Afghanistan News January 30, 2006

January 30, 2006

Afghanistan arrests 9 suspected terrorists
KABUL, Jan. 29 (Xinhuanet) -- Nine persons were arrested Saturday and Sunday in charge of terrorist activities in Afghan southern province of Kandahar, the provincial governor said Sunday.

"In three cleanup operations yesterday and today, nine suspected terrorists were arrested, and two Pakistanis were among them," Assadullah Khalid, provincial governor of Kandahar told journalists in a press conference.

"We have found explosives, vehicles for car bombs, remote control bombs and so on. After the investigation, the two Pakistanis have confessed they had been trained in Pakistan for the suicide explosion," he added.

"After the suicide explosions in the beginning of this month in Kanhahar, Afghan forces adopted security measures for the safety which lead to the arrest of these terrorists. The further investigation will continue," he said.

Taliban militants intensified attacks against Afghan and foreign troops especially with the way of suicide explosion. According to the report, about 20 suicide explosions have taken place since September 2005 which caused many casualties.

In the two suicide explosions happening in one day in the beginning of this month, more than 20 persons were killed, and more than 30 were injured in Kandahar. The provincial governor criticized the neighboring country to carry out this kind of bloody attacks and vowed to punish the murderers.

High Taliban commander arrested in S. Afghanistan
KABUL, Jan. 29 (Xinhuanet) -- A key Taliban commander was arrested Sunday in Afghan southern province of Kandahar, an Afghan officialsaid.

"This morning at about 9 a.m. (4:30 a.m. GMT) in a cleanup operation by Afghan forces, Mullah Janan, a key Taliban commander was arrested in Kandahar city," Zahir Azimi, spokesperson of the Defense Ministry told Xinhua.

Mullah Janan stood a very important position during the Taliban regime, and now he is still one of the Taliban high-ranking leaders controlling southern Afghanistan.

According to some other sources, Janan was arrested in Loyawala area of Kandahar city with his corolla car full of explosives, and he was ready for suicide explosion, Rahmatullah Raofi, the regional core commander of Afghan National Army told Xinhua.

Taliban militants intensified attacks against Afghan and foreign troops especially with the way of suicide explosion. According to the report, about 20 suicide explosions have taken place after September 2005 which caused many casualties.

According to a Taliban military commander Mullah Dadullah, 200 suicide bombers have been ready for suicide attacks. Unless all the foreign troops withdraw from Afghanistan, Taliban will not stop the attacks.

In the two suicide explosions happened in one day in the beginning of this month, more than 20 persons were killed, and more than 30 were injured in Kandahar.

Bomb Defused Near U.S. Embassy in Kabul
KABUL, Afghanistan - Security forces defused a roadside bomb discovered near the U.S. Embassy in the Afghan capital of Kabul on Monday, police said.

The bomb, made from two land mines wired to a detonator, was found hidden in a ditch about 300 yards from the heavily guarded embassy compound, said Ehbrar Ahmad, a senior official with a police commando squad.

The road on which the bomb was found leads to Kabul's airport and is frequently used by embassy personnel, security forces and others.

US looking to share Afghan "burden"
KABUL (AFP) - The United States has been     Afghanistan's biggest donor since leading the war that toppled the Taliban four years ago but it now wants others to carry more of the "burden", US and European officials say.

Bargaining over sharing the financial aid on which the country will be dependent for a while yet has intensified in the past months and will be taken up at the London conference on Afghanistan starting Tuesday.

The United States has disbursed close to five billion dollars in this destitute country since 2001.

"They think they are paying too much for Afghanistan compared to the others and that the cost of the war against terrorism, a global threat, should be shared," a     World Bank official said.

"The subject is under discussion," confirmed a US diplomat in Kabul. "But it is clear that we would like the 'Afghan burden' to be shared, notably at the multilateral level."

On the military side, there has already been some headway with     NATO countries due in the coming months to boost their force in the insurgency-hit country by about 6,000 extra soldiers.

The troops will take over from the US-dominated coalition in the south and east, the most unstable parts of the country, allowing Washington to pare its deployment by about more than 2,000 as announced in December by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Apart from being the biggest contributor to the military operation, the United States also made up two-thirds of the reconstruction aid sent to the war-shattered country in 2005.

While the international community, for which Afghanistan is far from the only priority, would want to make the country self-sufficient as soon as possible, it is clear the road will be long.

Ravaged by 25 years of war, the fledgling democracy has few of its own resources to rely on.

Last year only seven percent of the Afghan budget was financed by the government through about 330 million dollars in domestic revenues, generated for the most part through tariffs.

About 90 percent of the rest came from international donors, notably the United States.

The "Afghanistan Compact" to be signed in London by the country's 70 donor nations and aid groups sets the target of raising the domestic budgetary revenue to eight percent of gross domestic product by 2010-2011, compared to the current 4.5 percent.

The United States, which directs two-thirds of its aid to Afghanistan towards security, is meanwhile also funding nearly the entire cost of rebuilding the Afghan police and army.

This is also likely to be a long-term endeavour, with an official with NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) estimating a desertion rate of 30 percent.

"In the discussions we have today, the Americans systematically try to push security expenditure into the general budget, which is financed by several countries," a European official said.

"It should not be forgotten that we have (Hurricane) Katrina,     Iraq and a worrying deficit," said a US diplomat who asked not to be named.

The United States said Friday it would announce a big financial aid package for Afghanistan at the conference.

But a European official said: "In the end, their assistance is more likely to drop from 2006 onwards."

Afghanistan will need aid for a long time, Karzai warns
Mon Jan 30, 12:30 AM ET
COPENHAGEN (AFP) - Afghanistan will need international aid for a long time to come if it is to bolster its security and rebuild its institutions, President Hamid Karzai said during a visit to Denmark.

Karzai, who made a brief visit to the Scandinavian country ahead of this week's donors' conference in London, urged the international community to continue to support Afghanistan's stabilisation process.

"Afghanistan will need the support of the international community for many more years to come. How many years? Perhaps for five to 10 years, perhaps a bit longer with some difficult aspects of nation-building," he told reporters after a meeting with Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Sunday.

He said significant progress had been made since the ouster of the fundamentalist Taliban in late 2001, especially in terms of security, "but we need to do a lot in order to achieve what we desire as a nation to achieve."

He said the work "will take us many more years to accomplish: the work of institution-building, the work of being able to take our security over in our own hands, the work to defend our country ourselves."

The international community has pledged more than three billion dollars per year, excluding military spending, to rebuild Afghanistan, half of which has been financed by the United States.

But the Afghan government manages less than a quarter of the funds, the rest being spent directly by creditors through the United Nations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) or private companies.

Karzai therefore called for more money to be put directly into the hands of the Afghan government.

"We are asking the international community to channel more of the resources through the Afghan government because the ability of the Afghan government ... has improved significantly in comparison to the past four years," he said.

"You will not be able to enhance the capacity of the Afghan government unless you support it to stand on his own feet."

The World Bank director in Afghanistan, Jean Mazurelle, said 35 to 40 percent of the aid to the war-shattered country is "badly spent".

"In Afghanistan the wastage of aid is sky-high: there is real looting going on, mainly by private enterprises. It is a scandal," she said.

The issue is souring Afghans' attitude towards the country's substantial foreign aid community and is set to be a key topic of the London conference between the government and its donors starting Tuesday.

Afghan Province's Problems Underline Challenge for U.S.
Resilient Insurgency, Corruption Keep Uruzgan a 'Last Frontier'
By Griff Witte Washington Post Foreign Service Monday, January 30, 2006; A10
TIRIN KOT, Afghanistan -- When the United States sent tons of wheat seed here this winter to be given to farmers as an alternative to growing poppies, local officials sold the seeds and pocketed the money. When the U.S. ambassador came for a visit Jan. 5, a suicide bomber detonated himself several hundred yards away, killing 10 people.

And every time U.S. troops have managed to seize a portion of Uruzgan province, this remote, ruggedly beautiful region of south-central Afghanistan, enemy fighters have simply slipped away and found new hiding places among its endless craggy hills and hollows.

As one senior U.S. military official describes it, Uruzgan is "the last frontier" -- a place that exemplifies why the international mission to secure Afghanistan still has a long way to go, why well-intentioned foreign assistance often ends up in the wrong hands, and why -- more than four years since the defeat of Islamic Taliban rule -- the insurgency has proved so difficult to defeat.

In the Afghan capital, Kabul, where shopping malls and cell phone stores are proliferating, the modern bustle creates a sense of progress and security. But here, about 230 miles southwest, the hardtop highway shifts to deeply rutted tracks, nightfall brings pitch darkness, and residents face a stark, daily choice between helping U.S. and Afghan authorities or aiding the Islamic fighters, drug runners and criminals who call Uruzgan home.

"If you made a list of provinces from one to 34, where is Uruzgan in terms of progress in the security environment? It would certainly be toward the bottom," said Army Lt. Gen Karl W. Eikenberry, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, following a recent visit here. "But I don't see a province out there that we can't transform. It's just going to take time."

In many ways, Uruzgan is stuck in a vicious circle of danger and neglect. While many other provinces forge ahead with reconstruction, work cannot begin in earnest here until the security situation improves, because most aid organizations and contractors are too fearful to set up shop. But the security situation, officials said, is not likely to improve until Uruzgan gets more schools, hospitals, roads and jobs. Right now, all are in short supply.

Uruzgan was once home to Mohammad Omar, the Taliban leader, and his organization continues to enjoy some support here, especially among fellow ethnic Pashtuns. Officials say they believe groups of Taliban fighters are permanently based in the province and find opportunities to recruit young members at local religious schools.

Over the past four years, the insurgents have repeatedly resisted U.S. military attempts to drive them out, instead moving among havens within the province. Last year, despite aggressive tactics by U.S. forces, military leaders say they lost ground in many areas. The insurgents, meanwhile, continued massing in Uruzgan and stepped up their attacks, contributing to the nearly 100 U.S. military deaths nationwide.

Recent interviews with residents and officials suggested that most people here are sympathetic to the United States and to Afghan President Hamid Karzai. They are not sure, however, if Karzai and his Western backers can be counted on to keep them safe over the long term.

A few months from now, U.S. soldiers are scheduled to relinquish control over southern Afghanistan and be replaced by NATO forces. In Uruzgan, soldiers from the Netherlands are supposed to take over. But the Dutch have wavered over whether they will make the commitment, raising concerns that the Taliban and its allies may take advantage of the uncertainty.

"The majority of the population of Uruzgan wants to live in peace. They don't want war," said Talatbek Masadykov, who heads the U.N. mission for southern Afghanistan. "But there is talk in the air that the Americans are leaving." Local residents, he said, ask: Who will be there to protect us?

Sgt. Mehrab Gul, an Afghan National Army soldier who patrols Uruzgan with the U.S. military, was more blunt: "If U.S. forces leave today, there will be a huge war tomorrow," he predicted.

U.S. officials say they believe that over the long term, the Afghan army is the solution: a permanent security force that will remain after international troops are gone. Training that force has been a priority for the U.S. military, and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld cited the Afghan army's progress when he announced that the Pentagon would reduce total U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan from 19,000 to 16,500 during 2006.

In 2005, U.S. and Afghan troops together pushed into some of the most remote parts of Uruzgan, battling insurgents and conducting aid projects as they went. The landscape is marked by treacherously steep, barren mountains occasionally broken by wide, sandy valleys. Nomads guide herds of sheep and camels along ancient routes; farmers tend small fields and orchards beside rivers fed in spring by melting mountain snow.

At one base set up by U.S. Special Forces and Afghan troops -- a nine-hour drive over backbreaking roads from Tirin Kot, the provincial capital-- the soldiers patrol with horses as well as Humvees. Recently, Afghan National Army forces have begun carrying out more missions on their own.

"We want the ANA to step up and do things instead of us stepping up for them. And they've gotten a lot better at that," said Sgt. Jason Welk, 28, a member of the Texas National Guard who has been stationed in Uruzgan since last May.

Nonetheless, the Afghan army remains in its infancy, heavily dependent on the United States for training and equipment while lacking sufficient numbers to secure the province. Moreover, the two other regional sources of protection -- the national police and the provincial governor's militia -- have their own flaws and limits.

The national police, deployed to each province to keep peace and order, are widely perceived as corrupt.

The civilian governor, Jan Mohammed Khan, is a tough former anti-Taliban fighter who uses his own militia and own prison to exert his will. But vast areas of Uruzgan are beyond his reach and infested by insurgents. Critics also complain that he is a poor administrator whose office is riddled with cronyism and generates few development projects.

"The governor and the other elders here, they own all the jobs," said Akhtar Mohammed, an man of about 18 who earns a few dollars a day helping the United States with reconstruction projects. "They give them to their relatives and their friends. So there are no jobs for us."

The report card on provincial anti-drug efforts is also mixed. According to the national counternarcotics minister, Habibullah Qaderi, the governor carried out a strong poppy eradication program last year, cutting the number of acres harvested by more than half. On the other hand, a U.S.-led program to promote alternative crops by giving wheat seed and fertilizer to poor local farmers went awry when some of the shipments were sold off for profit by local officials, according to U.S. and Afghan sources.

"You need a platform on which to build. And part of that platform is a reasonable degree of governance," Eikenberry said. "That's a challenge that we've got here."

One member of the new national parliament, Sona Neilofer, said the governor is doing the best he can but receives little cooperation from Kabul.

Neilofer, a former health clinic aide, said one of her priorities is to get better medical care for her constituents. The closest modern hospital facility is a four-hour drive from Tirin Kot, in Kandahar. The drive was shortened from six hours after the United States built a blacktop highway, but for many it is still too far. "On the way there," Neilofer said, "our patients die."

During Eikenberry's visit here, he strolled through Tirin Kot's dusty bazaar and ducked into a dark concrete stall to chat with a man selling shoes. He asked the man, Satar Khan, if he felt safe.

"Inside the city, the security is very good," Khan, 35, said politely. And what about outside, the general probed. "I lost some of my family outside the city," Khan replied gravely. "They were murdered."

Rice arrives in London for meetings on Iran, Hamas, Afghanistan
Monday January 30, 4:41 AM
LONDON (AFP) - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in London for a 36-hour visit to attend a series of critical meetings on Afghanistan, Iran and the Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections.

The top US diplomat, who arrived at London's Heathrow airport in the evening, has a meeting scheduled Monday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who is in London for a conference of donors to Afghanistan.

Rice's meeting with Karzai compensates for her abbreviated participation in the conference, where she will appear early Tuesday before heading back to Washington for President George W. Bush's annual State of the Union speech.

At the talks, to be attended by 70 countries, Washington is expected to announce a major financial contribution for the next fiscal year.

Monday afternoon, Rice meets with other members of the so-called diplomatic quartet -- the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States -- which authored the "road map" peace plan for the Middle East.

The meeting, hastily called in response to the sweeping victory by radical group Hamas in Palestinian general elections last Wednesday, is to discuss the future of Palestinian aid programs.

The United States has refused to work with Hamas, which it considers a terrorist group, unless it renounces violence and recognizes Israel's right to exist.

Rice has yet another key meeting Monday: a dinner with her counterparts from Russia, China, France and Britain, all permanent members of the UN Security Council, focusing on Iran's controversial nuclear program.

The United States and Europeans are expected to try to convince Russia and China to support sending Iran to the UN Security Council at a meeting of the UN nuclear watchdog on Thursday in Vienna.

Why Afghanistan remains work in progress
By Andrew North BBC News, Kabul Monday, 30 January 2006, 08:35 GMT
Four years after the Taleban were overthrown, Afghan leaders and international donors will meet in London this week to discuss the country's future. They will be trying to agree a blueprint for the continuing efforts to rebuild and stabilise the country.

Despite progress in building up a new government, there is mounting concern over security - amid a recent rise in suicide attacks blamed on Taleban fighters - and frustration among many Afghans at the slow pace of change in their daily lives.

The Afghanistan Compact, a five-year security and development blueprint due to be signed in London acknowledges "Afghanistan's transition to peace and stability is not yet assured".

British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Afghan President Hamid Karzai will jointly host the two-day meeting. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice will also be there, along with foreign ministers and officials from 70 other countries.

At the heart of this meeting is the issue of trying to make the Afghan government and the international aid it receives more effective, so that people see real benefits as a result of the political changes of the past few years.

The elections of President Karzai in 2004 and a parliament the following year have given Afghanistan the most democratic government it has ever had - even if there is still dismay about the large number of "warlord" figures who won seats to the new assembly.

The problem is that this new Afghan government is still too poor to do very much. Almost all its running costs, from salaries to heating bills, are met by international donors.

Some Afghan officials want to see more aid money in future to go through Afghan government hands, rather than as at present through NGOs.

"At least 50% of the aid should be going to the government within the next five years," Rural Development Minister Hanif Atmar told the BBC.

In principle, many western donors agree with this - but concerns remain about massive corruption.

"We don't deny it is there," Mr Atmar says. But he insists that much tighter safeguards are in place now. "Don't use corruption as a reason not to keep giving us aid."

You see the results of the government's weakness everywhere. In the cities big new, privately-funded buildings have gone up but next door there are houses with no electricity and roads with the same potholes they have had since the 1990s civil war.

In the rural areas health facilities are among the worst in the world.

Tired of war?

Overshadowing all this is the continuing violence.

"If anyone has a regret about the past four years it's that terrorist acts such as those we have been seeing in the south recently are still possible," said one senior western official in the run-up to this conference.

But Afghan officials argue there is not widespread support for the continuing Taleban insurgency or other sources of violence. They say Afghans are tired of war.

The problem, they say, lies across the border in Pakistan, which they accuse of sheltering many of the militants involved in the attacks.

Only when this issue is addressed, they say, can development get going in the southern and eastern areas of the country where the violence is most severe.

The issue will be on the conference agenda but few expect any major changes as a result.

So to address all this, the compact, a final draft of which was obtained by the BBC, sets out benchmarks of progress that must be achieved over the next five years in areas such as security, development, better government and tackling the country's illegal drugs trade.

The targets include building up the national army to 70,000 soldiers, linking 40% of villages with roads, and getting electricity to 65% of urban households and 25% of rural ones.

It also states that all US-led "counter-terrorism operations will be conducted in close coordination with the Afghan government and Isaf", the Nato-led peacekeeping force - an acknowledgement of past Afghan concerns about the political fallout of heavy-handed American tactics.

'Money is crucial'

In pre-conference briefings in Afghanistan, officials have stressed this is not a pledging meeting, although the US and a few other countries are expected to announce some new aid packages.

But money is crucial.

Before the last major international meeting on rebuilding Afghanistan, in Berlin in April 2004, the Afghan government said it would need at least $4bn a year to rebuild for the following seven years.

And that is perhaps the big problem for Afghanistan - where is the money going to come from in the future?

With so many problems, after so many years of war, can the country ever survive without aid? It is not something this conference will address.

Taliban 'must be brought into dialogue'
By Mark Turner at the United Nations and agencies Sun Jan 29, 5:37 PM ET
The Afghan authorities and the international community should reach out to the Taliban if they want to keep the political process on track, according to one of the chief architects of the troubled Islamic republic's transition.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Lakhdar Brahimi, who retired from the United Nations late last year, described recent violence as a "wake-up call" and warned: "The job is not done yet."

His comments reflect concern that while the transition to a fully representative form of government, as laid down at the Bonn conference in late 2001, has run its course, there is no clear follow-up to keep the momentum going.

"I think the international community has got to have a serious second plan," Mr Brahimi said. "You need to recommit yourself for a number of years."

Underlying the difficulties was the fact that the Taliban, which ran the country before being dislodged by the US invasion in 2001, was not included in the Bonn process. That should change. "They need to be brought in," he said.

Mr Brahimi said somemembers of the Taliban were open to dialogue and had cut ties to al-Qaeda. However, the government needed to address concerns that were winning the Taliban support.

"When things are going wrong you need to look also at yourself and whether some of the things you are doing are responsible. There is too much corruption, too much injustice, too much neglect," he said. "This plays into the hands of the Taliban."

The Afghan government has approved a blueprint to build peace over the next five years, which will be presented to donors at the two-day conference this week in London.

Abdullah Abdullah, the foreign minister, said the Afghanistan compact would "lay out the framework for continued international engagement with Afghanistan over the next five years".

Last week seven Taliban prisoners escaped from Afghanistan's main jail. President Hamid Karzai also warned that the drugs trade was financing terrorism in the country.

"With that money, the enemies of Afghanistan make bombs . . . train suicide attackers . . . [and] carry out attacks on you," he said in Kabul. "We should eliminate drugs from our country. If we don't, they will eliminate us."

U.K. Defense Secretary Warns of More Casualties in Afghanistan
Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) -- U.K. Defense Secretary John Reid warned more casualties were likely as the nation deploys 3,300 troops to Afghanistan's southern region, where drug kingpins and remnants of the deposed Taliban government are based.

``It is getting riskier,'' Reid said in an interview with Sky News television in London today. ``As for the terrorists, we will find there is a greater propensity to attack as they retreat into their last bastions.''

U.S. and allied forces currently have more than 21,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, 1,100 of them British. Britain has suffered fewer than 10 deaths in Afghanistan since an invasion of the country in December 2001 ousted the Taliban.

Reid, who announced the deployment on Jan. 26, said the region of Afghanistan where British troops would patrol was more dangerous than the central and northern areas that Western forces already had secured.

``It's a dangerous task,'' Reid said. ``But it was envisioned. And it was at the invitation of Hamid Karzai,'' Afghanistan's president.

Hilary Benn, the U.K. cabinet minister in charge of foreign aid, said the deployment was necessary to make the southern region safe for aid workers.

``It's important that we undertake this deployment, which is going to be difficult,'' Benn said in a British Broadcasting Corp. television interview. ``If people are going to take on those forces, they are going to respond. But they are not going on to wage war.''

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization currently has 9,000 troops from 35 nations in Afghanistan. Germany contributed 2,200, Italy 2,000 and Canada 800. Spain and France each sent 500, according to NATO's Web site. Canada on Jan. 21 began deploying more than 1,000 troops there, intending to increase numbers to 2,200 by February.

NATO can't blink in Afghanistan
The Christian Science Monitor Mon Jan 30, 3:00 AM ET
Will the Dutch again decline to move Europe forward as a unified group of responsible nations? Last year, voters in the Netherlands rejected the European Union's proposed constitution. Now Dutch lawmakers may disrupt NATO plans to expand international forces which it leads in Afghanistan.

The lawmakers are concerned that if they approve sending 1,200 more Dutch troops to Afghanistan, their soldiers will face serious danger.

That's because the Dutch reinforcements, along with more British, Canadian, and other soldiers, would be deployed to the volatile south, where violence is common and the need for combat far more likely than in Kabul and other areas where NATO forces act more as peacekeepers. Like the Dutch, many Europeans fear being dragged into war.

Blocking the deployment, however, would be a huge blow to the integrity of the NATO military alliance, which still wrestles over mission and resources since it completed its job as the cold-war defender of the West. A Dutch denial could be read as a sign that NATO is unwilling to face an era of new threats that lie beyond Europe's borders and that could require sacrifice of life.

A Netherlands "no" would send a signal of weakness to terrorists who still operate along the Afghan/Pakistan border. And it would let down Afghans, who expect NATO to fulfill its commitment to provide security for rebuilding this struggling democracy beset by warlords, opium, and poverty. Also, Washington would surely be displeased. It's counting on the NATO-led expansion - an increase from 9,000 to about 15,000 troops - to allow a US drawdown in Afghanistan of 2,500 troops this year.

It's astounding, really, that the case for the NATO expansion has to be argued at all. The world can disagree on Iraq, but Afghanistan? The training ground for 9/11, where Taliban fighters still prowl? Afghans just elected their first parliament. Surely, securing their future - and Europe's - is worth the risk of being attacked. (It will still be the US's job to rout out terrorists.)

Step-by-halting-step, NATO is inching out of its defense-only cold-war mind-set, awakening to challenges outside its immediate geography. It has nearly 20,000 peacekeepers in the Balkans, and its presence in Afghanistan is a historic forward deployment. A tangible acknowledgment of its potential global security role is a rapid response force of 17,000. Set to be fully deployable in October, this Ferrari would roar anywhere in the world to handle evacuations, disasters, and counterterrorism.

But will there be the political will to use such a force? The Netherlands debate shows the difficulty of getting public backing for a beefier NATO. Unemployment and welfare costs keep European defense budgets flat or declining. So, too, does a general discomfort with military power.

Adjusting to the political and strategic sea change since the cold war isn't easy. In democracies, leaders can't get ahead of their publics - unless they bring them along through convincing argument. That's the challenge facing Europe's leaders today. If they fail, expect NATO's Ferrari to stay parked in the garage, right next to the stalled constitution, and expect European leadership to be eroded.

Afghan-made Coca-Cola hits the streets of Kabul
Sun Jan 29, 5:58 PM ET
KABUL (AFP) - Afghan-made Coca-Cola hit the streets of Kabul as distribution started from a 25-million-dollar plant that represents one of the most significant investments in the war-torn country since the ousting of the Taliban.

Brand new red and white trucks fanned out across the city to distribute the Afghanistan-made Coca-Cola, Fanta and Sprite which the franchisee is hoping will squeeze the Iranian- and Pakistani-made versions off the shelves.

The first distribution precedes an official launch expected in the Islamic New Year which starts in March.

"I believe in the future of Afghanistan -- that is why I put my money in Afghanistan," said Habib Gulzar, partner in the franchisee, Habib Gulzar International.

"The economy is getting better... we believe this is a good investment and Afghanistan has the potential for more investment," he told AFP.

Shopkeepers expected good sales from the drinks, which should be marginally cheaper than the average 35 afghani (less than a dollar) for one litre of the imported product.

"People have already been coming here and asking for Afghan coke," shopkeeper Sher Haadi said. "It is the product of our own country and Afghans are working there. I am so proud."

The high-tech factory is expected to employ more than 300 people, with each job projected to create another 20, Gulzar said.

With the war-pocked capital still unable to provide its residents with basic facilities, including more than a few hours of electricity every two days, the new plant includes its own well, generators and waste water treatment system.

Dependent on international aid, the country is trying to rebuild after decades of war. With the help of around 30,000 foreign troops, it is fighting an insurgency led by remnants of the Taliban regime ousted in 2001.

The new Coca Cola plant is the biggest investment in the industrial sector since the removal of the Taliban, the Afghanistan Investment Support Agency said.

It is indicative of "relative stability in the country" which has experienced double digit growth since 2002, it said in a statement.

"It says that Afghanistan is open and ready for investing, particularly, productive investment... Our hope is that other multinationals will follow suit."

Afghan reconstruction aid bypasses needy villages
By Agence France Presse (AFP) Monday, January 30, 2006
KHOST, Afghanistan: At the entrance to the arid Afghan village of Masha, 50-year-old Shawda Khan calls to the visitor: "It is not worth going to see the head of the tribe: I will show you myself that nothing has changed for us since the Taliban." With no clinic and no hospital, the village - like several others in eastern Khost province - has seen no benefit from the roughly $10 billion of aid money Afghanistan has received since the 2001 ouster of the Taliban that ended decades of war.

Not the worst victim of a deadly Taliban-led insurgency, nor a haven of peace, not the richest province, nor the poorest, Khost provides a representative glimpse into the progress of the daunting job of rebuilding Afghanistan.

And it reveals some of the shortcomings that are a symptom, officials say, of aid projects being uncoordinated and unmonitored - an issue that will feature at a January 31-February 1 conference in London between the government and its international partners.

There was once an attempt to do something for Masha, in Gurbaz district on the border with Pakistan.

"The American army gave 2.4 million Afghanis (about $48,000) to a local businessman to come and install a well," says villager Hamid Gul, 60.

"He pocketed the money, giving some to the head of the tribe, but nothing was done," he says.

Other villages have had a little more luck. At nearby Nawai Kot in Jaji district a clinic was renovated a few months ago by a non-government organization called the Swedish Committee.

Inside, the three staff sit among about 50 boxes of medicines they dole out to the roughly 60 people they treat a day.

"Life has improved slightly, but not enough to lower the infant mortality rate, which is about 20 percent in some villages," says pharmacist Gul Mansoor, 40.

But 18-year-old Janad Gul complains: "There is no work and the prices of food and fuel have doubled."

Apart from small projects undertaken as part of the government's National Solidarity Program, reconstruction is "often nonexistent in the villages," says a UN representative in the region.

"This has disappointed Afghans, who were expecting so much," he says.
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In the capital, also called Khost, the situation is different. The small town is bustling, its economy flourishing with foreign revenue sent home by its many sons and daughters who moved to the United Arab Emirates over the past decades.

"Life is a lot better," says Delawar, 28. "There is work, which was not the case under the Taliban."

"Things are happening, we can do business," adds 55-year-old Zahed.

The relatively well-off town paradoxically sees more aid than the needy villages.

The UN says 150 projects, such as the renovation of roads and schools, have been carried out in Khost in recent years, compared to 10 in Gurbaz or five in Jaji, the districts less stable than the provincial capital.

The number of students attending the Khost University has doubled to reach 1,310, according to its president, Faiz Mohammed Fayyaz.

And the hospital, the only in the province, has been renovated. But it still does not have enough qualified staff, with potential candidates opting for better salaries from non-government organizations, director Amir Pacha Mangal says.

A lot more needs to be done, says deputy provincial governor Ajab Khan Mangan, who complains that reconstruction is hamstrung by a "lack of interest" from the central government in Kabul, a lack of cooperation between donors and local authorities and NGO inefficiency.

An employee with an Italian NGO says in defense: "We have given new generators and water pumps and trained Afghans how to use them. But they have been broken or fallen into disrepair."

One project in the city was the renovation, at a cost of $25,000, of a government building that was used as the base for the election commission that ran the September parliamentary vote.

Their job over, the commission handed the modern building back to the government for public use.

But today, aid workers and residents say, it is the private residence of the deputy governor, Mangan. - AFP

Afghan president, Danish PM hold talks on Afghanistan situation
Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday held talks with Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen on the situation in Afghanistan and issues concerning the two countries.

Despite significant progress registered since the ouster of Taliban in late 2001, especially in terms of security, "we need to do a lot in order to achieve what we desire as a nation to achieve," Karzai told a news conference after the meeting.

According to reports from Danish capital of Copenhagen, Karzai also said Afghanistan still needs support from the international community in the next five to 10 years for nation-building and improvement of democracy.

While acknowledging that his country suffers from corruption, Karzai, who arrived in Copenhagen on Saturday on his way to London to attend an international donors conference, said that "to curb, to resolve corruption in Afghanistan ... is a mater of time and steady effort."

Afghanistan and international donors have drafted a development plan to be signed at the Jan. 31-Feb. 1 conference, which is expected to be attended by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

During the meeting, Rasmussen said the international community has the obligation to help build Afghanistan into a nation of freedom, peace, democracy and modernization.

Denmark will continue to support Afghanistan in its efforts to rebuild the country and fight terrorism, Rasmussen added.

Last year, Denmark granted 670 million kroner (about 110 million U.S. dollars) in aid to reconstruct Afghanistan.

Currently, Denmark has 160 soldiers posted in Kabul, the Afghan capital. On Jan. 19, the Danish parliament backed the government's proposal to send 200 more troops to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.

Karzai, who came from the World Forum in Davos, Switzerland, met Saturday with Danish Queen Margrethe and her husband Prince Henrik at the Amalienborg Palace in Copenhagen.

It was Karzai's first visit to Denmark.
Source: Xinhua

Pakistani Traders Oppose Duty on Sugar Exports to Afghanistan
Monday January 30, 3:16 PM
ISLAMABAD, Jan 30 Asia Pulse - Pakistani businessmen have blasted a government decision to levy a 15 per cent duty on sugar exports to Afghanistan, claiming the levy will have a debilitating impact on trade ties with the neighbouring country.

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, who also holds the finance portfolio, decided a 15 per cent tax would be imposed on sugar exports to Afghanistan at a meeting last week. Prime ministerial advisor on finance Dr Salman Shah chaired the meeting that took stock of the country's exports and imports in the context of the overall economic situation.

Expressing surprise at the decision, local traders said the move was reflective of their political leaders' ignorance of the market situation in Afghanistan. Haji Hamesh Gul, a Peshawar-based businessman, urged the government to flood Afghan bazaars with Pakistani goods before trying to gain access to the vast Central Asian market.

"Before establishing robust relations with central Asian countries we are required to forge closer trade links with Afghanistan, a gateway to the former Soviet states. Unfortunately, our policy-makers are either unaware of, or deliberately play down, the strategic location of Afghanistan," he said.

Gul maintained that the Pakistani government should reverse the proposed levy on sugar exports if it was really interested in consolidating its foothold in Afghanistan's market. He insisted the measure would hurt Islamabad's business interests in the imports-reliant impoverished country.

Another entrepreneur, Abdullah Jan, asked who would send sugar to the neighbouring country if the 15 per cent tax went into effect. "India and Iran are already dispatching better-quality sugar to Afghanistan which will obviate the need for the Pakistani commodity," Jan continued.

Shahryar Khan, an Islamabad-based economist, questioning the rationale behind the levy, remarked that Pakistani authorities appeared to be out of touch with the market situation in the region. "In the Afghan market, the tax is bound to have a negative effect on other Pakistani exports as well. On balance, it will create a feeling of negativity about Pakistani commodities," he warned.

Nevertheless, the Pakistani premier and his advisor firmly defend their decision. They argued that the sugar shortage in the country and its resultant price-hike has necessitated the 15 per cent tax on exports to Afghanistan.
(Pajhwok Afghan News)

ISAF intensifies search operations: Three ammunition caches recovered north of Kabul
Release #2006-005 Source: North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) 25 Jan 2006
Kabul, Afghanistan - On 24 January, as a result of heightened security presence patrols, engineers from the French Battle Group of ISAF's Kabul Multinational Brigade recovered three caches of weapons and ammunition 25 kilometres north of Kabul.

The operation began at around midday when an ISAF patrol discovered a cache in the Northern Shakadara district of Kabul Province and called for the assistance of a French explosives team. During a search of the immediate area, two more caches were found, buried beneath the snow.

Altogether, the patrol recovered 19 rockets of various sizes; 8 high explosive shells; 8 recoilless rifle shells; 6 mortar rounds; 1 Anti-tank mine; 5 fuses and 46 propulsive cartridges. 2 of the mortar rounds were destroyed on site in a controlled explosion and the rest of the ammunition was taken to the French ISAF Battle Group's Headquarters for future destruction.

The recovery and destruction of unauthorised weapons, ammunition caches and other explosive remnants of war, is essential for the long-term security of Afghanistan. ISAF will continue to support the national security forces in this process and welcomes the full cooperation of the Afghan people.

France has around 600 troops serving with ISAF, and provides the lead for one of three multinational battle groups comprising ISAF's Kabul Multinational Brigade. The Brigade provides security assistance to the Government of Afghanistan in the Capital Province, mounting over 300 security patrols a week, of which over 70 are jointly conducted with the Kabul City Police and the Afghan National Army.

ISAF's mission is to extend the authority of the Government of Afghanistan and to assist in creating a safe and secure environment. ISAF operations, through its provincial reconstruction teams and Kabul Multinational Brigade, will continue to focus on the security of the country to create the conditions in which the Afghan people can build a better future for their country.