Pakistan said that no one will be permitted to remain in the camps after they close.

The UNHCR has asked the refugees who choose to relocate within Pakistan must provide their names to the Commissioner for Afghan Refugees by March 1st.

Meanwhile the Government has reiterated that Girdi Jungle and Jungle Pir Alizai camps in Balochistan will close on 30 April 2006.

Afghans living in the camps will be offered a choice of assisted voluntary repatriation to Afghanistan by UNHCR or relocation to Mohammad Kheil camp in the same province.

Government will not permit anyone to remain in the closed camps.

Of about 200 refugee facilities meant for Afghans fleeing the Soviet invasion of 1979 and, later, further internal strife, Pakistan now has some 74 camps housing over 1 million refugees, according to UNHCR.

A further breakdown of UNHCR-administered Afghan refugee facilities in the country shows some 63 refugee camps located in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP), 10 in the southwestern province of Balochistan, with an additional one located in the Mianwali district of the eastern Punjab province.

Government official shot dead in south Afghanistan
KABUL, Feb. 23 (Xinhuanet) -- A local official was shot dead by unknown armed men Thursday morning in the troubled southern province of Helmand in Afghanistan, local official said.

"Armed men gunned down Mohammad Zarin, the administrative chief of Nad Ali district, at 8 a.m. (3:30 a.m. GMT) this morning on his way to office," district police chief Abdul Rahman told Xinhua.

He blamed no group or individual for the attack and Taliban hasyet to make any comment.

Over 1,500 people had been killed in Taliban-led militancy in 2005 and some 100 people have died in militias attacks so far thisyear.

Afghanistan/Pakistan: 'Inseparable Twins' In Need Of Separation
Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty February 23, 2006
During his recent trip to Islamabad, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Afghanistan and Pakistan are "joined together like twins" and are "inseparable." But for all the diplomatic gestures, relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan are now at their lowest ebb since the demise of the Taliban regime in late 2001.

President Karzai's main stated grievance is that his Pakistani counterpart Pervez Musharraf is, at best, unable or, at worst, unwilling to curtail the activities of the neo-Taliban inside Pakistan and to break up the support network created by Pakistani religious and military groups for the militants.

Afghan officials and the media have consistently accused Afghanistan's eastern neighbor of backing the violence perpetuated by the neo-Taliban. Recently, too, the Afghan public has taken up the call, in anti-Pakistani protests.

Karzai himself, though, had maintained a more diplomatic line. That has since changed, due to a wave of around 30 suicide attacks that killed nearly 100 people since mid-November. During a weekly radio program in late January, Karzai charged that "a neighbor" of Afghanistan has had a hand in the recent upsurge in violence. "The reason for these attacks is the continuation of subversive endeavors" by foreigners whose aim is "to dominate" Afghanistan, Karzai said. The former Taliban regime was, the Afghan president continued, part of a "hidden invasion" of Afghanistan "by a neighbor for the second time" since the Soviet Union invaded the country in 1979.

While clearly pointing to -- but refraining from directly identifying -- Pakistan, Karzai added that since the collapse of the Taliban regime following the U.S.-led invasion in late 2001, those "who controlled Afghanistan during the Taliban regime have not altered their intentions." Karzai went on to say that the unnamed neighbor has continued to interfere in Afghanistan's internal affairs and, for "this reason, terrorism and attacks [are] still widespread."

Militants and Secret Services

Islamabad may itself have voiced displeasure of its own at the 15 February meeting. Unconfirmed reports from Pakistan suggest that Pakistani officials handed Karzai evidence that Indian security agents have been operating in Pakistan's Baluchistan Province and tribal areas along the Afghan border. The reports suggest the agents had been using India's consulates in Afghanistan as bases.

Those reports are unofficial. However, Karzai was very empathetic when he stated on 15 February that Afghanistan's "relations with India in no way, no way, no way will impact" on ties between Kabul and Islamabad.

Islamabad has on a number of occasions since 2003 alleged that India is using Afghanistan as a base from which to interfere in Pakistan's internal affairs. In 2003, Pakistan's then interior minister, Faisal Saleh Hayat, accused India of running camps in Afghanistan to train Afghans and Pakistanis as terrorists.

The confusion that followed Afghan officials' announcement that they had given Pakistan a list of 150 former Taliban members living in Pakistan seemed, therefore, to be symptomatic of a broader divergence in views between the two countries. On 20 February, Pakistan denied receiving a list. The next day Pakistani Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao acknowledged that Islamabad had indeed received a list of "about 150 terrorists." But this was, he said, a routine exchange of intelligence. Differences persist. Most Pakistani officials say the list named Al-Qaeda members. Afghan officials say the list names members of the Taliban. Neither Afghan nor Pakistani officials have revealed any of the names.

A Separate But Equal Partnership

There are, though, glimmers of hope that Kabul and Islamabad might at least find it beneficial to work together to promote trade and transit opportunities.

On 15 February, Afghan and Pakistani officials met in Turkmenistan to discuss a proposed pipeline that would carry Turkmen gas to both countries, and perhaps onward to India. There is also talk of running a railroad through Afghanistan that would connect the republics of Central Asia with Pakistan and, through Pakistan's ports, to overseas markets. Similarly, there are ongoing discussions about bus links between Afghanistan and Pakistan. And, while resistant, Pakistan has not flatly rejected a proposal to allow an overland transit route between Afghanistan and India through Pakistan.

However, one proposal made by Karzai during his trip to Pakistan -- to adopt an open-border policy as a prelude to other confidence-building measures -- will have roused anxiety in Islamabad, as it is Afghanistan's longstanding policy not to recognize the Durand Line, the disputed boundary between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Afghanistan has never officially recognized the Durand Line, and Pakistan has therefore always regarded Afghanistan as a potential threat and sought to retain leverage in Afghanistan. It has done so partly by nurturing political opponents who could, in time of need, serve Pakistani interests.

The support that Pakistan is alleged to be providing the neo-Taliban is therefore part of a long-term strategy that predates the current war on terrorism and overreaches Musharraf's stated goodwill towards the Karzai government. And that also suggests that if the inseparable twins are to become separate but equal states, they will need to agree where exactly their borders lie.

Many ready to depose against ex-intelligence boss
Habib Rahman Ibrahimi & Borhan Younus
KABUL, Feb 23 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The high-profile trial of a communist-era Afghan intelligence chief would resume on Saturday with a dozen people expected to present testimony of his 'crimes,' officials said on Thursday.

Special Court judge Abdul Basit Bakhtiari said the trial should have resumed held three days ago, but the accused was given time in order to hire a defence lawyer and study the case.

Asadullah Sarwary has been charged ordering the execution of at least 180 people. Hearings in the case were adjourned twice - on December 26 and January 31 - after the ex-intelligence boss sought time.

But Bakhtiari told Pajhwok Afghan News the court would expedite proceedings in the case now that the defendant had already been given enough time. The judge would not say whether Sarwary had hired a defence lawyer so far.

Sarwary served as intelligence chief during the Noor Mohammad Taraki government. He allegedly killed and tortured government opponents on the basis of mere suspicion during the communist era.

In prison for the past 13 years, Sarwary rejects as baseless the charges brought against him. However, he sat deadpan in the courtroom at the last hearing when furious witnesses demanded capital punishment for him.

On Saturday, hundreds of people - who lost their near and dear ones during the communist era - are expected to be present in the court. Members of the spiritual Mujaddedi family, who air-dashed to Kabul from abroad, and others would depose against Sarwary, Bakhtiari continued.

The Naqshbandi Sufi order leader Ahmad Amin Ismail Mujaddedi, who has come from Islamabad to watch the trial, said he and his relatives had gathered reliable documentary evidence against the accused.

They would produce the documents in court, Mujaddedi said, claiming dozens of his followers might depose against the defendant. "I myself am a witness to the detention of 35 family members by Sarwary and his men. I have collected reliable documents showing his involvement in mass murder and arrests of hundreds of people."

He questioned the court's authority delay the case involving a "notorious" man. "I dont know why the government is proceeding so slowly in the case. Most people want to see Sarwari punished as soon as possible."

Earlier, Attorney General Mahmood Daqiq had confirmed Sarwary was accused of killing 35 members of the Mujaddedi family. If convicted, Sarwary could be awarded death sentence.
Translated & edited by Mudassir

British Army helpless as Afghan drug crop doubles
The Independent Online By Kim Sengupta in Lashkar Gar, Helmand 23 February 2006
The enormity of the problems in tackling Afghanistan's massive opium crop has become apparent as the first wave of British troops are deployed in one of the most dangerous parts of the country.

British Government ministers had repeatedly declared that one of the primary tasks of the 5,700- strong expeditionary force was to help end Afghan heroin production, which supplies 90 per cent of the narcotic in Britain. But the commander of the British forces in southern Iraq insisted yesterday that his troops would play no part in destroying poppy fields, while senior British civil servants cautioned that ending cultivation may take years.

"After all, it took 30 years to end opium production in Thailand under much more benign circumstances," said Nick Kay, the United Kingdom's regional co-ordinator for southern Afghanistan. "Considering the problems in Afghanistan one can see it will not be an easy process."

Col Gordon Messenger of the Royal Marines said that British troops deploying to Helmand, the biggest centre of heroin production in the biggest heroin-producing country in the world, would not be involved in a process being considered by President Hamid Karzai's government of eradicating poppies.

"There will be absolutely no maroon berets [of the marines] with scythes in a poppy field," he said.

British forces will not even directly stop vehicles suspected of smuggling the drug. The main role of the British forces will be to enable the Afghan police and army to establish control over areas which have remained outside their reach and allowed a resurgent Taliban and drug lords to gain ascendancy, said Col Messenger.

Even if the policy were changed to allow British involvement in poppy eradication, the troops would not be in a position to take part in such programmes, said Col Messenger, who won a DSO in the 1990-91 Iraq war.

Helmand, the biggest and the most lawless province in Afghanistan, accounts for 25 per cent of the opium produced nationally. It is the most important conduit for trafficking the drug to the West through Iran and to the rest of Asia through Pakistan.

According to British and Iraqi officials, the size of the crop is due to double next year, negating any gain made elsewhere in Afghanistan.

However, the yield from heroin has risen almost 1,000 per cent from seven Afghanis (around 8p) a kilo to 300 Afghanis (£3.44) in just two years.

Amir Mohammed, the district governor of Chemtal, west Mazar-I-Sharif, in northern Afghanistan , said: "We are trying to stop the problem, but people are poor and they are, of course, tempted by so much money."

The United Kingdom is giving aid of £20m a year in efforts to stop opium cultivation. However, farmers will not get monetary compensation matching the amount they will lose if they agree to abandon poppy cultivation.

Mr Kay said that a whole series of measures being implemented, including the establishment of law and order, and job opportunities, would eventually lead to a fall in opium production.

British officials are keen not to repeat the "mistakes" made in Iraq. "There has been criticism that in Iraq the military was deployed and aid did not follow," said Wendy Phillips, the Department for International Development's development adviser. "We are being very careful not to do this here. Here the British troops are working in full co-ordination with other agencies. This is not just a military matter."

But military matters are concentrating the minds of British commanders as a massive build-up takes place in southern Afghanistan. Lt-Col Henry Worsley, a senior British officer in Helmand, said: "Inevitably there will be opposition because there are more soldiers here now. If I were a Taliban commander I would want to have a go. But we will have quite a potent force and they will only get away with it once."

The RAF is already involved in attrition ,with Harrier jets based in Kandahar repeatedly taking part in raids. Last Sunday they carried out strikes with CRV7 rockets in the province of Oruzgan.

But the Taliban and their al-Qa'ida allies are lethally active in Helmand, with an attempted suicide bombing targeting the province's governor, teachers being beheaded for providing education for girls, and the murder of aid workers, including the shooting of one while he was praying at a mosque.

Engineer Mohammed Daoud, the governor of Helmand, stresses that the revenue from opium is fuelling the insurgency. " You cannot separate instablity and drugs in this province," he said. "The smugglers and drug dealers have very close connections with the Taliban and both support each other."

It will be interesting to see, say Afghan officials, how the British forces will fight this insurgency while refusing to get drawn into opium eradication.

* A bomb exploded near a Nato peace-keeping convoy in northern Afghanistan yesterday, killing one Afghan civilian and wounding 12 people, including a German peacekeeper.

Desperate Afghans turning to U.S. Army for work
Amid staggering unemployment, day-laborer jobs prized
By Anita Powell, Stars and Stripes Mideast edition, Thursday, February 23, 2006
BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan — Every morning for the last two months, Abdul Hanan has come to the gates of Afghanistan’s largest American base looking for work.

And every evening, the 30-year-old father of six walked away empty-handed.

During those long days, he and about 350 other men — from hopeful 15-year-old boys to wizened grandfathers — wait patiently in a fenced area, gazing imploringly at American guards, hoping to be one of the 150 to 250 workers admitted each day for the daily wage of about $4. The work is basic, unskilled: cleaning, digging, manual labor. Any movement toward the waiting area — a soldier opening the door, an approaching visitor — triggers a near-stampede of workers, many of whom rush to the chain-link fence and eagerly press against it.

Some are lucky. Others, like Abdul Hanan, aren’t.

“Please help me,” he said. “You see these 300, 400 people? They come to feed their families. They come early in the morning and leave in the evening. What should we do? We don’t have any money to feed our families.”

Another worker, 25-year-old Zalmay, gave a similar story.

“It’s three months and I haven’t had a job,” he said in Dari. “Every day is like this.”

In Taliban times, he said, he worked in Pakistan.

“We came back and we thought our country was safe and the Taliban is defeated and we’d all have jobs,” he said. “We want the U.S. Army to provide a solution.”

Although no hard figures are available, current CIA estimates place Afghanistan’s unemployment rate at 40 percent. A recent U.N. estimate places unemployment as high as 78 percent.

At Bagram, the truth is somewhere in the middle: Of the 350-some waiting workers, between 150 and 250 make it in every day, said Capt. Trace Major, who oversees contracting operations for the 111th Area Support Group. Additionally, an estimated 500 men, all of whom lack the security credentials to get closer to the base, cluster daily around an Afghan checkpoint in Bagram looking for work on base.

Locals at Bagram universally complain that work has become harder to find since the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, a claim that’s hard to judge, as reliable unemployment figures are unavailable. However, in 1995 — which until 2005 was the most recent year for which figures were available — the CIA estimated that only eight percent of eligible workers in Afghanistan were unemployed.

Hanan, a former Northern Alliance soldier who looks at least a decade older than his 30 years, said he has exhausted local job possibilities.

“They don’t hire any person in the national police,” he said. “I tried many times, both in the national army or the police.”

He conceded that there are opportunities to earn money from anti-American forces, but, like many men appealing to the Americans for work, his hatred of the Taliban eclipses his desire for money.

“I was a prisoner in the Taliban time for two years,” he said. “There is opportunity, but we don’t want to go. The Taliban destroyed our life.”

But like many others, he was quick to pin a different culprit for his current problems.

“Of course it is the fault of the U.S. Army,” he said. “They came here. They have to support us.”

Those thoughts were echoed by locals both inside and outside the gate.

A one-legged man who gave his name as Shaker, who has a regular job writing down names of day workers, said he also believes the solution lies in American hands.

“If they provide a job for them, make a factory or a company,” things will be better, he said. “Of course the [Afghan] government doesn’t have the money to do that. But the U.S. Army can do that.”

Base officials say they’re doing what they can.

Currently, the base spends about $30,000 a month on day labor, said Sgt. Nathaniel Adamson, a member of the 111th Area Support Group who works closely with many of the day laborers.

“A lot of the work they’re doing are created jobs,” he said. “I think it’s a good program for a lot of people out there who work and benefit. There are some people who get picked up [to work] every day.”

“There’s a lot of times you want to do more for them,” he said. “You can’t help them all. There’s no way.”

Hanan, when asked to propose a solution, simply raised his hands in exasperation.

“I don’t know,” he said. “What should I do? God knows. Nobody knows.”

Soldier Acquitted in Afghan Prisoner Abuse
By ALICIA A. CALDWELL, Associated Press Writer
FORT BLISS, Texas - Sgt. Alan J. Driver kissed a photo album with pictures of his children after a military jury acquitted him of abusing prisoners at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

The jury deliberated for only 15 minutes before acquitting Driver on Thursday. He was the last of 11 Army reservists from Cincinnati-based 377th MP Company who had been charged with mistreating detainees.

"I just did my job," Driver said after hugging his wife and parents. "We were put in a difficult situation with minimal training and did the best with what we had."

Driver was accused of being one of several soldiers who beat a detainee known as Habibullah, who the Army says died of his injuries. Driver was also accused of throwing a shackled and handcuffed prisoner, Omar al-Farouq, against a wall.

Driver's attorney, Capt. Michael Waddington, had argued that prosecution witnesses had no credibility.

He showed jurors a receipt indicating that al-Farouq, a former al-Qaida operative, was released from the jail in good condition on Sept. 20, before the time prosecutors alleged Driver threw him against a wall.

"All we have is clouded memories, completely differing accounts of what happened," Waddington told the jury.

Capt. John B. Parker, the prosecutor, stressed that the case was about abuse of authority.

"It's not a question of confusion. It's not a question of fog of war. It's two specific incidents where a soldier went over the line," Parker said.

Prosecutors struggled with wobbly witnesses and little evidence. During the only day of testimony, one member of the 377th MP Company said it was not uncommon for MPs to forcefully wake sleeping detainees, and another testified he never saw Driver mistreat anyone.

The investigation was launched shortly after Habibullah and another man known as Dilawar died within days of each other in Bagram in December 2002. No one has been prosecuted for the detainees' deaths, though both cases were ruled homicides and the Army claims the men were beaten to death at the jail.

Only one soldier from Driver's unit was convicted by an Army jury, and he was spared jail time. Two pleaded guilty to assault and went to prison before being kicked out of the Army. Charges against three others were dropped in part because investigators in some pretrial hearings found no evidence of wrongdoing.

Driver's mother, Lori Marsh, was relieved by Thursday's verdict but still astonished that her son was prosecuted.

"You just never expect to have to fight for your son against your government," Marsh said with tears in her eyes.

Parker and other prosecutors declined to comment after the verdict.

Remember Afghanistan?
Los Angeles Times- Commentary February 23, 2006
By Neamat Nojumi, Neamat Nojumi, a senior fellow at the Center for World Religion, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University, was an Afghan military commander during the anti-Soviet war in the 1980s.

AFGHANISTAN'S impressive achievements are in danger of being lost. Donor nations aren't giving enough development funds. Western nongovernmental organizations are mismanaging reconstruction. And Pakistan has failed to arrest Al Qaeda and Taliban militants in its backyard. The optimism and hope generated by last October's presidential election and last month's legislative voting will soon fade. Afghanistan could again become a base for global Islamist terrorism.

Four years after the U.S.-led coalition kicked the Taliban out of power, Taliban and Al Qaeda remnants continue to use Pakistan as a sanctuary, training base and staging area for attacks on coalition and Afghan soldiers. More than 50 U.S. soldiers and hundreds of Afghans have been killed this year. Reconstruction is stalled in Afghanistan's border provinces because of a lack of security. Last year, groups of five to 10 engaged in the cross-border attacks from Pakistan, according to tribal elders I met in eastern Nuristan province. This year, the attackers number in the 70s and 80s and often wear uniforms.

Despite Pakistani military operations in Waziristan, periodic arrests of militants and announcements that the border has been "sealed," Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and his generals still play both fireman and arsonist in Afghanistan. This will only worsen unless President Bush and Congress stop indulging Pakistan's two-track policy.

The great majority of Afghans I've spoken with believe that the promises of reconstruction assistance from the Afghan government and the international community remain unfulfilled. Several major roads have been built, and many schools have reopened. But four years into reconstruction, most of Kabul lacks electricity, the capital's streets are unpaved and the sewer and water systems don't work.

The lack of reconstruction programs is most evident in Afghanistan's rural areas. A doctor in the Guzara district of Herat province told me that many pregnant women die on their way to hospitals because they lack transportation or the roads are impassable. More than $5 billion in reconstruction aid has not bought one new power plant, even though electricity is a crucial ingredient in agricultural and industrial development. Opium production is at unacceptably high levels, with terrorist groups and warlords reaping large profits trafficking drugs. Corruption is on the rise.

A big part of the problem is the more than 1,000 Western nongovernmental organizations that receive and channel the aid. Too often they perform governmental functions that elected but under-sourced Afghans should be doing. Maintaining the maze of foreign NGOs is also wasteful. Their logistics, personnel, housing and other internal costs eat up more than 60% of the assistance money (some estimates are as high as 80%). Afghans joke that they suffered under the Soviets, then the Taliban and now the NGOs.

Afghanistan's governing institutions remain too weak to be effective. Little progress has been made in preparing Afghans to govern. Afghan judges and legal experts repeatedly told me that resolving the huge upsurge in property disputes left over from 20 years of war is beyond the judiciary's ability.

In judicial as well as other governmental and administrative areas, aid agencies are not devoting sufficient attention to training and deploying a professional Afghan cadre of managers and skilled civil servants essential to administering the country. Weak democratic institutions and an inadequate civil society undercut President Hamid Karzai's ability to deal with Muslim extremists and warlords.

What's to be done?

First and foremost, the United States, bilateral donors and the United Nations must investigate and eliminate the inefficiency and mismanagement rampant within the NGO-administered reconstruction. Government functions performed by non-Afghans should be transferred to Afghan institutions, both public and private, as expeditiously as possible.

To reduce corruption, donors should demand more accountability from the Karzai government. When the new Afghan parliament convenes, it will target this corruption. Karzai would be wise to fire some ministers and implement anti-corruption regulations before that day.

Friends of Afghanistan need to recognize that the successful September legislative elections didn't make the country a functioning nation-state. Continued progress doesn't depend on more foreign troops, but on a smarter, redirected and better-funded reconstruction strategy.