Afghanistan News January 1, 2006

January 1, 2006

Al Jazeera team freed in Kabul after questioning
(Reuters) - January 1, 2006
DUBAI - US and Afghan forces released the Kabul correspondent of Al Jazeera television, his driver and a cameraman on Sunday hours after holding and questioning them, the station said.

An Al Jazeera journalist said from Kabul that the three had not been aware of any restrictions on reporting in the area where they were held.

The Qatar-based station earlier quoted a statement from the US forces as saying the team had been filming locations of a ”security nature” near the headquarters of the US-led troops operating in Afghanistan.

Military fears big Afghan losses
Michael Smith The Times - Sunday (UK) January 1, 2006
BRITISH troops set to deploy to southern Afghanistan this spring could sustain losses on a scale not seen since the Falklands war, military intelligence officers have warned.

They say insurgent forces in the south are preparing for a large offensive by Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, backed by sophisticated weapons and training from Iran.

The warnings follow an increase in fighting in southern Afghanistan over the past year. Several thousand people, including about 100 US soldiers, have been killed.

The insurgents regard the withdrawal of 2,000 US troops as a key victory and are expected to press home their advantage against the British-led Nato force.

An advance party of British troops from 16 Air Assault Brigade will fly to Afghanistan this week to begin preparing for the deployment.

A new terror group linked to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s Al-Qaeda in Iraq has emerged in southern Afghanistan and is imitating his methods. Messages from the group, Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, have appeared on the same jihadist internet sites as those of Zarqawi’s terror group.

The Taliban has regrouped, adapting its tactics to a classic insurgency campaign. There has also been a surge in suicide bombings and in roadside bombs similar to those introduced to Iraq last year.

US intelligence officers in southern Afghanistan and at the Coalition Joint Task Force headquarters in Bagram, north of Kabul, are blaming Iran for the increase in the use of sophisticated technology.

The British troops’ anti-narcotics operations could also provoke attacks from local warlords. The Dutch will decide on February 2 whether to withdraw their contingent because of warnings from military intelligence about the risks. They are expected to do so.

The plan is for just over 3,000 of the 6,000-strong Nato force to come from the UK, with Canada and the Dutch supplying the remaining troops. A British battle group commanded by 16 Air Assault Brigade and led by 3rd Battalion the Parachute Regiment will take over Helmand province from the Americans.

Briefings to officers from 3 Para highlighted the possibility of casualties on a par with those during the 1982 Falklands conflict, when 255 British servicemen died.

NATO Troops Will Relieve Americans in Fighting the Taliban
By ERIC SCHMITT The New York Times December 31, 2005
KANDAHAR AIR BASE, Afghanistan, Dec. 30 - NATO troops that will replace American soldiers in southern Afghanistan next spring are planning to conduct counterinsurgency missions against Taliban fighters and other militants despite initial opposition from some alliance members, American and allied commanders said Friday.

Soldiers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization now oversee security and reconstruction in northern and western Afghanistan, and are scheduled to replace more than 2,500 European-based American soldiers here in the south by March. Some allies, including Germany and France, had opposed expanding NATO's role to include the much riskier counterinsurgency missions.

But a senior officer from Canada said Friday that his country, which will command the NATO troops, will use the same rules of engagement that American forces have used. "In Canada, it's clear that this is not a peacekeeping mission," said the officer, Col. S. J. Bowes, who heads a Canadian civil and military reconstruction team here. "We understand that there is an active insurgency."

The American officer who will transfer command of the sector, Col. Kevin Owens, who leads the 173rd Airborne Brigade, said American and Canadian military teams had been working closely over the past several weeks to prepare for the transition. "In every instance, at all levels, they are prepared to sustain the offensive nature of our operations here," he said.

The uncertainty over the alliance's commitment to counterinsurgency missions in the south had prompted some senior American commanders to warn that the slow but steady political, economic and security gains they say have been accomplished here could be at risk. Violence has flared in the south in the past several months, with Taliban forces conducting a campaign of assassinations, intimidation and roadside bombings that some military analysts say is aimed partly at shaking NATO's commitment.

Britain and the Netherlands will join Canada in assuming control in the south, along with a much smaller contingent of American support troops. Maj. Gen. Jason K. Kamiya, the senior American ground commander in Afghanistan, expressed optimism on Friday that all three allies would heed pleas that they not limit troop operations.

Such restrictions, called national caveats, have severely limited the kinds of missions allied forces can carry out in Afghanistan and Iraq, and have been a source of frustration for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his top regional commanders.

With NATO moving into the south, the Pentagon has said it will be able to reduce the overall number of American troops in Afghanistan to about 16,500 troops from 19,000 now. The United States will still have the largest number of foreign soldiers in Afghanistan, and will keep control of the country's eastern sector, the scene of many firefights and skirmishes along the mountainous border with Pakistan.

Newly trained Afghan soldiers and police officers are also playing a greater role, General Kamiya said, noting that the number of Afghan Army battalions has grown to 40 from 18 when he arrived in March. Twenty-four of those battalions are considered combat units. American trainers praised the Afghan forces' ability to glean intelligence and conduct small-unit operations, but cautioned that they were still dependent on American logistics and other support.

General Kamiya sought to play down the impact of the recent violence, saying the attacks, including several suicide bombings, were "a sign of their desperation." He said there was no concrete evidence that tactics or foreign fighters were flowing directly from Iraq. Instead, he said impoverished Afghan youths who had been recruited by militant Islamic schools, or madrasas, were to blame for the rash of suicide bombings.

One of General Kamiya's senior subordinates, Col. Patrick J. Donahue, who commands 4,100 American troops in the eastern sector, said his forces had not engaged foreign fighters. "The guys we're fighting and capturing are Afghans," he said.

American intelligence officials have said, however, that the Taliban militants, who typically fight in groups of 15 to 20 men but can rally as many as 60, receive training and financial assistance from operatives of Al Qaeda in Pakistan.

The commanders spoke in interviews as Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited troops here and in Kabul.

Afghanistan's march to democracy
The New Nation (Bangladesh) Editorial By Dr. Abdulla Al-Madani Sun, 1 Jan 2006, 10:39:00
Last week, Afghanistan marked another milestone in its march to democracy by inaugurating its first popularly elected national assembly in more than 30 years.

This was the final step in the transition to democracy agreed at an international conference in Bonn, Germany, in 2001. Milestones along the way have included the adoption of a new constitution in 2003, the election of Hamid Karzai as president and the formation of a new government in 2004, and the holding of general elections in September of this year.

A national parliament last sat in Afghanistan in 1973, before a coup ended centuries of rule by the monarchy as well as the country's experiment with democracy that had begun with its first freely-elected parliament in 1965.

The event reminded many Afghans of the 1960s and early 1970s, a period remembered as the most peaceful and prosperous in the country's history.

One reason was the presence of former king Muhammad Zaher Shah (now bearer of the title "Father of the Nation" according to the new constitution) who addressed the inaugural session in the same way he used to do in bygone days. Another was the setting of both the opening ceremony and the swearing in of the new MPs in Afghanistan's old parliament building, which had served in the last two decades as a battleground, a hideout, or a prison. The building, a heap of rubble a year ago, has been reconstructed, in a $3.5 million project, to serve as the national assembly's interim home

The new parliament consists of two chambers: People's Council (Wolesi Jirga), whose 249 members are popularly elected, and Council of Elders (Meshrano Jirga), whose 102 members are chosen by the country's 34 provincial councils or appointed by the president to represent minorities.

Despite the more than 70 officially registered political parties in the country, the vast majority of the new lawmakers consider themselves independents. But this does not rule out their connections or affiliation with one political group or another.

It is hard to draw a political map for the Wolesi Jirga, given the personality-based nature of Afghan politics, not to mention the history of radical shifts of alliances among Afghan politicians in the past. One, however, can cautiously divide the council's members into four broad and often overlapping camps.

According to analyst Amin Tarzi, these camps are: first, former mujaheddin, including some 40 members of Hizb-e-Islami who distanced themselves from their party leader and current anti-government fugitive Gulbuddin Hekmatyar; second, independents, technocrats, and those tribal leaders who are not affiliated with certain parties; third, former communists and leftists; and fourth, former members of the Taliban movement.

Although the first camp seems to enjoy a majority, several factors may prevent it from successfully pushing for its conservative agendas, including retroactive action on many of Karzai's decrees and appointments and the reinserting of religion into politics of the country.

These factors include division and competition among the mujaheddin on ethnic, sectarian, or tribal lines, their lacking of any strong leadership, their fears of a possible reopen of their black files of atrocities in the 1990s, and the affiliation of some of them with President Karzai. They also include the unity of the second camp behind Karzai, who constitutionally enjoys strong power.

One of the positive aspects of the new parliament is that 68 of the Wolesi Council's members are women, a turnaround from the days of the Taliban's ban on females taking part in politics or even taking jobs. With this, Afghanistan now ranks 20th in terms of parliamentary representation of women in the world.

Against this encouraging aspect, however, nearly 60 percent of new MPs are former warlords with very bad human rights records, 20 legislators still have active private militias, and at least 20 more have been involved in drug trade.

As a result, many ordinary Afghans have voiced their disappointment, saying "how can we trust a body that includes warlords and notorious human rights abusers as lawmakers?"

One of the first issues the new parliament might have to confront, therefore, is whether such human rights abusers will be brought to justice. While female MPs and technocrats strongly support the idea, others are expected to unite and use all tools at their disposal to opposite it on the pretext that seeking justice now would be counterproductive and would fall in the Taliban's interest.

Despite all doubts and reservations, the fact that a parliament is sitting at all is a victory for Afghans. It has given them hope that their country can move forward and cannot be held back by the toppled Taliban-led insurgency.
(Dr. Abdulla Al-Madani, academic researcher and lecturer on Asian affairs.)

Clerics defy Musharraf order to expel foreign students
By Massoud Ansari in Karachi The Telegraph (UK) January 1, 2006
Radical clerics have ignored an edict to expel all foreign students from Pakistan’s madrassas, heightening fears that the Islamic schools will continue to be recruiting grounds for young Britons intent on pursuing jihad.

After the July 7 London bombings, in which three out of four suicide bombers were of Pakistani origin, President Pervez Musharraf pledged to the West that foreigners would be excluded from the schools.

Two of the bombers, Shehzad Tanweer and Mohammed Sidique Khan, are believed to have visited madrassas. Within three weeks of the atrocity, Gen Musharraf ordered all non-Pakistanis be expelled by the end of 2005. But he backed down in the subsequent battle of wills with Islamists and the deadline passed yesterday without the edict being enacted.

Western intelligence agencies suspect that madrassas served as rendezvous points between senior al-Qaeda operatives and Tanweer, Khan and other British recruits. The general relented on Thursday after clerics said they would rather be incarcerated than comply with orders to expel foreigners or give their names to the authorities.

Hanif Jalandhri, the head of the Federation of Madrassas, said that about 1,000 foreign students had left since July. Of the 700 who remained, those facing forced repatriation saw themselves as victims of the president’s efforts to curry favour with America and Britain.

Maulana Fazlur Rahman, a cleric who heads Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), known for its close ties to Afghanistan’s ousted Taliban regime, said: “We’ll do our best to keep the students with us and prefer arrest to giving the foreigners to police.” Pakistan’s interior ministry abruptly dropped threats to begin arresting violators, and then denied that there had been any ultimatum in the first place. “There is no deadline for it,” said Aftab Khan Sherpao, the interior minister.

The JUI leader accused Gen Musharraf of violating both the Pakistani constitution and the United Nations Convention on Human Rights by forcing out students in the absence of evidence that they had committed crimes.

Qari Hanif Jalhandri, the general secretary of the Union of Seminaries, vowed that the measure would be contested in the Pakistani courts if it led to students being deported against their will. “It is a black law and we are confident that the court’s decision would go in our favour,” he said. Islamabad has not said if it will set a new deadline for expulsion or whether it will enforce the existing one. December 31 was also supposed to be the deadline for every madrassa in the country to register with the government.

Yesterday, however, only about 6,000 of the 20,000 or so had done so – despite a watering-down of the rules on the information they had to submit. In September, ministers dropped the requirement for each school to declare its sources of funding – meaning cash from terrorist affiliates can still flow in.

At the time of the bombings, officials estimated that up to 1,700 foreign nationals, including citizens of Britain, the United States and France were attending madrassas. MI5 and MI6 feared that a small number could be manipulated in those schools linked to al-Qaeda and recruited as bombers.

The Pakistani government’s jitters underline the delicacy of its position in trying to keep a lid on terrorist recruitment. While Gen Musharraf has swung firmly behind the West in the war on terror, he also wants to avoid alienating influential Islamic parties within his own country, some of which have links with extremists.

Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI, has known links with jihadist groups and elements within it have provided backing for al-Qaeda-type groups. Ten days ago, the authorities in the province of eastern Punjab said 91 students from Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Tanzania and Bangladesh would have to be expelled by December 31.

In some areas where Islamic parties have strong backing, government officials have now said they will refuse to enforce the expulsions. Among them is the provincial government in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province.

Akram Khan Durrani, the NWFP chief minister, said expulsions would not be in the interests either of Pakistan or of Pakistani students studying abroad.

CIA may need decade to rebuild clandestine service
By David Morgan Sun Jan 1, 9:36 AM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A former CIA counterterrorism officer who tracked Osama bin Laden through the mountains of Afghanistan says the U.S. spy agency could need a decade to build up its clandestine service for the U.S. war on terrorism.

Gary Berntsen, a decorated espionage officer who led a paramilitary unit code-named "Jawbreaker" in the war that toppled the Taliban after the September 11 attacks, said CIA Director Porter Goss faces an uphill battle to fill the agency's senior ranks with aggressive, seasoned operatives.

"He's probably more aggressive than most of the senior officers in the clandestine service. So I think he's having to pull them along a bit," Berntsen said in an interview.

"(Goss) is trying to improve the situation. But it's going to be tough. The rebuilding is going to take years. A decade, at least," he told Reuters late last week.

The CIA, widely criticized for lapses involving prewar Iraq and the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, has seen its clandestine staff dwindle to less than 5,000 employees from a peak of over 7,000, intelligence sources say.

Experts blame a post-Cold War downturn in recruitment for a current lack of seasoned clandestine operatives that has been exacerbated by a rush to lucrative private sector jobs in recent years.

"We have a smaller number of really, really aggressive, creative members of our leadership in the senior service," said Berntsen, who recently published a book about his exploits in the war on terrorism, titled "Jawbreaker" (Crown Publishing).

Former CIA Director George Tenet told the September 11 commission in April 2004 the CIA would need five years to produce a clandestine service fully capable of tackling the terrorism threat.

'CIA IS MOVING AGGRESSIVELY TO REBUILD'

Goss later said at his September 2004 Senate confirmation hearings that rebuilding the clandestine operation would be "a long build-out, a long haul."

President George W. Bush issued an order last year that called for a 50 percent increase in CIA clandestine officers and analysts to be completed "as soon as feasible."

"The CIA is moving aggressively to rebuild and enhance its capabilities across the board," CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said.

But intelligence sources say the rebuilding process has been complicated by disaffection for Goss' leadership within the clandestine service.

Years of double-digit growth in federal spending on intelligence that followed the September 11 attacks may also be about to end.

John Negroponte, the new U.S. director of national intelligence, has endorsed an intelligence budget for fiscal year 2007 that is relatively flat, with current spending levels believed to total about $44 billion for the 15-agency intelligence community. Fiscal 2007 begins in October.

Berntsen, 48, who also led the CIA Counterterrorism Center's response to the 1998 al Qaeda bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa, sued the CIA in July, accusing the spy agency of trying to stop him from publishing his book.

Gimigliano said the CIA reviewed Bernsten's book before publication only to ensure that it contained no classified information.

In the book, Berntsen says his Jawbreaker team tracked bin Laden to Afghanistan's Tora Bora region late in 2001 and could have killed or captured the al Qaeda leader there if military officials had agreed to his request for an additional force of about 800 U.S. troops.

But the troops were never sent and bin Laden was able to escape, he said.

His account contradicts public statements by Bush and former Gen. Tommy Franks, who maintained that U.S. officials were never sure bin Laden was at Tora Bora.

Trade pact with Tashkent
Dawn (Pakistan) January 1, 2006 issue
ISLAMABAD, Dec 31: Pakistan and Uzbekistan have agreed to enter into a trilateral transit trade agreement with Afghanistan to benefit from the Gwadar port facility and land routes.

A decision to this effect was reached at the second meeting of Pakistan-Uzbekistan Joint Ministerial Commission held in Tashkent on Dec 29-30, said an official announcement on Saturday.

A 10-member delegation led by Federal Minister for Water and Power Liaquat Ali Jatoi and comprising secretaries of economic affairs division and communication, additional secretary food and agriculture, adviser to the ministry of water and power and senior officials of commerce, interior and foreign affairs represented Pakistan.

Both sides agreed to enhance cooperation in bilateral trade, scientific and technological fields, telecommunication, food and agriculture, and signed a joint protocol in this regard.

The two sides signed a protocol to organize mutual visits of business delegations, hold single-country exhibitions, and promote cooperation in the fields of water and power, science and technology, food and agriculture, tourism, culture, information technology and telecommunication.

The two sides entered into an understanding, in principle, that Pakistan would purchase cotton from Uzbekistan on a regular basis.

With a view to creating favourable conditions for bilateral trade, both sides agreed to develop cooperation between banking and financial institutions of the two states.

Pakistan offered technical and financial expertise in the textile sector and a credit line of $5 million to Uzbekistan for import of textile machinery and other engineering goods from Pakistan.

The two countries agreed to establish a joint committee on science and technology and start short-term training courses in various fields for each other.