Afghanistan News January 28, 2006

January 28, 2006

Afghan president to visit Denmark Saturday
12:45 2006-01-28 Pravda Ru
Afghan President Hamid Karzai was set to arrive in Denmark Saturday for a brief visit on his way to a foreign donors' conference in London.

Karzai will have a private meeting with Queen Margrethe at the downtown Copenhagen Amalienborg Palace on Saturday evening, followed by a dinner at the Foreign Ministry hosted by Foreign Aid Minister Ulla Toernaes.

Last year, the Danish Parliament granted 670 million kroner (Ђ90 million; US$110 million) in aid to reconstruct Afghanistan.

On Sunday Karzai, who will be visiting Denmark for the first time, will have talks with Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Denmark, which backed the U.S.-led war to oust the Taliban regime in 2001, presently has 160 soldiers in Kabul, the Afghan capital.

On Jan, 19, Denmark's Parliament backed the government's proposal to send 200 more troops to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, or ISAF.

The troops are set to leave in May or June and will be based in Afghanistan's troubled south, where NATO will take over peacekeeping from U.S. forces, AP reported.

Afghan leader: foreign troops may be needed 10 years
By Evelyn Leopold Fri Jan 27, 3:29 PM ET
DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) -     Afghanistan may need foreign troops for another 5-10 years to combat terrorism and insurgents, President Hamid Karzai said on Friday.

Karzai said his government was constructing jails to get some 100 Afghans back from U.S. prisons in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which houses about 500 inmates. The construction, he said, would take about two years.

"When the Afghans leave that facility, it's none of our business what happens there," he said in answer to queries about prisoners kept in detention for years without charges.

He was speaking to journalists at the     World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos.

After the September 11 attacks, U.S.-led forces overthrew the ruling Taliban for harboring     Osama bin Laden, whose al Qaeda network was blamed for the carnage.

But Karzai insisted bin Laden was not on the Afghanistan side of the border with Pakistan. "Osama bin Laden is not in Afghanistan. As to where he is, I don't know."

Karzai welcomed the announcement that Britain would send another 3,300 troops to his country. But he estimated it would take "between 5 and 10 years" before foreign soldiers would no longer be needed.

STRONG INSTITUTIONS
"We have an army, we have a police force," he said. "Our armed forces have to turn into strong institutions to be able to defend the country and maintain internal stability."

He said this would take some times because "numbers and equipment do not alone make institutions." The Afghan government has about 33,000 soldiers.

NATO has fielded 9,000 troops across Kabul, the north and the west and decided last month to move into Taliban strongholds in the south with another 6,000. In addition, the United States has a force of 19,000, which hunts down insurgents.

Karzai spoke before a conference in London on Afghanistan, which he said would also obligate Kabul to institute a variety of reforms.

The two-day international meeting, beginning on Tuesday, is to launch a five-year blue print on development, peace and how best to confront the continuing attacks by government opponents in the impoverished central Asian nation.

"Afghanistan has certain responsibilities in terms of reform, the fight against drugs...and the international community has the responsibility in helping us fulfil these objectives," Karzai said.

Karzai will co-chairing the London meeting along with U.N. Secretary-General     Kofi Annan and British Prime Minister     Tony Blair. It is designed as a follow-up to a U.N.-led meeting in Bonn, Germany, which set the political course for Afghanistan in December 2001 after the ousting of the Taliban.

Afghanistan's Karzai wants direct money from London conference
Sat Jan 28, 12:07 AM ET
LONDON (AFP) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai wants the international community to route extra reconstruction money through the government rather than NGOs, he told the Financial Times.

Karzai said the time was right to do so and warned that doing otherwise could stunt the development of     Afghanistan's institutions.

The British business daily said Karzai was to ask aid donors for an extra four billion dollars (3.3 billion euros) to boost reconstruction, at a conference on Afghanistan in London on Tuesday.

"We are more capable now," Karzai told the paper at the     World Economic Forum summit in the Swiss ski resort of Davos.

"We would like the international community to deliver a bigger part of their resources through the Afghan government institutions rather than spending it through non-governmental organisations.

"Afghan people want a stronger Afghan government and Afghan civil service with the ability to fund and deliver basic services."

The prominent role of NGOs is unpopular in Afghanistan and undermines efforts to build state capacity, he said.

Afghanistan's international partners will gather in London to renew their support for the strategic but destitute country as it battles an insurgency, drugs and corruption following 25 years of war.

The January 31-February 1 meeting will see the Afghan government and its donors -- who fund more than 90 percent of the country's budget -- sign a five-year development plan called the Afghanistan Compact.

Among those due to attend the conference are Karzai, UN Secretary General     Kofi Annan, US Secretary of State     Condoleezza Rice and British Prime Minister     Tony Blair, along with representatives from around 70 other nations and multilateral institutions.

Karzai admitted that corruption was troubling many observers but insisted that Afghanistan's warlord era is in the past, with former commanders now integrated into the political system.

"This is a major achievement, a very substantial change."

Karzai said the recent spike in attacks on     NATO-led forces and civilians showed the "desperation" of the remaining Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces in Afghanistan.

Tribal chiefs had told him that Taliban/Al-Qaeda agents were attempting to recruit suicide bombers across the border in Pakistan, he revealed.

"We did not believe them at the time but after the past two to three months we have signs these reports might be true."

He said he would press his Pakistani counterpart General Pervez Musharraf on the matter when they meet next month, as the "greater part" of attacks were committed "by militants based across the border".

On the drugs trade, Karzai said British forces building up in the troubled southern Helmand province should take on opium growers as well as Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters.

"Narcotics is a problem we have to face. Narcotics money feeds terrorism," he said.

Though the two worries overlapped, he added, they were not the same and drugs had also to be tackled with non-military solutions.

Bomb hits coalition force in Afghanistan, wounds three policemen
Sat Jan 28, 2:32 AM ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) - A bomb has struck a convoy of Afghan, Romanian and Canadian forces in insurgency-hit southern Afghanistan, wounding three Afghan policemen, police said.

A purported Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the attack.

The convoy was returning Friday from a humanitarian mission in southern Kandahar province when the roadside bomb hit, police official Ahmad Zia Massoud said on Saturday.

"Three policemen were injured, but the foreign forces did not suffer any casualties," Massoud told AFP.

Romanian troops are part of a US-led coalition force in Afghanistan and Canadians soldiers are working with a civil-military reconstruction programme in Kandahar.

Kandahar has been badly hit by an insurgency led by remnants of the Taliban regime ousted in a US-led operation in November 2001 for sheltering the Al-Qaeda network.

More than 30 people have been killed in Taliban-linked violence in Kandahar this year, the deadliest attack being a January 16 suicide bombing that killed at least 22 people in the border town of Spin Boldak.

Violence mostly blamed on the Taliban claimed more than 1,700 lives last year, the bloodiest since the toppling of the hardliners.

The insurgents have vowed to topple the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.

More than 20,000 US-led troops are based in Afghanistan -- thousands of them in Kandahar -- along with a 10,000-strong NATO-led peacekeeping force to help the authorities bring stability to the war-torn country.

British defence minister meets troops ahead of Afghan mission
Fri Jan 27, 8:53 AM ET
SALISBURY PLAIN, England (AFP) - Britain's Defence Secretary John Reid met some of the 3,300-strong contingent of troops preparing to deploy to southern Afghanistan as part of a NATO peacekeeping force.

Dressed in a combat jacket, Reid Friday watched as two Apache attack helicopters, two Lynx helicopters and a Chinook carried out a simulated medical evacuation on Salisbury Plain in central southern England.

The meet-and-greet came one day after Reid announced details of the three-year mission, which will see British troop numbers in the whole of the country more than quadruple to 5,700 before settling at about 4,700.

The 3,300 soldiers being sent to the dangerous southern Helmand province, where members of the ousted Taliban regime are still active, will be charged with providing security rather than pro-actively seeking out insurgents, Reid said.

"They are there to help the Afghan people build their own society, their economy, give their own people more opportunities and by doing that make sure that the terrorists can never again take control of Afghanistan," Reid said.

The mission will not involve pro-active counter-terrorism, but British troops will defend themselves "robustly" if necessary, he told BBC television.

"Our soldiers will take any measures necessary to protect their own interests and their own lives and if that means they have to take initiatives then that is what they will do," the minister said.

"Those decisions are for the commanders. Rules of engagement will allow them to defend themselves robustly, but they are not there in order to wage war."

The new contingent will form part of a three-year expansion of the NATO force to some 18,500 troops, including 9,000 in the south, with commitments from the United States, Canada, Romania and Estonia, his ministry said.

It is the third phase of the expansion of NATO, which has already deployed in Kabul and northwest Afghanistan in a bid to stabilise the nation, rebuild it and help impose the authority of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government.

Reid emphasised the multi-national aspect of the deployment, with some 2,500 Canadian troops stationed to the east of Helmand province and hopefully 1,400 Dutch forces -- pending a crucial vote by the Dutch parliament next week -- to north.

Estonia, Denmark, Australia and New Zealand are considering sending smaller contingents.

Britain's part in the mission will cost taxpayers one billion pounds (1.45 billion euros or 1.78 billion dollars), according to the defence minister.

Afghan Police Say Seven Insurgents Killed As Violence Continues
Radio Free Europe: Radio Library - Jan 27 5:39 AM
27 January 2006 -- Afghan police today said that seven neo-Taliban fighters were killed this week and five policemen wounded when the insurgents attacked a district police headquarters in southern Afghanistan.

The event comes in the wake of a number of other violent episodes in recent days.

The announcement today said the most recent incident occurred on 25 January in a remote part of the southern Kandahar Province.

In a separate attack, two policemen were killed and two wounded when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb in the south of the country today.

District police chief Haji Zaman blamed Taliban guerrillas for the
attack, which happened on a main road in Helmand province.

Other Recent Episodes

Officials announced on 26 January that insurgents had ambushed an army post in Afghanistan, killing two local soldiers. An Afghan army general, Akram Sami, said the attack occurred late on 24 January in the southeastern Paktika Province.

In Kandahar Province, a Defense Ministry spokesman reported that a bomb had destroyed a fuel tanker supplying U.S.-led coalition troops on 25 January. No one was hurt in that incident. The spokesman, General Mohammad Zahir Azimi, said six mortars were also fired at an Afghan army base in neighboring Oruzgan Province, but caused no casualties.

Azimi also said that security forces in the western Herat Province had defused 10 rockets rigged up to be fired at the main provincial airport, also on 25 January.
(compiled from agency reports)

Afghan MP says she will not be silenced
Tom Coghlan, Kabul Friday, 27 January 2006, 14:21 GMT BBC News
Malalai Joya is one of the most popular MPs in Afghanistan and has many a time taken stand against the ex-Mujahideen fighters who dominate the country's new assembly.

But Ms Joya and many of her supporters fear she will be assassinated.

As she describes what she believes is going to happen, it is with apparent fear and what sounds at times like a romantically conceived vision of martyrdom.

"They will kill me but they will not kill my voice," she says, "because it will be the voice of all Afghan women. You can cut the flower, but you cannot stop the coming of spring."

The 27-year-old MP is the most famous woman in Afghanistan.

She has made her name as a woman's rights activist who has attacked Afghanistan's most powerful institution, the Mujahideen.

They are the fighters who defeated the Soviet invasion of the 1980s but who, in many cases, became leading participants in the destruction of the civil war that erupted in the 1990s.

Many of the leading MPs elected to the new parliament were factional commanders during the civil war period.

Some have also been implicated in human rights abuses.

But with their status underpinned by the religious justification of jihad against the Soviets, Ms Joya's public criticisms of the Mujahideen risk an extreme reaction from some.

'Criminal warlords'

On 20 December, the day of the parliament's first session in more than 30 years, she did what many of her friends feared she would.

Rising from her seat she launched into a denunciation of many of those seated around her, condemning the presence in the parliament of "criminal warlords" whose hands are stained with the blood of the people".

Many MPs beat their fists on their desks and furiously shouted her down.

As she left the parliament she received death threats.

"As her close friend we have tried several times to persuade Malalai to be less openly critical, but she says no she will not stop," said Toor Pekai, one of a number of female MPs who circle protectively around Ms Joya in the parliament.

Other women MPs are too afraid to speak to her openly.

Many of Malalai's supporters felt that the timing of her outburst, amid a first day atmosphere of good will, was ill-judged - offending even those MPs who might otherwise have sympathy for her views.

"The threat against her life is very real," said Ms Pekai. "All the rumours in the parliament are that people are preparing to kill her."

Ms Joya says that she continues to receive a constant stream of messages of support from ordinary Afghans.

"It gives me strength to keep telling the truth," she said.

Popular disquiet at the makeup of the new parliament is widespread.

A poll conducted by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission in January 2005 found that 90% of Afghans wanted human rights abusers excluded from public office.

War crime trials were more than twice as popular as any other form of censure for those implicated in such abuses.

A low turnout in the parliamentary elections, only 33% of those registered in Kabul, was seen by many analysts as further proof of popular disillusionment at some of the figures who were allowed to stand.

Popular support

Born in the remote south-western province of Farah, Ms Joya spent most of her youth in refugee camps in Pakistan and Iran.

She returned to Afghanistan during the Taleban period and ran a school for women.

At the time all female education was banned, so the classes were conducted in secret.

She continues to work for an NGO called the Organisation for Promoting Afghan Women's Capabilities (OPAWC).

"How can a country improve when 50% of its population are silenced?" she said. "It is like a bird with only one wing."

She rose from obscurity three years ago with her first and most famous outburst against the Mujahideen, as a delegate at the Loya Jirga (grand council), convened in Kabul to formulate a draft constitution for Afghanistan.

On that occasion several ex-Mujahideen delegates tried to attack her after she described them as "criminals" who had "destroyed the country."

Her stance appeared to be endorsed when she was elected an MP for Farah in October, coming second overall in the province.

Such support for a woman candidate was an astonishing result from one of the most conservative regions of the country.

Martyrdom

Many of her enemies accuse her of membership of RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan).

It is a secretive feminist organisation founded in 1977 with Maoist roots by another female activist called Meena.

She was killed in 1987 by unknown assassins.

Ms Joya denies any involvement with RAWA.

"I am an independent," she said, "though RAWA support my views and I am grateful for that."

Privately, several of those who know her well say she is quite prepared for what she would see as her own martyrdom, and even talks of the need for martyrs to galvanise the cause of Afghan women.

In the course of this interview she mentioned Nadia Anjuman, an Afghan poetess killed in November 2005, and Amina of Badakhshan, a young woman reportedly stoned to death for having an extra-marital affair in April 2005.

The man implicated received one hundred lashes.

She is also inspired, she says, by her namesake Malalai of Maiwand - one of the greatest Afghan heroines, who ran onto the battlefield at Maiwand in 1880 and rallied the Afghan forces to defeat the British.

"Every democrat must be ready to die for truth and freedom," said Ms Joya.

"I am not better than any of the others, but I am young and energetic and the women of Afghanistan need me."

Russia proposes publication of Taliban list - Foreign Ministry
RIA Novosti, Russia 01/27/2006
MOSCOW - Russia proposed Friday the publication of a list of high-ranking leaders of the Taliban movement in Afghanistan in a bid to stop the spread of terrorism in the country. "We believe the Taliban issue can be resolved if a list of the Taliban leaders ranking down to 'deputy minister' and 'governor' is made public," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said.

Referring to Taliban leaders who occupied high posts in the radical Islamic movement when it ruled Afghanistan during 1996-2001, Kamynin said the individuals should be declared outside the law and made to stand trial.

Kamynin said Russia was concerned about the emergence of former warlords and other notorious Taliban leaders in the current Afghani parliament, including Mullah Abdul Salam Raketi and Maulvi Arsala Rahmani.

"Such reconciliatory gestures toward the Taliban will hardly bring the expected effect and will not stop them from conducting anti-government activities," Kamynin said.

Afghanistan four years after the fall of the Taliban
KABUL, Jan 27, 2006 (AFP) - Since the ouster of the Taliban in late 2001 Afghanistan has gone through a significant political transition, but it remains a fragile state dependent on international troops, notably from the United States, for its stability.

Here is a sketch of the country today:

- Developments since the ouster of the Taliban

Weeks after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, a military coalition under American command invaded Afghanistan to remove the Taliban regime, which was sheltering the Al-Qaeda network blamed for the attacks.

Since then the country has been relatively stable thanks to the presence of 30,000 international troops -- 20,000 with the coalition and 10,000 in a NATO-led force.

The main progress has been political, with the adoption of a constitution and the country's first ever presidential election that kept President Hamid Karzai in office last year.

An election in September chose the country's first elected parliament in three decades.

- Afghanistan today

Reconstruction has been laborious, hampered by insecurity, uncoordinated international projects and an ossified state with little authority in provinces, several of which are plagued by violence blamed on the Taliban in the south and east and criminals in other areas.

The government is making little headway since the removal of the Taliban in tackling an explosion in the production of opium, which is equivalent to about 52 percent of the licit gross domestic product and threatens to turn the country into a narco-state.

Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world despite economic growth of more than 10 percent on average in the past three years that has mainly benefited the urban middle class.

Life expectancy is around 44 years and one out of five children dies before the age of five, with about 1,600 of every 100,000 mothers dying in childbirth or because of related complications -- one of the highest rates in the world.

Only 13 percent of Afghans have access to safe water, 12 percent to adequate sanitation, and six percent to electricity, the World Bank says.

Situated between Pakistan and Iran and at the crossroads of Asia and Europe, the country is strategically located, notably for the US-led "war on terror".

- Who is supporting Afghanistan?

The United States is by far the country's principle donor, spending around 10 billion dollars a year on counter-insurgency operations and contributing more than half of the reconstruction aid of four billion dollars committed last year.

About 70 countries have been involved in rebuilding since 2002, for which they have committed 20 billion dollars, and effectively spent half of it, according to the ministry of finance.

This year donors are expected to commit another 4.5 billion dollars. About two-thirds of this will come from the United States and the rest from the World Bank (300 million dollars), the European Community and Britain (200 million each) and Japan (between 150 and 200 million).

Germany, India and Canada are expected to each contribute 100 million dollars each, followed by other countries, notably from Europe.

Taliban militants burn down three Afghan schools
Sat Jan 28, 3:03 AM ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Taliban insurgents have torched three schools in a restive southern province of     Afghanistan, the latest attacks in the militants' campaign against the U.S.-backed government and its efforts to promote education.

The three newly built schools, where 1,000 boys and girls studied, were gutted on Friday night in different parts of Nawa district in Helmand province, said provincial education chief Mohammad Qasim.

"I can say that the Taliban were behind this," Qasim told Reuters on Saturday, adding that no one was hurt in the attacks.

Taliban spokesmen were not immediately available for comment.

The Taliban banned girls from school during their rule, which ended when they were ousted by U.S.-led forces in late 2001 after the Islamists refused to hand over     Osama bin Laden, architect of the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Since then, insurgents battling U.S. and government forces have launched numerous attacks on schools and teachers, including deadly attacks in recent weeks in Helmand, where British troops will soon be based.

Suspected Taliban gunmen dragged a teacher from his classroom and shot him at the gates of his school in December after he had ignored warnings to stop teaching boys and girls, officials said.

In a separate attack, also in December, gunmen shot and killed an 18-year-old male student and a guard at another school in Helmand. The gunmen opened fire on teachers and said they would be killed unless the schools were shut down, police said.

In Zabul province, also in the south, a teacher was dragged from his home and beheaded last month.

Dozens of people, most of them civilians, have been killed in a wave of attacks -- including 13 suicide bombings -- across Afghanistan's south and east in recent months.

The government blames Taliban fighters and their al Qaeda allies, saying the militants want to frighten off     NATO members from a planned expansion of their Afghan peacekeeping force.

On Thursday Britain announced it would send 3,300 more troops to Afghanistan, bringing its total there to 5,700 after it takes over command of the NATO mission in May.

The new troops include a so-called Provincial Reconstruction Team, which will aim to establish security for development in Helmand.

The militants are mostly active in the south and east, close to the border with Pakistan.

VIEW: Poppy power —Emma Bonino
The Daily Times - Pakistan Friday, January 27, 2006
An increase in production of “medical” opium would address its lack of availability worldwide. It would also provide Afghan peasants, who have been growing poppy despite forced eradication of the plant and incentives to change crops, with an option that is regulated by law and that, in time, could have an impact on the heroin trade

This month, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on Afghanistan that could pave the way for a new and more open-minded approach to counter-narcotics strategies worldwide. In fact, the resolution calls on the participants at a conference of donors, to take place in London at the end of January, “to take into consideration the proposal of licensed production of opium for medical purposes, as already granted to a number of countries.”

This proposal was originally made by the Senlis Council, an independent organisation based in Paris, during a workshop in Kabul last September. The text introduced by the European Liberal Democrats, with the support of virtually all political groups in the European Parliament, is revolutionary, not only because it goes against conventional thinking, but also because it raises the issue above the stagnant reality of the “war on drugs”. In Afghanistan, that so-called war has essentially been based on eradication campaigns and alternative livelihood projects, which have achieved only scant results. The European Parliament’s new stance may, I hope, mark the beginning of a radical policy shift by all actors involved in rebuilding Afghanistan.

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, despite concerted efforts at eradication and crop substitution, Afghanistan produced 87 percent of the world’s opium in 2005 — roughly 4.1 tonnes — generating $2.7 billion of illegal revenue, which amounts to roughly 52 percent of the country’s GDP. The 2005 Afghanistan Opium Survey, released last November, estimates that the total value of this opium, once turned into heroin and distributed around the world, could reach more than $40 billion.

Moreover, in recent years, factories and laboratories for processing opium into heroin have been sprouting in Afghanistan, producing 420 tonnes of heroin last year alone. The increase in domestic heroin production has provided a massive boost to the local retail market, giving rise to concerns about HIV/AIDS spreading in a country with poor infrastructure and nonexistent health services.

In addition, the itineraries used by the export convoys are no longer limited to the infamous “golden route” through Pakistan and Iran, but have multiplied, employing exit points in former Soviet Republics such as Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. This is promoting further instability in already volatile political contexts.

International counter-narcotics policy is currently driven by pressure for rapid and visible results. But eradication and alternative livelihood projects mainly affect the lowest end of the value-added chain, the farmers, with no real impact on those higher up, such as large landowners and local traffickers, not to mention the extremely powerful drug lords and the international cartels and mafias. Most landless farmers find it difficult to switch to different crops, being caught up as they are in the illegal opium-denominated market, which forces them to live at the mercy of the drug traffickers, who provide them with access to credit and market outlets.

The result of this was laid out in a report by the European Union’s Election Observation Mission that I presented in Kabul last December: Afghanistan risks becoming a “rentier” state with easy access to resources that lubricate corruption throughout its entire political system, finance illegal armed groups, and fuel regional destabilisation. Illicit Afghan networks, replicating well-known methods that organised crime has applied successfully for decades in other parts of the world, are mobile and resourceful, and can plug into a range of legal economic activities to sustain themselves.

This might lead Afghanistan into a situation of no return: becoming a narco-state that drifts away from any form of rule of law and disengages itself from the fragile social contract with its own citizens that it has started to establish. As New York University’s Barnett Rubin, an expert on Afghan society, has put it: “Afghanistan cannot be stabilised while the most dynamic sector of its economy is illegal, nor if more than half of its economy is destroyed.”

So what should be done?

Because of the serious threat that the illegal drug economy poses to stability and democracy in Afghanistan, we must start thinking in terms of regulated poppy growing for medical purposes, in particular for painkillers, with the active participation of donor countries and the UN itself. Indeed, the UN estimates that just six countries prescribe 78 percent of the total legal production of opiates, implying shortages of opium-based painkillers in many of the UN’s 185 other member states. Hence the potential legal demand is huge.

Moreover, the UN also estimates that there are 45 million people living with HIV/AIDS in countries where health systems are either absent or very poor, and that over the next 20 years there will be some 10 million new cases of cancer in the developing world. These estimates, together with poor countries’ additional needs when natural catastrophes strike, imply that the potential legal demand for medicinal opiates is even higher.

An increase in production of “medical” opium would address its lack of availability worldwide. It would also provide Afghan peasants, who have been growing poppy despite forced eradication of the plant and incentives to change crops, with an option that is regulated by law and that, in time, could have an impact on the heroin trade.

Governments, international organisations and individuals that participate in the London conference must not dismiss the call made by the European Parliament, for it offers a far more workable strategy to promote Afghanistan’s future than the current counter-narcotics policies permit. —DT-PS

Emma Bonino is a member of the European Parliament

World Bank accuses West of undermining Karzai
The Independent, UK 01/26/2006 By Kim Sengupta
The system used to channel Western aid to Afghanistan is undermining the government of Hamid Karzai and damaging development prospects, the World Bank has warned.
Donor countries including Britain and the United States are engaged in often wasteful projects outside the control, and sometimes the knowledge, of the Afghan administration, says a report by the Bank's economists.

Its main recommendation, that aid should be channelled through government agencies, is due to be discussed at next week's London conference on Afghanistan. The summit, jointly chaired by Tony Blair, the UN secretary general Kofi Annan and President Karzai, will draw up a five-year plan for speeding up reconstruction and attempt to combat the rising tide of violence. It will be attended by the representatives of 70 countries.

The Afghan government will present its own blueprint for the future, the national development strategy, which will also call for greater control over international aid. The top UN envoy in Afghanistan, Jean Arnault, said in Kabul yesterday that the plan was the result of "detailed consultations between the Afghan government and the international community".

He added: "It contains some key provisions on the Afghan leadership, capacity building for people and institutions, fairness and transparency aimed at making sure that international assistance to Afghanistan is not only maintained but further improved." Total aid, running at around $3bn (£1.7bn), is 10 times the government's revenue of $300m. But three -quarters of the money from donors is channelled outside the government budget. Alastair McKechnie, the World Bank country director for Afghanistan, said: "Experience demonstrates that channelling aid through government is more cost-effective. For example a basic package of health services contracted outside government channels can be 50 per cent more expensive than the package contracted by the government on a competitive basis.

"Furthermore, the credibility of the government is increased as it demonstrates its ability to oversee services and become accountable for results to its people and newly-elected parliament." Afghanistan is experiencing one of the bloodiest periods since "liberation" by US and British forces, with an increase in suicide bombings and attacks by a resurgent Taliban in the provinces bordering Pakistan. Britain is sending around 3,000 extra troops to one of the most violent provinces, Helmand, and the Dutch parliament is due to debate the deployment of a force of 1,200.

The report says donors want the government to establish its authority, but they are disempowering it through their aid strategy. Even the Afghan army and police are paid their salaries outside the control of Kabul.

Stephane Guimbert, a co-author of the report, said: "There was justification for giving direct aid just after the war when there was no infrastructure at all. But things have progressed since then." The report says Afghanistan has "accomplished remarkable progress" in some fields including education, building of roads and a stable currency. "Fiscal discipline has been strictly enforced and maintained, notably through control over the government wage bill. The government has also made a strong commitment to financial transparency and accountability."

Israel tried to kill bin Laden in 1996: paper
Jerusalem (Reuters) - Israel's Mossad spy service and a foreign counterpart enlisted a confidante of Osama bin Laden to kill the al Qaeda leader in 1996 but the plan fell apart over a political dispute, a newspaper said on Thursday.

Mossad picked up bin Laden's trail while helping U.S. and Egyptian agents probe an attempt by Islamist militants on the life of Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak as he visited Ethiopia, Israeli daily Yedioth Aharonoth said citing security sources.

According to the report, Mossad recruited a woman close to bin Laden with the help of the intelligence service in her country. Neither the woman's name nor nationality were given.
Yedioth said the woman was meant to kill bin Laden, but the mission was aborted as a result of a breakdown of ties between Israel and her country linked to Israeli-Palestinian tensions.
Contacted by Reuters, Danny Yatom, who was head of Mossad at the time, declined comment on the report. U.S. officials believe bin Laden is now hiding in the region of the rugged border demarcating Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Obituary: Khan Abdul Wali Khan — last man to unite Pukhtoons
By Iqbal Khattak Friday, January 27, 2006 The Daily Times -Pakistan
PESHAWAR: Veteran politician and Pukhtoon nationalist leader Khan Abdul Wali Khan is among us no more. Let’s pray to God to rest the departed soul in eternal peace. Amen!

As a journalist, I had only one chance to meet Wali Khan when he was at bed at his Wali Bagh residence in June 2005. My interaction with him was short, may not be more than 100 seconds, but that short call on is enough to refresh my memory about him.

After the meeting, I asked Begum Nasim Wali Khan that how she found her husband as politician and what was more striking about him.

“His power to forecast future scenarios was excellent,” she said after taking a sip of hot tea and cited examples relevant to his strong “political vision”.

Begum Nasim said that Khan Abdul Ghafar Khan, the Red Shirt leader and father of Wali Khan, was fond of listening to Radio Kabul after offering Fajr prayers. “One day Radio Kabul was off air and Ghafar Khan asked Wali Khan to tune the station, who did but could not find Radio Kabul and told his father ‘there is something wrong in Kabul’.”

Hours later, the Wali Khan family had a news of coup by Sardar Daud Khan against King Zahir Shah in 1973. On that occasion, Wali Khan forecast “bloody years” for Afghanistan that he loved so much, Begum Nasim Wali said. And Afghanistan bled heavily since then and bloodshed continues even today when ultra-conservative Taliban are trying to fight back after their ouster from power in 2001, she added.

“Daud’s arrival is Afghanistan’s destruction,” Wali Khan reacted to the development that shook Afghanistan and the world when few years later the Red Army landed in Kabul in December 1979. What Wali Khan used to say against Pakistan’s Afghan policy in 80s and 90s was proved later and Islamabad holds the same policy responsible for the problems it is facing today.

Begum Nasim said that late Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto met Wali Khan when the country had plunged into a political chaos. “When are you going back, Wali Khan asked Bhutto? The question provoked Bhutto,” she said. “I will fix all of them,” Bhutto angrily told Wali Khan while referring to opposition leaders and army generals, she added.

“Wali Khan told Bhutto to go to Larkana, otherwise his body will be sent,” she said, adding that her Cambridge-qualified husband spoke “better political language than Bhutto”.

Money factor in Pakistani politics is no secret and Wali Khan earned fame with his statement, “If you have Rs 100 million, you can be Pakistan’s prime minister.” The veteran politician’s death may not affect the national political scene but his own party will feel his absence. “Fifty percent of Wali Bagh influence has gone with his death,” observers say.

Power struggle within his family - between Begum Nasim Wali Khan and his stepson Asfandyar Wali Khan - appears to be increasing. Wali Khan was the last man to unite Pukhtoons in NWFP and Balochistan and where the Pukhtoon nation will go after his death is a question that only time will answer.

Afghanistan's economy growing but poverty pervasive
By Robert Birsel
KABUL, Jan 27 (Reuters) - Afghan stone mason Khan Mohammad says he hasn't had a proper job in three months.

Standing on a cold street corner in Kabul early on Friday, Mohammad and a few dozen other men are hoping to get a day's work.

"I've managed to get only two days as a labourer, not as a mason," Mohammad said. He was paid 180 afghanis ($3.60) one day and 200 afghanis ($4) the other.

He said he would wait all day in the hope someone would give him work and would only go back to his rented room where he lives with his wife and five children after dark.

"I have to sneak back after dark to avoid the shop-keepers I owe money to," he said.

Afghanistan's economy is growing, despite a stubborn insurgency in the south and east, but for many Afghans, such as Mohammad, life isn't getting any easier.

The International Monetary Fund said last month Afghanistan's economy was set to grow 14 percent in 2005/06, although that was likely to slow to 10 percent by year-end.

Good weather boosted agriculture last year. Construction also remains buoyant while inflationary pressures have eased, the IMF said.

"The economy has improved now if you compare with four years ago, but not enough to satisfy everyone," Minister of Economy Mohammad Amin Farhang, told Reuters in an interview this week.

The government says it is aiming for 10 percent growth annually over the next five years and has drawn up a plan -- known as the Interim National Development Strategy -- that sets out a range of development targets.

The plan will be presented at an international conference on Afghanistan in London at the end of the month, where Afghanistan is hoping to get promises of help on security and development.

POVERTY PERVASIVE
Afghanistan's international backers are likely to seek assurances on problems from drugs to security, to corruption and the government's capacity to handle aid properly.

Since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban in late 2001, $11.8 billion of aid has been disbursed, according to government figures, but many Afghans remain mired in poverty.

Even in Kabul, residents are plagued by power cuts while many of the city's roads are in appalling condition.

Only 13 percent of Afghans have access to safe water and 12 percent to adequate sanitation, according to the World Bank. Only 6 percent of Afghans have access to mains electricity.

"Poverty is pervasive," said Ameerah Haq, the U.N. secretary-general's deputy representative in Afghanistan.

"We've got about 6.8 million people who are chronically hungry ... We have about 53 percent of the population living below the poverty line, less than a dollar a day. These are daunting figures," she told Reuters.

A major problem is public revenue. Afghanistan has one of the lowest ratios of gross domestic product to domestic revenue earned, about 4.5 percent, Haq said.

The United Nations is recommending a two-pronged development strategy -- investment in infrastructure to take advantage of the country's position at the cross-roads of Asia and the Middle East -- and broad-based rural development.

"It requires a lot of economic stimulus to increase the amount of revenue but also to have external aid allocated in a way which allows growth from both sides -- one trying to bring in foreign income, the other saying the vast majority of the population are rural, so let's try and lift them up," Haq said.

Anja de Beer, director of an umbrella organisation coordinating the efforts of aid groups, said the lives of most Afghans had improved and parts of the government were doing a good job in defining policy and getting it implemented.

"There are still huge problems. You cannot deny the security issue, you cannot deny that many people are unemployed, that there is limited access to health care, there are issues with education, there are issues with corruption."

"(But) Afghans are so focused on moving forward ... so intent on making a better future, I think that gives cause for optimism," she said.

Former UNHCR staffer leads Afghanistan's fight against illegal drugs
By Nader Farhad In Kabul 27 Jan 2006 12:16:30 GMT
KABUL, Jan. 27 (UNHCR) – For a man with one of the toughest jobs in Afghanistan, and certainly one of its most closely scrutinized, Habibullah Qadiri has a relaxed manner that quickly puts visitors to his Kabul office at ease.

It may help that the visitor is from UNHCR, where Qadiri, now Afghanistan's Minister for Counter-Narcotics, worked for 12 years. But when he speaks of the challenges he faces in combating Afghanistan's opium production, as well as his views on the longer-term future of his country, it's clear that his optimism and affability come naturally.

"When I was working for the UN refugee agency I felt I was doing something truly worthwhile," says Qadiri who lived as a refugee in Pakistan for 16 years. "Through the agency I was serving my country. Today it's the same. I'm serving my country by ridding it of the scourge of drugs."

The fight against narcotics will be centre stage next Tuesday (Jan. 31) in London, when U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and world leaders gather to launch the Afghanistan Compact, setting out the country's political and economic plans for the next five years. "Counter-narcotics" is one of the four main areas addressed by the Compact, and Qadiri will be right there in the London conference centre for the discussions.

For Qadiri, who has been in the job for a little over a year, Afghanistan's poppy cultivation poses a threat to the country's continued recovery from decades of war.

"We have to spare no efforts in our fight against drugs and not allow their production to further tarnish the image of Afghanistan among the community of nations," he says.

The production of some 4,200 tonnes of raw opium in 2005 left Afghanistan holding the unwanted title of world's number one opium producer, the key ingredient used to manufacture heroin.

A report released at the end of last year by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) stated that the area of land being used for poppy cultivation in Afghanistan had dropped by some 20 per cent in 2005, but improved climatic conditions resulted in higher crop yields for farmers.

"In 2006 we will be working to further reduce the area of land being used to grow poppy with programs aimed at the growers," says Qadiri. "But we'll also be going after the traffickers and those operating the laboratories that produce the heroin."

The country's domestic drug problem is another priority. A survey conducted by the counter narcotics ministry estimated that there are more than 900,000 drug addicts in Afghanistan, 50,000 of who are heroin users.

A father of six, Qadiri fled his home in southern Kandahar province in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Though trained as an engineer, he was soon working with UNHCR in Pakistan, providing assistance and protection to millions of his fellow Afghans who were now living in refugee camps. In 2002, following the defeat of the Taliban, he was among the first group of Afghans to return to their homeland as part of the UN refugee agency's repatriation operation.

In Kabul he resumed his work with UNHCR, acting as an advisor to the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation. His abilities drew wider notice and following the 2004 presidential election, he was appointed by President Karzai as the minister responsible for the country's fight against the drugs trade.

"While I was living as a refugee the pull was always back towards home. I never had the desire to settle in another country. What sustained me during those years was the belief that I would see my country liberated and that I would be able to play a role in its reconstruction."

The course of rebuilding is still in its early stages, says Qadiri. But he points to the election of a national assembly last year, which effectively completed the Bonn Process, as evidence of progress made.

"There is great deal more work to be done," he says, as his assistant enters to remind him of another appointment. "But whether it is ending opium production or improving peoples' living standards, my belief is that we will achieve our aims."

Court orders hand and foot amputation for Afghan robber
Khaleej Times - Jan 27 8:03 PM
ISLAMABAD — A Pakistani court has sentenced an Afghan national to amputation of his hand and foot under Islamic “Hudood law” after finding him guilty of robbery, a news report said yesterday.

The daily Dawn reported that the lower court judge in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) directed that Ajab Khan’s right hand from the wrist and his left foot from the ankle be chopped off as punishment for the crime.

Additionally, Khan will undergo a five-year jail term and shall have to pay a fine of about $500.

Khan, a resident of Afghanistan’s eastern Jalalabad city, robbed a small businessman on a roadside in Peshawar, the NWFP capital, in 2005.

“He (businessman) was waiting at a bus stand in Peshawar when Khan attacked him and snatched Rs320,240 ($5,350),” public prosecutor Shehzada Khan told the court.

It is the second judgment under the strict Islamic law by any court in NWFP, a province bordering Afghanistan and now being ruled by an Islamic alliance, Muttahida Majlise Ammal (MMA).

The convict can, however, petition the Federal Shariat Court (FSC), which adjudicates legal matters in view of the Quranic injunctions.

US soldiers face court martial for detainee abuse in Afghanistan
AFP via Yahoo! News Fri Jan 27, 2006
Army Specialist James Hayes was charged with "conspiracy to maltreat, dereliction of duty, maltreatment of detainees and assault consummated by battery," the US-led coalition said in a statement on Friday.

Army Sergeant Kevin Myricks would go before the court martial on Monday, it said. The trials were being held at the main US base in Afghanistan at the town of Bagram, 60 kilometres (37 miles) north of capital Kabul.

A third soldier has already been punished for knowing about the incident in July last year in southern Uruzgan province and not immediately reporting it to authorities.

The coalition announced in October that the two soldiers were alleged to have punched the detainees in the chest, shoulders and stomach.

The US military has been stationed in Afghanistan since helping to topple the hardline Taliban government in late 2001. It leads a force of nearly 20,000 troops hunting insurgents, including from the Taliban and their Al-Qaeda allies.

The force has been under fire from human rights groups for mistreating prisoners arrested during the operation.

New York-based Human Rights Watch has said at least six detainees in US custody in Afghanistan have been killed since 2002 with US Department of Defence documents showing that five of the deaths were homicides.

An incident that caused particular outrage in this devout Islamic country was the burning by US soldiers of the bodies of two Taliban fighters killed in a clash in September last year.

The burning of bodies of Muslims violates tenets of Islam as well as some international treaties on war.

The US military found the soldiers had torched the decomposing corpses for hygiene reasons, but it issued them with a reprimand for going against Islam, a punishment the Afghan government said was too lenient.

Video footage of the incident also showed two other soldiers using the burning to taunt other Taliban, apparently to try to provoke them to fight.

These soldiers were also reprimanded over the original incident, given "non-judicial punishment" -- which may include a loss of rank, and reassigned.