Pakistani security officials claim a rocket launched from neighboring Afghanistan killed at least 14 people in northern Pakistan's tribal region, not far from the Afghan border. This was the second alleged case of cross-border fire this week in areas thought to be havens for al-Qaida and Taleban insurgents.

Officials say at least one rocket hit a village elder's home in Pakistan's Bajaur tribal area early Friday morning. Local authorities claim the attack was staged from across the border in Afghanistan's Kunar province, about seven kilometers away.

U.S.-led forces patrolling the Afghan side of the border have come under frequent attacks from Taleban insurgents in that area.

Last week, local Pakistani residents of Waziristan say, eight people were killed during an operation against suspected Afghan militants, which appeared to spill over the border.

Pakistan Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Tasneem Aslam says both incidents are under investigation.

"Certainly, if our innocent civilians are being killed in cross-border fire, this is an issue of concern for us," he said.

Both cases occurred inside Pakistan's remote tribal belt bordering Afghanistan.

Pakistan has deployed some 70,000 troops to the region to help secure the border and flush out suspected militants.

BBC News Friday, 13 January 2006

At least 14 people have been killed in a rocket attack on a Pakistani village near the Afghan border, local officials and residents say.

Locals claimed the missiles were launched from neighbouring Afghanistan but officials there deny it.

Last weekend, Pakistan protested after eight died in nearby Waziristan in what it said was cross-border firing.

Afghan and US-led coalition forces believe Taleban-led militants take advantage of the porous border.

Helicopters

The US military in Afghanistan said on Friday it had no reports of US operations in the area of the latest attack.

The attack took place in the village of Damadola in the Bajaur tribal area, about 200km (125 miles) north-west of Pakistan's capital, Islamabad.

The village is about 7km inside Pakistan.

Reporters who reached Damadola spoke of three houses hundreds of metres apart that had been destroyed.

Sami Ullah, a 17-year-old student, told Associated Press: "My entire family was killed and I don't know whom should I blame for it. I only seek justice from God."

Shah Zaman said he lost two of his sons and a daughter. "I ran out and saw planes. I ran toward a nearby mountain with my wife. When we were running we heard three more explosions. I saw my home being hit.

"I don't know who carried out this attack and why. We were needlessly attacked. We are law-abiding people."

Banned group

Pakistani military spokesman Maj-Gen Shaukat Sultan said the source of the attack was not yet clear.

The deputy provincial governor of Afghanistan's neighbouring province of Kunar, Noor Mohammed, denied the strike was launched from within Afghanistan.

"I have been in touch with all the security forces in Kunar and no one has heard about this," he said.

"I don't think it's true the rocket came from within Afghanistan."

A Pakistani intelligence official told Reuters news agency: "The casualties may be much higher. People are very angry. They are not allowing access, so exact figures of deaths and wounded people are not available."

He said Damadola was the stronghold of a banned pro-Taleban group, the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi.

Pakistan protested to US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan after eight Pakistanis were killed in alleged cross-border firing in Miran Shah, Waziristan, last Saturday.

The US military denied it had bombed the area.

The US has about 20,000 troops in Afghanistan, but Pakistan does not allow them to operate across the border.

Pakistan has about 70,000 troops in the border region.

Source: Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA)  13 Jan 2006

The Afghan envoy to the European Union has urged the Dutch parliament to approve the deploying of more than 1,000 troops to an unsettled southern province in Afghanistan, hours before the Dutch cabinet is to debate the issue.

The choice lay "between the struggle against the fascist Taliban and the terrorists of al-Qaeda and bombs in your own country and trains full of blood as in Madrid", Humayun Tandar told national public television.

Afghans were keenly awaiting the arrival of the Dutch troops, the Brussels-based envoy said, adding the Dutch as a prosperous nation had a "responsibility to help others".

Tandar acknowledged that the south-central province of Uruzgan where the troops will be deployed was dangerous.

"The mission will perhaps cost a few soldiers their lives, but it will save the lives of thousands of others," he said.

And he predicted the troops, whose main task is reconstruction, would see only small-scale conflict with the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

The Dutch cabinet has repeatedly postponed taking a firm decision on the deployment of 1,200 to 1,400 troops to Uruzgan in June as part of an extended operation by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. dpa rpm jh

AFP via Yahoo! News

THE HAGUE (AFP) - The Dutch government wants to send troops to Afghanistan to join the NATO-led peacekeeping force, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said, as international pressure mounted on it do so.

"The government wants to take part in the ISAF misssion," he said following a cabinet meeting on Friday. "We want to help the people of Afghanistan."

An official of the Atlantic alliance hinted Thursday that NATO would like the Netherlands to agree to contribute troops to expand its International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) before a London conference on Afghanistan at the end of January.

But the Dutch parliament, where there is heavy opposition to the move, is not likely to make the required decision until February.

Some 1,100 Dutch troops would be deployed as part of a NATO force in the southern Uruzgan province, one of Afghanistan's most dangerous, which would eventually total about 6,000 men.

The government put off a decision without going to parliament in December in the face of hostility from the public and a majority of deputies.

An opinion poll published Thursday showed half the country opposed to the despatch of troops.

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer -- himself Dutch -- earlier this week called for the Netherlands' decision-making process to "be speeded up as much as possible."

Radio Netherlands, Netherlands 1/13/06

The Dutch cabinet's 'intention' to deploy Dutch troops on a new mission in southern Afghanistan has been attracting an unusual amount of attention not only in the Netherlands but elsewhere in the world as well, for a possible Dutch 'No' is likely to have a dramatic impact on NATO.

On 8 December 2004, the countries which make up NATO decided to expand the alliance's mission inside Afghanistan to the relatively dangerous south of the country. The proposal had the backing of the current Dutch government. In the months leading up to the decision, Dutch Defence Minister Henk Kamp had more or less committed the Netherlands to playing an active part in this extension of operations to the south. Negotiations were held within NATO and with the United Kingdom and Canada, which - as in the case of the Netherlands - were each prepared to take on responsibility for one of Afghanistan's southern provinces.

The junior partner's doubts

However, as is standard practice in many NATO countries, the Dutch parliament still had to give the green light for the new mission to go ahead. This is where the problems arose. The smallest of the three parties that make up the current Dutch government, the progressive liberal D'66 party, said that is was categorically against the country's participation in the new NATO mission in the south of Afghanistan, because it believes the situation there to be too dangerous.

It's worth pointing out here that D'66 does, however, support the NATO deployment of Dutch troops in the north of Afghanistan and the role played by Dutch Special Forces in 'Enduring Freedom', the US-led operation against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the south and east of the country.

Media offensive

The position taken by D'66 created a deadlock which has yet to be resolved. NATO responded almost immediately with a media offensive. The alliance's current Secretary-General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, just happens to be a Dutchman, a former foreign minister and ex-leader of the Dutch Christian Democrat CDA party, the largest partner in the current cabinet. In recent weeks he has appeared often in the Dutch media in an effort to clarify the new mission and indeed argue for the Dutch to take part in it.

The story has, however, also been attracting media attention elsewhere, particularly in Canada and the UK. One reason for this lies in the fact that a possible 'No' from the Netherlands would mean that these two countries may have to supply larger numbers of their own troops. The same applies to the United States, which already shoulders the lion's share of the NATO mission in Afghanistan.

In Australia, too, there's also been an exceptional amount of media interest in recent weeks as regards what's taking place in the Netherlands. This is because Australia is due to supply some 300 troops to carry out reconstruction work in the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan, the one which the Dutch would be in charge of should they decide to take part. It would be the task of the Dutch troops to provide protection for the Australians, and the media in Australia have suggested that without the Dutch there will be no protection, hence there'll be no Australians heading to the province either.

Feasible

The fact that the complexities of politics in the Netherlands are not equally well understood across the globe became clear in a report published by French news agency AFP. The report - which appeared earlier this month - stated that not only the Dutch junior coalition partner was against the new NATO mission, but also the country's armed forces. The report was totally inaccurate. The commander in chief of the armed forces had in fact said that, while the mission was not without risk, it was certainly a feasible one.

In the meantime, the doubts being voiced in the Netherlands have appeared on occasion to take on truly dramatic significance. This week, for example, well-known US commentator William Pfaff went so far as to say that, thanks to the Netherlands, not only the new mission but also the entire future of both Afghanistan and NATO hang in the balance.

A similar statement came also this week from the European Union's representative in Afghanistan, Francesc Vendrell, who said that it would be a 'heavy blow for Europe's prestige' if the Netherlands does not send troops to south Afghanistan. All in all, it's clear that both the government and parliament in The Hague are under considerable international pressure to say 'Yes'.

January 13, 2006 via Anti War.com by Jim Lobe

If U.S. President George W. Bush is looking for good news, he should be talking less about Iraq and more about Afghanistan, according to the latest survey results from that country.

Despite grinding poverty, a widening divide between rich and poor, and the continued empowerment of regional warlords, more than four out of five Afghans believe their country is going "in the right direction" and have a favorable opinion of the United States, according to a poll by the Washington-based Program on International Policy Attitudes conducted in late November and early December.

The survey, which interviewed more than 2,000 in Afghans in all but four of the country's 34 provinces, also found strongly negative attitudes toward both the Taliban, which ruled the country from 1996 until its ouster by rebel and U.S. forces in late 2001, and al-Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden.

Nearly nine out of 10 respondents said they had an unfavorable opinion of the Taliban, the ultra-orthodox Islamist movement whose forces continue to challenge the government of U.S.-backed Prime Minister Hamid Karzai, particularly in predominantly Pashtun areas in the south and along the eastern border with Pakistan.

Only 8 percent of respondents said they had a favorable opinion of their former rulers, while just 5 percent had good things to say about bin Laden. The Taliban's refusal to turn bin Laden over to the United States in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon resulted in the U.S.-led military campaign that ousted it.

The survey's findings, which echo those of a somewhat more detailed ABC News poll of just over 1,000 Afghan adults in early October, came as little surprise to Barnett Rubin, an Afghan expert at New York University who has advised the United Nations on its work in the country.

"All the Afghan poll results are somewhat more positive than my own impressions," he said. "People there tend to complain a lot. But the fact is they think [the current situation] is so much better than it used to be [under the Taliban]."

"Afghanistan is not like Iraq," he said, noting that surveys of Iraqi opinion have shown far more hostility toward the U.S. and particularly its military presence there.

While 83 percent of Afghan respondents said they had a favorable opinion of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, nearly two-thirds of Iraqi respondents told an ABC poll in November they opposed the presence of U.S.-led coalition forces there.

According to another poll sponsored by the British Defense Ministry in October, 82 percent of Iraqi respondents said they "strongly oppose" the presence of foreign troops in their country, while 45 percent approved of insurgent attacks against them.

By contrast, nearly 80 percent of Afghan respondents said they approved of U.S. military operations against al-Qaeda. Even in predominantly Pashtun regions, where such operations have sometimes resulted in the killings of innocent civilians, more than two-thirds of respondents voiced support.

Rubin said the foreign presence in Afghanistan is considered significantly more legitimate than in Iraq. "For one thing, the intervention there was based on actual facts; when they invaded Afghanistan, they found that al-Qaeda was actually there."

Moreover, he noted, "the troop presence in Afghanistan is very unobtrusive except in a few provinces. Afghans didn't feel their country was really sovereign before, because of all of the external interference [by its neighbors] and that this intervention, which is technically under the aegis of the UN, not the U.S., is much better – that the troops are there to preserve Afghan sovereignty against outsiders who haven't respected it."

Indeed, asked about the influence of Pakistan, which had provided strong backing for the Taliban from its rise to power 10 years ago until the Sept. 11 attacks, nearly two-thirds of Afghan respondents called it "negative."

In recent months, tensions between the two countries have risen amid charges by senior Afghan officials that Pakistan continues to harbor Taliban insurgents who infiltrate the border. Only 21 percent said they thought Pakistan "is seriously trying to stop the Taliban from operating in Pakistan."

Asked the same question about Iran's influence, Afghan respondents split on whether it was positive or negative, although senior officials in Kabul have said recently that in their view, Tehran was not causing problems in the country.

The survey, which was carried out in face-to-face interviews by ACSOR/D3 Systems, sought as representative a sample as possible. Respondents were equally divided between men and women and were proportionately divided between urban and rural-dwellers. Fifty percent were illiterate, 20 percent completed primary school, 26 percent secondary school, and 5 percent had some higher education.

Ethnic Pashtuns, the country's largest minority, were somewhat underrepresented, accounting for nearly 37 percent of respondents, while Tajiks, the second-largest minority, accounted for nearly 39 percent.

Strong support was expressed for Karzai himself – 83 percent expressed a favorable opinion, 68 percent "very favorable." By contrast, 88 percent of respondents expressed an unfavorable opinion of the Taliban, with 62 percent "very unfavorable."

A whopping 91 percent of respondents said they regarded his government as either "very" (55 percent) or "somewhat effective." Local leaders, on the other hand, were not as highly regarded.

Of the 81 percent who expressed a favorable opinion of the United States, half qualified their view as "very favorable." Eighty-three percent said they had a favorable (39 percent "very favorable") view of "the U.S. military forces in our country."

Washington recently launched a plan to gradually reduce its commitments – both military and economic – in Afghanistan. It plans to cut its troop strength in the country from the current 19,000 to 16,500 and to transfer more responsibility for security in the Pashtun regions to NATO. In addition, it is expected to reduce its development aid from just over $1 billion last year by about $400 million in 2006.

According to the survey, international organizations and agencies are also highly regarded by the population. Ninety-three percent said they had either a "very" or "somewhat favorable" opinion of the United Nations. Eighty-one percent said they considered international agencies providing aid for reconstruction to be either very or somewhat effective; 82 percent characterized the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) as "effective."

Two-thirds said they approved of the deployment of ISAF forces beyond Kabul, although only 48 percent of Uzbeks, who are concentrated in the northern part of the country, said they supported such a move.

More than three-quarters of respondents said they approved of efforts by international military forces to stop the cultivation of opium poppies in Afghanistan, a growing concern of U.S., UN, and European officials there who say that the drug trade now accounts for more than half of the nation's economy – or about $2.7 billion annually.

(Inter Press Service)

Sioux Falls Argus Leader-U.S. Article Published: 01/13/06

Despite a recent increase in insurgent activities, Afghanistan has reached the point where its greatest need is expertise in building irrigation systems and roads and helping farmers revive traditional orchard agriculture, Rep. Stephanie Herseth said Thursday.

Much of that expertise resides in U.S. land grant schools such as South Dakota State University, she said, urging researchers there to consider helping rebuild Afghanistan's agriculture.

Afghanistan, which is east of Iran and west of China, has been torn apart the past 25 years by a Soviet invasion, Taliban rule, and al-Qaida and regional warlords.

Herseth, a South Dakota Democrat, met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in the capital city of Kabul and also toured Kandahar in the southeast. She was a member of a congressional delegation from the House Agriculture Committee. Other members were Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, Democratic Rep. David Scott of Georgia and Republican Reps. Frank Lucas of Oklahoma, Jerry Moran of Kansas and Jean Schmidt of Ohio.

Herseth said Karzai "asked us to be helpful in figuring ways to help farmers get back to traditional practices and to commodities they have traditionally grown."

C.Y. Wang, interim associate director of the SDSU Experiment Stations, said university researchers have long studied agriculture in semiarid central and western South Dakota. While they have useful skills and knowledge, no plan is in place for the university or researchers to reach out to Afghanistan through the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the Agency for International Development, he said.

"One thing I can convey is we certainly have expertise, and we are willing to see the potential possibilities that we can be partners with the federal government if they want to do that," Wang said.

Herseth also met with U.S. troops in Afghanistan, including Maj. Harold Walker of the South Dakota Army National Guard, who is embedded with the Afghan national army. Remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaida continue to use the Afghanistan-Pakistan border as a staging area, and many regional warlords have held onto power by integrating into the new national government. But reconstruction is at least as critical to Afghanistan's future as providing security, Herseth said.

"Our forces are acting as a buffer to keep the al -Qaida network beyond the borders," she said. "We need adequate personnel for provincial reconstruction teams to transfer knowledge about agriculture and irrigation. Security is sufficient so that can be done now."

Karzai was candid, however, in acknowledging that the while it has made progress, at this point the Afghan government can barely act as one. He told the congressional delegation "our government is not yet in a position to deliver services, not even basic services," Herseth said. She said there is a crucial need for "standing up these ministries in the new government in the provinces and regionally to establish legitimacy."

Reviving traditional agriculture would help wean Afghanistan from opium poppy production. Now, it is the largest producer of such poppies, in part because they are drought-resistant in an area beset by inadequate rainfall the past seven years. It's also because of Taliban threats that farmers "better plant poppies or they will be killed," Herseth said.

In the past, Afghanistan had a thriving export trade in fruits, nuts and raisins, "but because of the Taliban and the drought, traditional vineyards and orchards have dissipated," she said.

Resumption of a regional agricultural trade is an attainable goal, she said. But she thinks Afghanistan has little prospect of soon becoming a trading partner with nations such as the United States.

"Not in the near future," she said. However, she added, "it's not so far off it can't be envisioned, because of the history of the country."

Reach Peter Harriman at 575-3615.

'Our forces are acting as a buffer to keep the al-Qaida network beyond the borders. We need adequate personnel for provincial ... teams to transfer knowledge about agriculture and irrigation.'

State's Fried highlights the importance of NATO to Afghanistan's success

Source: Washington File By Vince Crawley 1/12/06

Washington -- Strengthening civil liberties and recent parliamentary elections have moved Afghanistan from “not free” to “partly free” on the Freedom House’s worldwide index of liberty.

Daniel Fried, the State Department’s assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs, attributes much of the country’s recent progress to the growing involvement of NATO allies in Afghanistan’s reconstruction following decades of civil turmoil.

“The alliance has made substantial progress in 2005,” Fried told the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant in an interview published January 10.

“There is an underlying commonality of views, of what we want to do together in the world,” Fried said. “We achieve these goals -- the U.S. and a strong European partner -- working through NATO, working through the U.S.-EU relationship to advance freedom and security in the world.”

“Afghanistan saw its status move from Not Free to Partly Free because of strengthening of civil society and a modest improvement in the rule of law following the holding of relatively successful parliamentary elections,” Freedom House’s director of research, Arch Puddington, said in a preliminary report released in late December 2005. The organization has been compiling data on measures of world freedom since 1972.

Afghanistan was one of 27 countries to improve its status on the Freedom House’s 2006 Freedom in the World report.

NATO currently has 9,000 troops in Afghanistan. The military alliance makes all of its formal decisions by consensus among its 26 member nations. The NATO allies in December 2005 agreed to send an additional 6,000 troops early in 2006 to accelerate reconstruction in Afghanistan. (See related story.)

NATO MISSION BOTH MILITARY AND HUMANITARIAN

NATO forces with the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan are involved in a host of security and peacekeeping missions throughout the country. In recent months, multinational troops have built schools, provided training for security forces, destroyed weapons stockpiles, and opened a newly rebuilt bridge in the western province of Herat.

“NATO is doing a good job,” Fried said. “In so many European countries we are seeing an increased commitment to NATO, we are seeing NATO acting more effectively in the world,” says Fried. “The Germans, Italians, Spanish, among others, are running PRTs [Provincial Reconstruction Teams] in Afghanistan. This is making a difference for people on the ground.”

On January 6, the Spanish contingent of ISAF arranged for a woman from Herat to be transferred to Madrid, Spain, to receive medical treatment for burns sustained in an accident a year ago. Spanish medical teams learned about her condition four months ago, attempted to treat her injuries but realized her condition was not improving. The 19-year-old woman and her father are now in Spain where she is receiving specialized care for two months to three months.

“It is important that NATO keep its word to the Afghan people, to the democratically elected Afghan government,” Fried said. “This is a multilateral effort by a great multilateral alliance. Together we are doing good things and we will do more.”

In the fall 2005, building sites for 10 schools opened in Herat. The construction of the schools is supported by ISAF and the Italian government as part of their commitment to the future of Afghanistan.

"Culture and education of young people are the main themes in order to lay the foundations for a good future,” said PRT Commander Colonel Amadeo Sperotto at the opening ceremony for the school construction. “And this is the reason we worked together with local authorities to give an answer to people's demands.”

Fried agrees. “There are emotions involved every time troops are put abroad. And that is understandable. But the conditions are there for a successful mission in Afghanistan. The alliance made a promise to the Afghan people and we have to carry it out.”

A summary of the Freedom House report is available on the organization’s Web site. Freedom House is a nonpartisan, nonprofit entity dedicated to promotion of freedom throughout the world.

See Rebuilding Afghanistan for more information on the country’s economic development and reconstruction efforts.

1/13/06

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - A photo exhibition in Kabul this week shows something rarely seen in public in Afghanistan: women smiling.

A mother with her daughter at her side stands in her garden, holding a tray of biscuits and looking happily at the camera. An old woman throws her blue burqa up over her head, revealing a big, nearly toothless grin.

The pictures provide a glimpse into the lives of women who for years were hidden behind all-encompassing veils or the closed doors of their homes in this deeply conservative Muslim country. It highlights both the progress and the problems many still face four years after the Taliban's ouster by U.S.-led forces in late 2001.

One of the photos shows a group of girls sitting on the ground reading books in a school courtyard in Logar province, next to the capital Kabul. Under the Taliban's draconian interpretation of Islamic law girls were barred from studying. And Logar has suffered a series of attacks by suspected Taliban rebels on girls' schools, several of which have been burned.

Another photo, taken in Bamiyan province, shows a woman weaving a carpet, one of the country's main exports. The Taliban barred women from working.

The pictures were taken during a photography course aimed at giving women skills to find jobs, one sign that Afghan women's lives are improving after years of oppression under the Taliban.

Forty women from four provinces participated in the workshops. Many have since found jobs - one as a wedding photographer and another for a local newspaper - said Paul Greening, a development officer with the U.N. Population Fund, which sponsored the course.

Since the Taliban's fall, millions of women and girls have returned to work and school. U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai has pushed through a new constitution that guarantees women equal rights and a quarter of seats in a national legislature that convened last month. And some women have abandoned the head-to-toe public veiling that was mandatory under the tough Islamic regime.

"There have been some successes, but still not enough is being done for women," Greening said. "Women are still very much second- and third-class citizens in some remote areas," he said. "There is a great disrespect for their position in society."

Under the Taliban, women couldn't travel without a male relative and were whipped in the street for showing as much as an ankle.

And although much has changed, Karzai's government has little authority in many rural areas, largely because of a reinvigorated Taliban-led insurgency that left about 1,600 people dead last year and put much of the country off-limits to aid workers.

Hundreds of thousands of girls across the country are being educated again. But about 1.2 million primary school-age girls still are not studying, according to the United Nations.

The militants have recently targeted teachers, beheading a school headmaster earlier this month.

Many women have found work in the past few years. But about 2.5 million - many of them widowed during the past quarter century of war - are in "desperate need of skills to help them find employment," said Noria Banwal, director of Women's Economic Empowerment at the women's ministry.

"The lives of women have improved a lot, but there is still much, much more to do,'' she said.

Cincinnati Post  By Michael Collins Post Washington Bureau 1/13/06

WASHINGTON - The war in Afghanistan may have disappeared from the headlines, but morale remains high among American soldiers stationed in that country, Congressman Jean Schmidt said Thursday after visiting some of the troops.

"They really believe in what they are doing," Schmidt told reporters during a conference call from the Middle East. "They are very proud to be there and help these people have a democracy that we have enjoyed for so many years."

The Miami Township Republican is visiting the region this week with five other members of the House Agriculture Committee. Besides Afghanistan, the delegation has visited Bulgaria, Romania and Pakistan and also plans to go to Iraq.

The purpose of the trip is to get an update on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and to see what can be done to help the new democracies in the region get up and running.

In Afghanistan, the group went to the presidential palace for a meeting with President Hamid Karzai, who expressed his gratitude for the presence of American troops and asked for assurance that they won't be withdrawn as NATO becomes more of a presence in the region.

Karzai told the lawmakers he believes Osama bin Laden is still alive, Schmidt said.

"There is a mixed view (in the region) of whether he's dead or alive," Schmidt said. "President Karzai believes he is alive, and he has suspicions that he is probably hiding in Pakistan."

Schmidt also met with military officials, including a group of soldiers from Ohio and the general in charge of troops in the region. The military brass and the enlisted soldiers assured the lawmakers that they have all of the equipment they need, Schmidt said.