 |
||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Serving you since 1998 | ||||||||||||
|
|
Bush pays surprise first visit to Afghanistan
By Steve Holland and Sayed Salahuddin
KABUL (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush began his first visit to South Asia on Wednesday with a surprise stop over in Afghanistan, where thousands of American troops are still engaged in hunting down the architects of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
Bush's Air Force One flew to Bagram air base, headquarters of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, from where helicopters ferried him and his entourage across the dusty plain over mud brick homes to the capital, Kabul.
He later arrived in India, the world's largest democracy, on the second leg of his trip, with hopes of elevating a new friendship between the two nations into a strategic partnership.
During his visit to Afghanistan, Bush held talks with President Hamid Karzai and his U.S.-backed government that took power after the Taliban regime was overthrown for refusing to hand over al Qaeda leaders following the September 11 attacks.
"It's in our nation's interest that Afghanistan develop into a democracy. It is in the interests of the United States of America for there to be examples around the world of what is possible," he said at the U.S. embassy in Kabul.
Bush is visiting Afghanistan at a time when the country is still troubled by a stubborn Taliban insurgency that has claimed 1,500 lives since the start of last year, including dozens of U.S. soldiers, and suicide attacks have increased.
There is an 18,000-strong U.S.-led force stationed in Afghanistan, along with around 9,000 NATO-led peacekeepers.
But more than four years after U.S. troops toppled the Taliban, al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar remain at large. "It's not a matter of if they are captured and brought to justice, it's when they are brought to justice," Bush told a joint news conference with Karzai after the two leaders met.
American officials have portrayed Afghanistan as a relative success story compared to the U.S. front in Iraq.
Millions of war refugees have returned to the country and presidential elections installed Karzai in October 2004 and the country's first democratically elected parliament in September.
During a ribbon cutting ceremony at the official opening of the new U.S. embassy in Kabul, Bush said Washington was there for the long haul.
"My message to the people of Afghanistan is: take a look at this building -- it's a big, solid, permanent structure which should represent the commitment of the United States of America."
COMMITTED TO THE FUTURE
Bush said Afghans who visited Washington often asked him whether the U.S. was committed Afghanistan's future.
"They ask me with their words, they ask with their stares as they look in my eyes, 'Is the United States firmly committed to the future of Afghanistan'? My answer is 'absolutely'," he said.
The Taliban deputy leader and former defense minister Mullah Abdullah Akhund said on Wednesday that Bush's "secret visit" showed the Taliban had a strong control over Afghanistan.
"If the American president's visit had been announced in advance, the Taliban mujahideen would have greeted him with rockets and attacks. But Bush proved his cowardice by coming on a secret visit as a thief," he told Reuters by satellite telephone.
"The Taliban mujahideen want to tell the American president ... that they will continue attacking your Afghan puppets and American forces, will continue sending bodies of American soldiers to America and this jihad will go on."
Bush's three-day visit to India, the fifth by a U.S. president, has raised expectations in Asia's third-largest economy, which has slowly shed its socialist baggage and turned to the West to help it become a regional power.
Both countries hope Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will clinch a landmark civilian nuclear cooperation deal, seen as the centerpiece of the visit.
The deal, agreed in principle last July when Singh visited Washington, has run into trouble over differences on nuclear-armed India's plan to separate its military and civilian atomic plants to prevent proliferation, a key requirement.
Both sides have tried to play down expectations even as they continue to discuss the number of reactors India will declare as civilian and open them up for international inspections.
Bush is also due to visit the technology city of Hyderabad in the south on Friday before flying to Pakistan. Indian and U.S. agencies have made unprecedented security arrangements for the visit, which has drawn the ire of leftist and Muslim groups.
Tens of thousands of Muslims and communists took to the streets across India on Wednesday to protest against his visit.
About 100,000 Muslim men gathered in a public ground in the heart of the Indian capital New Delhi shouting anti-Bush slogans.
"Go back, Bush," "Bush is a killer," "Bully Bush, buzz off," "Bush, stop the ambush," they shouted as hundreds of policemen in riot gear kept watch.
In the eastern city of Kolkata, a leftist stronghold, about 25,000 communist supporters converged on the city center to take part in an anti-Bush public meeting.
(Additional reporting by Y.P. Rajesh in NEW DELHI, Syed Salahuddin in KABUL, David Brunnstrom in ISLAMABAD, Saeed Ali Achakzai in SPIN BOLDAK)
Bush hails Afghanistan's democracy, vows Bin Laden will be captured
Wednesday March 1, 8:53 PM
KABUL (AFP) - US President George W. Bush hailed Afghanistan's young democracy and vowed to bring Osama bin Laden to justice as he made his surprise first visit to the country since the fall of the Taliban.
Bush, on the first leg of a landmark tour of South Asia, praised Afghanistan's first democratically elected president Hamid Karzai and said the war-scarred country was "inspiring others".
Karzai welcomed Bush as "our great friend, our great supporter, a man that helped us liberate" the country from the fundamentalist Taliban in late 2001 and set it on the path to democracy.
The United States led the military operation that overthrew the Taliban when the regime refused to hand over its ally, Bin Laden, the alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.
Washington has around 19,000 troops here hunting for Taliban and Al-Qaeda insurgents and is the biggest supplier of the aid on which the destitute country relies as it tries to rebuild after 25 years of war.
"People all over the world are watching the experience here in Afghanistan," Bush told Karzai at a joint press conference.
"You are inspiring others and that inspiration will cause others to demand their freedom, and as the world becomes more free the world will become more peaceful."
Bush, the first US president to visit Afghanistan since Dwight Eisenhower made a short trip in 1959, said he was confident Al-Qaeda chief Bin Laden would be captured.
The Saudi militant, who was sheltered by the Taliban regime, is believed to be hiding out along the remote, mountainous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"I am confident he will be brought to justice," Bush told reporters at the heavily fortified presidential palace circled by military helicopters, adding that US, Afghan and Pakistani forces were involved.
"We are making progress at dismantling Al-Qaeda. Slowly and surely we are bringing the people to justice and the world is better for it as a result of our steady progress," he said.
Bush said he would emphasise during his trip to Pakistan, following a short stay in India, the importance in rooting out Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants believed to be sheltering in Pakistan and planning attacks in Afghanistan.
About 80,000 Pakistani troops are also stationed along the border with Afghanistan to hunt militants.
The tens of thousands of troops hunting for the militants have failed to stop a Taliban-led insurgency from becoming more violent, adopting in recent months Iraq-style tactics including suicide attacks and car bombings.
Bush, who was accompanied by his wife Laura and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, later visited the US embassy in the capital where he and Karzai cut a ribbon to formally open the mission.
He was due to meet US troops at the biggest US air base in Afghanistan in the town of Bagram, north of Kabul, before heading to India.
His unannounced visit was kept secret until the last minute because of security concerns.
Bush was later Wednesday due to fly to New Delhi, where around 50,000 Muslims shouting "Bush, Bush die!" staged a rally against his first visit to India.
While in India the US leader is hoping to seal a landmark deal on sharing civilian nuclear energy.
US officials, who said they had expected protests because of India's long-standing democratic traditions, say that aside from the nuclear issue, Bush's visit was aimed at boosting the fast-warming relationship between Washington and the world's biggest democracy.
Bush Confident Bin Laden Will Be Captured
By TERENCE HUNT, AP White House Correspondent
KABUL, Afghanistan - President Bush, on an unannounced visit to Afghanistan, vowed Wednesday to stand by this emerging democracy and "not cut and run" in the face of rising violence. He also predicted Osama bin Laden would be captured despite a futile five-year hunt.
"I'm confident he will be brought to justice," Bush said, standing alongside Afghan President Hamid Karzai outside the presidential palace.
Bush also sought to rally U.S. troops and express solidarity with Karzai's U.S.-backed government.
Bush spent just over four hours on the ground during his surprise visit at the onset of a South Asia trip.
He later flew to New Delhi, India, where tens of thousands of Indians demonstrated on Wednesday against his visit, and was visiting Pakistan later in the week.
Bush pledged that bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader, and other planners of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks would be caught.
"It's not a matter of if they're captured and brought to justice, it's when they're brought to justice," Bush said.
It was the first presidential visit to Afghanistan since the United States routed the Taliban and began a thus far fruitless five-year search for bin laden in the region.
Bin Laden is believed to be hiding out somewhere along the mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
Bush spent just over four hours on the ground during his surprise visit at the onset of a South Asia trip that was also taking him to India and Pakistan.
Bush held a working lunch with Karzai and other Afghan leaders, attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the U.S. embassy in Kabul and spoke to U.S. troops at Bagram Air Base.
"People all over the world are watching the experience here in Afghanistan," Bush said, praising Karzai as "a friend and an ally."
Karzai took power after U.S.-led forces overthrew the Taliban regime. But Taliban insurgents and al-Qaida militants have been increasing attacks within Afghanistan in recent months.
The director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, told a congressional hearing in Washington on Tuesday that the insurgency was still growing and posed a greater threat to Karzai's government "than at any point since late 2001."
Karzai greeted Bush as "our great friend, our great supporter, a man who helped us liberate."
At a joint news conference with Karzai, Bush said the United States and India — his next stop — still have not reached a deal over U.S. help for India's civilian nuclear program.
"This is a difficult issue," he said. He said negotiations were continuing, even as he headed to India.
U.S. restrictions on providing nuclear assistance to India, slapped on after back-to-back nuclear weapons tests by India and Pakistan in 1998, remain in place.
"Hopefully we can reach an agreement," Bush said. "If not, we'll continue to work on it until we do."
Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed an agreement in July that would provide India with nuclear fuel for the country's booming but energy-starved economy.
But the pact faces some political opposition in both countries, mostly over determining how to separate India's civilian and military nuclear facilities.
Asked about the search for bin Laden, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States, and of the president's long-ago call for getting him "dead or alive," Bush said the search for bin Laden and his associates continues.
"I am confident he will be brought to justice," Bush said. "We've got U.S. forces on the hunt for not only bin Laden but anybody who plots and plans with bin Laden. There are Afghan forces on the hunt. ... We've got Pakistan forces on the hunt."
Bush's entourage flew into the city from Bagram in a flock of heavily armed helicopters. Two door gunners on a press helicopter fired off a short burst of machine gun fire at unknown targets as the aircraft flew low and fast over barren, rugged countryside.
Before leaving Afghanistan, Bush gave a pep talk to U.S. troops at the air base where he landed and departed.
Speaking to about 500 soldiers in a huge recreational tent, Bush expressed resolve at the U.S. mission here.
"I assure you this government of yours will not blink, we will not yield. ...The United States is not cut and run," Bush said to enthusiastic cheers and applause.
There are about 19,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, a number Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said would be reduced to about 16,000 by summer.
At the ceremonial ribbon-cutting ceremony, Bush told U.S. embassy workers they were "on the front line of freedom's march."
Suspicion that al-Qaida and Taliban militants may be using Pakistan as base for launching terror strikes in Afghanistan has become a source of tension in relations with Afghanistan. More than two dozen suicide attacks in recent months have fueled Afghan suspicions.
Bush said that, when he is in Pakistan later this week, he will raise the issue of cross-border infiltrations with Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
Meanwhile, Pakistani security forces backed by helicopter gunships struck a militant training camp earlier Wednesday in a tribal region on Pakistan near the Afghan border, killing or wounding at least 25 militants, an official said.
Bush was accompanied by his wife, Laura, who visited Afghanistan in April 2005. Vice President Dick Cheney visited there in December 2005. It was Bush's first visit.
Bush Visits Bin Laden Country
The Washington Post March 01, 2006
President Bush and Osama bin Laden are visiting the same country this week.
The President will spend much of his week in Pakistan and India, and the President insists that there is equivalence between the two countries. "These nations are undergoing great changes," Bush said recently, "and those changes are being felt all across the world."
Well, India is undergoing great changes. Pakistan, on the other hand, is one of the world's primary breeding grounds for terrorism. If ever there were an unreliable partner, one who says one thing and does another, it is Pakistan.
The politically correct position on Pakistan and India -- at least the Cold War nuclear obsessed position -- is to lump India's nuclear forces in with Pakistan's. After all, the two nuclear nations have clashed along their borders and threatened nuclear war.
But India is also the world's largest democracy, and a likely future partner with the United States in everything from trade to development to non-proliferation.
Bush's visit to India this week will thus read like nuclear acquiescence to some, while others will wonder why the United States hadn't long ago looked the other way when it came to India's arsenal.
Pakistan on the other hand, gets preferential treatment and granted equivalence because it also holds America hostage in the war on terror.
But Pakistan is a military dictatorship with a central government that can not even control its own territory. What is more, then objective signs indicate that it doesn't really desire to.
Barely a week after two hijacked airliners destroyed the World Trade Center on 9/11, the United States concluded its secret basing and cooperation deal with Pakistan.
War with land-locked Afghanistan was impossible without at least overflight rights -- "over-shoot" rights one high-ranking military officer called it -- but the U.S. wanted much more from the Pakistani government: refueling access, staging of rescue forces, the movement of materiel, even the quiet hosting of special operations and intelligence.
Pakistan was itself a source of much Islamic extremism, a nuclear rogue state, and President Pervez Musharraf, who had seized power in a 1999 coup, had provided many of the same services to al Qaeda and the Taliban in a quest to manage Afghan internal struggles. The Pakistani intelligence service had even directly undermined U.S. counter-terrorism operations prior to 9/11.
But the Bush administration meant business after 9/11 and the Pakistani president was told in no uncertain terms that his country was either with the United States, or it was next. Musharraf agreed to a program of 74 basing and staging activities.
Pakistan extracted the usual "requirement" of non-democratic governments for secrecy regarding the American presence. But there was an additional twist that the United States acquiesced to: According to Gen. Tommy Franks, then commander of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), in his book American Soldier:
"In return, Musharraf requested that the campaign plan not involve the Indian government or the Indian military, especially in any way that would put Indian forces in Pakistani air or sea space. He also asked that the Coalition not "advertise" Indian political involvement, which would inflame sensitivities in Pakistan.
The requests were reasonable, and well worth the effort in exchange for secure southern flank in Afghanistan."
Five years later, it isn't so clear that this Pakistani military cooperation straitjacket has been so "well worth it."
The President, moreover, is planning to go to Islamabad this week to thank Musharraf for his help in the war on terrorism. Sure it is the case that the Pakistani president has accommodated U.S. requests to deploy additional troops to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area to apprehend and interdict al Qaeda and Taliban outlaws, and he does secretly host large CIA and military contingents. Sure his cooperation with the Bush administration and his rhetorical condemnation of Islamic extremism has provoked assassination attempts and internal protests.
But just because Musharraf faces a risk of assassination and is under the gun for playing both sides of the fence doesn't mean that the United States should provide more support -- Shah like -- to his government. We run the risk of supporting a leadership that is not only out of touch with the "street," but also ineffective at influencing what will happen in the future.
The bottom line is the Musharraf, like Bush, uses the state of war to mask a lack of change.
The President says that Musharraf "leads a country that the terrorists seek to use as a base of operations, and they take advantage of every opportunity to create chaos and destabilize the country."
Mr. President, terrorists do use the country as a base. Say hi to bin Laden while our there.
Pakistan forces hit militants on Afghan border
By Haji Mujtaba
MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani helicopter gunships and ground forces attacked a militant hideout near the Afghan border on Wednesday killing up to 30 people, according to a senior official in the North Waziristan tribal region.
Sayed Zaheerul Islam, the top government administrator in North Waziristan, said between 25 and 30 foreign fighters and tribal militants had been killed and more wounded in the assault on Danda Saidgai, a village about 15 km (10 miles) north of Miranshah, the region's main town.
"It was a camp of foreign miscreants," Islam said. "Bodies and wounded are being airlifted," he added.
But a witness at Danda Saidgai said he saw helicopters attack houses where women and children lived. Others said a backlash against the army action was brewing in Miranshah, the region's main town.
There has been mounting anger among Pashtun tribes over the conduct of the war on terrorism which has resulted in Pakistani deaths and occasionally violations of Pakistani territory like the U.S. airstrike on the Bajaur tribal agency that killed 18 people in early January.
The latest Pakistani military operation came hours before U.S. President George W. Bush made a stop in Afghanistan at the start of trip that will also take him to India and Pakistan.
Bush told a news conference in Kabul that he intended to raise the issue of militants using Pakistan as a base when he meets President Pervez Musharraf in Islamabad.
"I absolutely will bring up the cross-border infiltration with President Musharraf," said Bush, whose visit is otherwise seen as a gesture of support for his Pakistani ally.
"These infiltrations are causing harm to friends and allies and cause harm to U.S. troops."
U.S. and Afghan forces along the border are regularly harried by Taliban insurgents, Central Asian Islamist militants and al Qaeda remnants, while Osama bin Laden is widely believed to be hiding somewhere in Pakistan.
Pakistan often comes under pressure to take more forcible action, although it has deployed 80,000 troops in border areas.
VILLAGE HOUSES HIT
The operation in North Waziristan was launched after the army received intelligence from the Afghan side of the border that a party of militants had returned to Pakistani territory from the Afghan province of Khost, according to Islam.
He said helicopter gunships struck first and ground troops then closed in on the hideout close to the border.
An ammunition dump at the base was also hit and explosions could be heard in Miranshah.
A Reuters correspondent in Miranshah later heard firing after hundreds of tribesmen, some armed with automatic weapons and rockets, headed out toward Danda Saidgai, angered by talk of casualties among villagers.
"We are hearing explosions and rockets and Kalashnikov fire. It happens with gaps of four to five minutes," he said.
Military spokesman Major-General Shaukat Sultan said the assault had targeted a compound where foreign militants were hiding. But he was unable to give casualty figures or say whether there were any high value targets present.
"The security forces have struck and knocked out this compound early this morning," Sultan told Reuters Television in the garrison city of Rawalpindi.
Nek Amal Khan, a tribal elder from the area, said he and two others were driving to Danda Saidgai when a helicopter strafed their van.
He said they jumped out and lay on the ground to play dead, when they saw eight more helicopters fire on the house of a local Muslim cleric, Mullah Noor Peo Khan, and other nearby houses.
"Then all the troops disembarked from the helicopters and surrounded the village," the tribal elder said, after bringing his two wounded companions to a hospital in Miranshah.
Four Days of Rioting at Afghan Prison End
By AMIR SHAH, Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan - Authorities regained control of Afghanistan's most notorious prison after four days of rioting allegedly sparked by al-Qaida and Taliban convicts left at least six people dead, a senior Afghan official said Wednesday.
Deputy justice minister Mohammed Qasim Hashimzai said more than 1,300 unruly prisoners, including 350 Taliban and al-Qaida inmates accused of fomenting the unrest, were transferred to another block of the prison under official guard.
"God help us, now everything is safe and secure," Hashimzai told reporters.
He said one more dead body had been found as the prisoners were cleared out, raising the death toll to six.
Afghan army soldiers were escorting reporters to look inside Policharki prison on the outskirts of the Afghan capital.
US Afghan inmate says Taliban threaten to behead him
By David Brunnstrom Tue Feb 28, 11:01 PM ET
KABUL (Reuters) - An American journalist inmate at an Afghan jail block seized by prisoners said Taliban militants held there threatened on Tuesday to behead him and told him he would die if an attempt were made to end the siege by force.
Emmy award-winning documentary maker Edward Caraballo, 44, from New York, was one of three Americans jailed in 2004 after being convicted of running a private jail and illegally detaining and torturing men in a freelance war on terror.
Speaking by mobile phone from Pul-i-Charkhi jail on the outskirts of Kabul, Caraballo told Reuters he was barricaded in his room in block one of the prison, parts of which were overrun by inmates on Saturday night.
He said some prisoners in the block were protecting him but others, who said they were Taliban militants, had threatened to kill him if their demands were not met.
"I'm not letting anyone in, and I am not going out," said Caraballo who sounded frightened.
"I have told the U.S. embassy that they want to speak to the ambassador and President Karzai on the phone to tell them their demands. I was told that if they don't do that and they don't want to talk to these people, then they will cut my head off."
"Right after I spoke to the embassy, four of them walked into my room and very calmly, very matter-of-factly, said this is not anything personal against you, but we have grievances that we want to get across to somebody in charge."
The men who threatened him said they were Taliban, not al Qaeda militants, he said. They had said authorities should not attempt to storm the jail.
"They said there would be a lot of bloodshed and I would be one of the first to go," he said.
Caraballo said his two-year sentence expired in four months and all he wanted to do was to return home and see his daughter.
"PLEASE, PLEASE, DO NOT STORM"
"My recommendation to the U.S. government and Afghan police force is please, please, do not storm at this time; just keep the negotiations going and please do not attack us," he said.
Caraballo was contacted in the prison on a mobile phone number that a diplomat confirmed belonged to the prisoner.
He said he had spoken to the U.S. embassy and asked for assistance, but had been told: "They cannot extract me, it is not their business, and it's in the Afghan's hands."
Caraballo said he had been nicked in the side by a bullet or a piece of shrapnel when police opened fire in the prison at the start of the siege, when he had been trying to run back to his cell. He said he was not badly hurt.
"It's a nick; it's really nothing," he said. "It was not intentional. The police have been very good in trying to protect me -- it was just friendly fire."
He said he was now feeling unwell had had been vomiting frequently and questioned whether his food had been poisoned.
Caraballo said that since the siege began he had been treading a thin line between being one of the protesting prisoners and "being a hostage, because the first thing they said was 'Get the American and get his phone."'
He said there were about five different factions among the prisoners, one of which was trying to protect him.
Caraballo said one of the men who had threatened him had said their only demand was not to be prosecuted for the uprising because the police had started it and killed their comrades.
Four prisoners were killed in attempts to subdue the riot.
The two Americans jailed with Caraballo -- Former U.S. Green Beret Jonathan "Jack" Idema and another ex-serviceman, Brent Bennett -- are in the same prison but in a separate block, where they were not thought to be in danger.
The two, given 10-year terms at their trial, said then that Caraballo had been just a journalist filming their activities.
Asked to comment on Caraballo's status, U.S. embassy spokesman Lou Fintor read a statement saying that in the absence of Privacy Act Waivers, U.S. law prohibited the embassy from providing specific information about Americans at Pul-i-Charkhi.
"We are aware of media reports but are not in a position to confirm anything at this time," it said.
"We are continuing to closely monitor the situation at Pul-i-Charkhi prison and are in regular contact with Afghan authorities. We would like to see the government of Afghanistan resolve this situation in a peaceful manner."
Mawlavi Mohammad Siddiqi, a cleric who was one of those held by Idema's vigilante group and is now acting as a mediator in the prison standoff, told reporters Idema was not in danger, but Caraballo was "not in a good place."
US soldier killed, seven Taliban captured in Uruzgan
Pajhwok Report
KABUL, Feb 28 (Pajhwok Afghan News): One US soldier was killed and two others wounded, while seven Taliban were captured during a combat operation in the southern Uruzgan province on Tuesday.
A statement released from the US' Bagram Airbase, said the coalition forces were conducting offensive operation in Uruzgan today when they clashed with the insurgents.
One Coalition vehicle was damaged by an improvised explosive device during the engagement in the vicinity of Tarin Kot, said the statement. Coalition forces attacked the enemy with small-arms fire.
The wounded service members were evacuated for medical treatment to a nearby facility. They are in stable condition. Names are being withheld pending notification of next of kin.
We are deeply saddened by the loss of one of our fellow service members, said Maj Gen Benjamin C Freakley, commanding general of the Coalitions Combined Joint Task Force-76.
He selflessly volunteered to serve his country and to build a better future for Afghanistan. His death is mourned by his comrades in arms but he is not nor ever will be forgotten, said the commander.
Afghanistan to bolster border security with three neighbours
by Sam Dagher
DOHA, Feb 28, 2006 (AFP) - Afghanistan on Tuesday inked pacts with three of its neighbours to bolster border security at a conference in Qatar amid warnings of growing links between insurgents and the region's drug trade.
"There have been three agreements signed between Afghanistan on one side, and Iran, Pakistan and China on the other side -- that means three of the major neighbours," Tom Koenigs, who heads the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), told AFP.
"They have agreed to facilitate better border management and those present from the international community have agreed to support this effort through special projects. The idea is to facilitate trade and prevent crime and illegal border crossings of goods or persons."
He spoke at the end of a two-day conference on Afghanistan border security in Doha in which 22 countries participated, including the country's six neighbours.
Koenigs said similar border agreements were in the pipeline with two other Afghan neighbours -- Turkmenistan and Tajikistan.
Some delegates made pledges of financial assistance for the border security effort, subject to approval from their governments, the UN official said, declining to elaborate.
The war-wrecked and destitute Central Asian nation clinched pledges amounting to 10.5 billion dollars at a major donors' conference in London on February 1.
At a previous meeting in Doha in May 2004, the country raised 340 million dollars to rebuild its security forces.
The interior ministers of Afghanistan, Germany, Iran, Pakistan, Qatar, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, as well as senior narcotics control officers from Britain, Norway, Russia and the United States, were among those present at the latest Doha meeting.
Germany, which co-sponsored the gathering, warned of growing links between "terrorism" and Afghanistan's lucrative drug trade.
"Drug trafficking, organised crime and international terrorism are all linked, we must cut off the resources of this scourge," Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble told reporters.
"We are doing this not just to help Afghanistan but all neighbouring states and the world."
Schauble warned that Gulf countries have become a major transit route for Afghan opium, which he said accounted for 90 percent of world supplies.
Experts believe protection money paid by opium farmers is a major source of funding for the Taliban, who continue to battle foreign-trained and backed Afghan troops more than four years after being toppled in a US-led operation for failing to hand over Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
The country's southern border with Pakistan is one of the bloodiest fronts for the insurgency, which has killed about 1,700 people over the past year.
Germany, which has been involved in training Afghan police since 2002, has also warned of the destabilising effect of a deficit of 30 million euros (36 million dollars) in the country's security budget this year.
Afghan Interior Minister Zarar Ahmad Moqbel estimated the police force's financing needs this year at 137 million dollars.
At present Afghanistan has nearly 27,000 trained army personnel and 55,000 police officers.
The US military maintains a force of 19,000 in the country, while the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force has about 9,000 troops, representing all 26 NATO allies and 10 non-NATO nations.
Raytheons JPS Communications ACU T Enables Better Comms For Afghan Army
by Staff Writers Raleigh NC (SPX) Mar 01, 2006
The U.S. Military's Office of Security Cooperation-Afghanistan (OSC-A) has improved the Afghan National Army's (ANA) radio communications and safety readiness by deploying Raytheon's ACU-T tactical device. Using the ACU-T, a modular, 8-pound portable unit that provides six interconnect modules for simplified communications management, ANA soldiers or army officers can now communicate in a timely and efficient manner.
Communication among soldiers and regional command and control headquarters had been difficult as the army did not have the communications equipment necessary to allow for interoperability. Various ANA units use UHF or VHF radios while others use standard cell phones or landline phones. These disparate systems could not communicate with one another. If ANA soldiers were trying to communicate with other soldiers or their regional command office, and they were using different communications devices, the message had to be relayed, taking more time than desired to communicate a message.
"The decision to purchase an ACU-T was simple for us. It provided the ability to link our different radios to one another with different wave forms on the same nets and allowed for our radio users to connect with our telephone users," said Lt. Col. Jose Rodriguez, chief of communications for OSC-A. OSC-A already has purchased 13 ACU-Ts and now is assessing how many more Afghanistan will need for future interoperability between its military and police sectors. Thus far, two installations are complete: one at the National Military Command Center in Kabul and the other at the 201st Corps Regional Command Center in Pol-e-Charkhi.
The ACU-T device is ideal for the ANA because it is a small, rugged, rapidly deployable unit suitable for tactical or vehicular use. It also meets ANA's needs in that it can be customized to include any combination of radio and phone modules and is ideal for remote operation.
"The ACU-T device was rather straightforward to operate in mission critical environments," Rodriguez added. "This was extremely important to our purchasing decision, and the unit is reasonably priced."
The ACU-T has eliminated the need for message relaying and has significantly decreased the time it takes to properly transmit a message to its intended recipient. Now, soldiers or army offices can communicate in a timely and efficient manner. The ACU-T operator, typically located at a regional command center, simply connects the two disparate communications systems, using a computer interface on the ACU-T device. The two users are able to communicate instantly.
"The ACU-T has proven to be a valuable command and control tool for the ANA. Its ease of operation and deployment aided the ANA's efforts to achieve successful and timely communications," said Lee Martin, Raytheon JPS Communications director of Department of Defense sales.
Once the units have been installed properly, a team of ANA and U.S. military members will train army personnel assigned to operate the unit. OSC-A is now installing the systems and providing training for units in the field.
JPS Communications, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Raytheon Company, designs, manufactures and sells electronic hardware and software products that enhance the effectiveness of communications systems. The company's mission is to extend communications capabilities through the use of advanced digital technology. Headquartered in Raleigh, N.C., the company's focus is on radio interconnect products.
JPS offers unsurpassed local, regional, state, and wide-area interoperability by linking radios (HF, UHF, & VHF), SATCOM, cellular, WiFi and regular phones directly and over networks.
Taliban attacks on schools create 'lost generation'
By Kim Sengupta, in Lashkar Gar, Helmand Independent (UK) - Tue, Feb 28, 2006
Ghulam Rasul was leaving school when two gunmen walked in and opened fire. The 17-year-old died instantly. As other students and teachers fled in terror, the shooting continued. Two more people were hit.
The attack at Kartilaya High School in Lashkar Gar was just one in a series which is crippling Afghanistan's education system. At least 165 schools and colleges have been burnt down or forced to close so far by a resurgent Taliban and their Islamist allies.
Five years after the end of the Afghan war and Tony Blair's famous pledge that "this time we will not walk away", it seems the Taliban and al-Qa'ida are back with a vengeance, and one of their main targets is the country's education system.
The campaign is intended, say educationalists and human rights groups, to terrorise families into keeping children uneducated, unemployable, and a recruitment pool for the Islamists.
Teachers are the main targets. Some have been beheaded, others shot in front of their classes. One was killed while attending his father's funeral.
The years of fighting the Russians, the subsequent civil war and Taliban rule has produced a "lost generation" in education. International agencies and aid organisations speak of their difficulties in finding qualified people to run projects.
Now another lost generation is being created. The education system of modern Afghanistan is anathema to the Taliban and Islamist extremists because it is inclusive of girls, and offers secular subjects for study. They have declared that only madrassas (Muslim religious schools) meeting their approval will be allowed to operate.
There are bitter complaints from Afghans that neither their government, nor American and British forces, are doing anything like enough to stop the murderous targeting of children and schools. British commanders say they will address the problem when more troops arrive.
The attack at Kartilaya High, which has 4,200 pupils, about half of them girls, was in the centre of Lashkar Gar, the provincial capital of Helmand, where a massive British force is now being deployed. The school is 15 minutes drive from an American base, now being taken over by the British, and just 500 metres from an Afghan police post. Police did not turn up for half an hour after the shooting. The Americans failed to turn up at all.
Asadullah Ali, 20, who ran a sweet shop at the school, was shot in the neck during the raid two months ago.
"I was very lucky," he said. "It was also very lucky that it was just before the classes broke for the afternoon, otherwise there would have been a lot more children in the playground."
Sabira Ishmail, a 15-year- old girl, knew Ghulam Rasul and his family well. "He came from another province and stayed with his uncle. His cousin still comes to this school. Of course we are very frightened by what has happened," she said.
The killings of teachers are normally preceded by a warning "night letter" from the Islamists ordering schools to be shut down. Retribution is taken if there is a failure to comply.
Haji Abdul Kassim, the director of education for Helmand province, said: "In Helmand alone we have had 18 schools burnt down and 66 others which have been shut down because of threats.
"We are talking about thousands of children being affected. We have also had eight teachers killed.
"I have got one of these night letters threatening to kill me, but what can we do? It is our job to educate the young. If we don't, Afghanistan will always remain one of the poorest countries in the world.
"But why don't the security forces, our own, the Americans and the British protect these schools? What is the point of them being here if they cannot protect even children?"
n Supplies of food, water and electricity were restored to inmates at Kabul's main jail yesterday after prisoners agreed to halt violence, officials said. Security forces were surrounding Pulicharkhi jail, where al-Qa'ida and Taliban prisoners incited a riot over compulsory prison uniforms on Saturday.
Ghulam Rasul was leaving school when two gunmen walked in and opened fire. The 17-year-old died instantly. As other students and teachers fled in terror, the shooting continued. Two more people were hit.
The attack at Kartilaya High School in Lashkar Gar was just one in a series which is crippling Afghanistan's education system. At least 165 schools and colleges have been burnt down or forced to close so far by a resurgent Taliban and their Islamist allies.
Five years after the end of the Afghan war and Tony Blair's famous pledge that "this time we will not walk away", it seems the Taliban and al-Qa'ida are back with a vengeance, and one of their main targets is the country's education system.
The campaign is intended, say educationalists and human rights groups, to terrorise families into keeping children uneducated, unemployable, and a recruitment pool for the Islamists.
Teachers are the main targets. Some have been beheaded, others shot in front of their classes. One was killed while attending his father's funeral.
The years of fighting the Russians, the subsequent civil war and Taliban rule has produced a "lost generation" in education. International agencies and aid organisations speak of their difficulties in finding qualified people to run projects.
Now another lost generation is being created. The education system of modern Afghanistan is anathema to the Taliban and Islamist extremists because it is inclusive of girls, and offers secular subjects for study. They have declared that only madrassas (Muslim religious schools) meeting their approval will be allowed to operate.
There are bitter complaints from Afghans that neither their government, nor American and British forces, are doing anything like enough to stop the murderous targeting of children and schools. British commanders say they will address the problem when more troops arrive.
The attack at Kartilaya High, which has 4,200 pupils, about half of them girls, was in the centre of Lashkar Gar, the provincial capital of Helmand, where a massive British force is now being deployed. The school is 15 minutes drive from an American base, now being taken over by the British, and just 500 metres from an Afghan police post. Police did not turn up for half an hour after the shooting. The Americans failed to turn up at all.
Asadullah Ali, 20, who ran a sweet shop at the school, was shot in the neck during the raid two months ago.
"I was very lucky," he said. "It was also very lucky that it was just before the classes broke for the afternoon, otherwise there would have been a lot more children in the playground."
Sabira Ishmail, a 15-year- old girl, knew Ghulam Rasul and his family well. "He came from another province and stayed with his uncle. His cousin still comes to this school. Of course we are very frightened by what has happened," she said.
The killings of teachers are normally preceded by a warning "night letter" from the Islamists ordering schools to be shut down. Retribution is taken if there is a failure to comply.
Haji Abdul Kassim, the director of education for Helmand province, said: "In Helmand alone we have had 18 schools burnt down and 66 others which have been shut down because of threats.
"We are talking about thousands of children being affected. We have also had eight teachers killed.
"I have got one of these night letters threatening to kill me, but what can we do? It is our job to educate the young. If we don't, Afghanistan will always remain one of the poorest countries in the world.
"But why don't the security forces, our own, the Americans and the British protect these schools? What is the point of them being here if they cannot protect even children?"
n Supplies of food, water and electricity were restored to inmates at Kabul's main jail yesterday after prisoners agreed to halt violence, officials said. Security forces were surrounding Pulicharkhi jail, where al-Qa'ida and Taliban prisoners incited a riot over compulsory prison uniforms on Saturday.
US hands over Coalition command of Afghanistan to Canada
KABUL, Feb. 28 (Xinhuanet) -- U.S. military handed over Tuesday the command of Coalition forces in southwestern region of Afghanistan to Canadian troops, commander of Coalition in Afghanistan Gen. Eikenberry said.
"Today U.S. military will hand over the command of Coalition in southwestern region to Canadian troops under the lead of NATO," Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry said in the transferring ceremony held in Kandahar airport.
"Canadian forces, together with U.S. forces, have taken active part in the fight against Taliban. In the future, U.S. military will continue to strengthen cooperation with Canadian troops under the command of Canadian force in airforce, logistics, intelligence and so on," he added.
About 6,000 NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops have been deployed to the southwestern part of Afghanistan including Kandahar, Zabul, Uruzgan and Helmand provinces where the intensified attacks from Taliban always focus on.
About 19,000 strong U.S.-led Coalition troops stayed in Afghanistan since the collapse of Taliban in late 2001, to continue the further cleanup operations. This year, U.S. military decided to decrease the number to about 16,000 and encouraged ISAF troops to enter southern region to join the anti-terrorism operation.
ISAF from 2001 has about 9,000 troops in Afghanistan for peacekeeping work, while this year 6,000 more troops will arrive step by step and will be deployed especially in the southern region to take part in the fight against terrorism with U.S. military.
World Bank supports health services with additional US$30 million
Source: The World Bank Group 28 Feb 2006 Press Release No:2006/289/SAR
WASHINGTON, February 28, 2006 - The World Bank approved today a US$30 million supplemental grant to support the Government of Afghanistan's effort to extend and expand delivery of basic health services.
The supplemental support to the Health Sector Emergency Reconstruction and Development Project is designed to reduce infant and child mortality, maternal mortality, child malnutrition, and fertility by expanding the delivery of basic health services, and making sure that these services reach Afghan citizens equally. The grant will increase the Ministry of Public Health's stewardship over the sector, including a greater role in healthcare financing, coordination of partners, and overseeing the work of NGOs. It will also build the capacity of Afghan health workers to provide and manage health services.
"This package of health services which we are financing is the most effective and equitable means of improving the health of Afghans," said Benjamin P. Loevinsohn, World Bank Lead Public Health Specialist and the Task Team Leader. "This grant will help ensure expansion of health services to rural areas where hundreds of thousands of people, mainly women and children, die every year because no such service exists."
The Ministry of Public Health has made significant progress in expanding access to basic health services and improving the quality of care since the World Bank Board approved the US$59.6 million grant for the original Health Sector Emergency Reconstruction and Development Project in June 2003. Notable among these achievements are significant increases in the availability of health services for the Afghan people. More than 100 new health facilities have been established and thousands of community health workers have been trained.
Yet the health status of the 25 million Afghans remains among the worst in the world. The under five mortality rate in 2003 was 257 per 1,000 live births, the 4th highest in the world. Due to the high infant and under five mortality rates, life expectancy in Afghanistan is only 43 years. The nutritional status of women and children is also very poor. Thirty-nine percent of children under five are underweight, and more than half of Afghan children suffer from chronic malnutrition.
More specifically, the supplemental grant from the International Development Association (IDA) will finance the expansion of basic health services in eight new areas across the country where no clinics have been established and where health services have rarely been provided. It will also allow existing performance based partnership agreements (PPAs) that cover eight provinces (Helmand, Farah, Badghis, Sari-Pul, Balkh, Samangan, Wardak and Nimroze) to be continued for another 18 months.
Nangarhar bans chicken imports from Pakistan
JALALABAD, March 1 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The eastern Nangarhar province Wednesday banned chicken imports from Pakistan, where strains of bird-flu virus were reportedly been found in poultry farms in Charsadda and Abbottabad districts of the Frontier province.
The Agriculture, livestock and Food Department imposed the ban on imports and sales of Pakistani chickens in the province. Ziaul Haq Sadeqi, deputy chief of the department, said they had directed all dealers to halt poultry imports from Pakistan and cull the chickens they had.
In an exclusive chat with Pajhwok Afghan News, he said they had also instructed security officials to help enforce the ban in border areas in the interest of public health.
The ban has caused concern among chicken-sellers in the province. President of the Chicken-Sellers' Union Mohammad Masil the ban would hit hard hundreds of people involved in the poultry business. Culling or selling the chickens at cheaper prices would inflict losses on the businessmen, he argued while seeking recompense from the government. Dost Mohammad, a poultry dealer near the temple in the Jalalabad, said they would inexorably suffer losses even if they sold the chickens cheaply. He urged the government to check up the chickens and slaughter those infected with the virus.
Ziaul Haq Sadeqi, however, ruled out such an exercise, saying they did not have the facilities to detect the virus among chickens. "The ban on the imports and sales of these chickens is the only fair choice," he insisted.
Hayatullah Gaheez
AFGHANISTAN: Nationwide polio vaccination drive
KABUL, 28 February (IRIN) - More than 7 million children under the age of five across Afghanistan will be vaccinated against the crippling polio virus next week as part of a joint United Nations-government initiative, the UN said on Monday.
"Between March 5 and 7, children in all 34 provinces of Afghanistan will receive oral polio vaccines in a joint initiative of the Ministry of Public Health, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO)," Aleem Siddique, senior public information officer for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), told reporters at a press conference at the Afghan capital, Kabul.
About 40,000 people, including volunteers, supervisors, district coordinators and monitors, will be involved in the drive. In addition, some 5.2 million children aged between nine and 59 months will receive Vitamin A supplements during the campaign, Siddique added. Vitamin A boosts resistance against diseases that commonly affect children.
Although Afghanistan has gone a long way towards tackling polio – the country had just seven cases of the disease during 2005 according to health ministry - there are real challenges ahead. "While Afghanistan has taken major steps towards polio eradication in recent years and transmission of the virus is localised in the south, the entire country is still at risk," Siddique told the briefing.
A lack of security in the south is cited as the main reason for the persistence of polio in the region, particularly in the provinces of Helmand and Urozgan.
"Unfortunately, we had not implemented the polio vaccination drive a hundred percent in Urozgan and Helmand provinces in the past due to ongoing insecurity in the area," Abdullah Fahim, health ministry spokesman, said.
Poliomyelitis (polio) is a highly infectious disease caused by a virus. It invades the nervous system and can cause total paralysis in a matter of hours. It can strike at any age, but affects mainly children under three (over 50 percent of all cases). The virus enters the body through the mouth and multiplies in the intestine.
Afghanistan is one of just six countries in the world where polio remains endemic: the remaining five are Nigeria, India, Niger, Somali and Pakistan.
The campaign is being funded through contributions from UNICEF, the World Bank, Rotary International and aid arms of the governments of Britain, Japan and the United States.
New Risk for Aid Workers
The arrest of a suspected suicide bomber who disguised himself as a member of a non-government organization could put all aid workers at risk.
Institute For War and Peace Reporting By Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi in Mazar-e-Sharif (ARR No. 204, 24-Feb-06)
Kruma Yaya came to Mazar-e-Sharif as an aid worker intent on setting up a computer science training centre in this provincial capital. At least that’s what his credentials indicated.
In reality, according to the Afghan authorities, he was a would-be suicide bomber who intended to assassinate Mohammad Atta, the governor of Balkh province. He was arrested in the governor’s office with explosives strapped around his waist, according to officials.
Staff working with non-government organisations, NGOs, already had plenty to worry about, given the continued violence in much of Afghanistan and the constant accusations of embezzlement and mismanagement levied by members of the government and the public. Now, following the incident in Mazar-e-Sharif, they also face the danger of being considered potential terrorists.
According to officials, Yaya held a Malian passport and was carrying an identification card issued by the International Security Assistance Force, ISAF, when he was detained.
“During his stay, [Yaya] bought some computers and put them in a house in Mazar just to pretend that he was establishing a computer training centre,” said Atta at a press conference following the incident.
The governor said that between February 2 and 6, Yaya repeatedly requested a meeting to present his project to him. His insistence provoked the suspicion of the governor’s bodyguards, who arrested him when he entered Atta’s office on February 6. They reportedly discovered explosives hidden beneath his clothing.
“This incident will oblige me to take a closer look at NGOs from now on,” said Atta. “We knew that smugglers and mafia bands were working through some NGOs, but now we know that terrorists have penetrated the organisations as well.”
The accusation has caused consternation in the government and in the NGO community, whose presence has long been a subject of dispute in Afghanistan.
“It is not a simple matter for terrorists to penetrate NGOs,” said deputy economy minister Nazir Ahmad Shahidi,. “We check the identity of everyone working for NGOs, and we do not issue a license until we have adequate information.”
Shahidi speculated that Yaya’s NGO credentials may have been forged.
Captain Katia Oberg of the Provincial Reconstruction Team in Mazar-e-Sharif told IWPR that ISAF did not issue an ID card to Yaya. “Acquiring an ISAF ID card is not easy,” she said. “We issue identification cards only to those individuals who work with ISAF.”
Mohammad Hashim Mayar, deputy director of the Afghan Coordinating Body for Aid Relief, ACBAR, told IWPR that the accusation of NGO involvement in the attempted assassination was just another means to call the activities of aid groups into question.
“NGOs have attracted a lot of attention in Afghanistan,” he said. “They have been accused of embezzlement and corruption. Now there is a new trick being used on them –mentioning them in the same context as terrorist or mafia activities.
“This is a warning for us to be smart and careful,” he said. “We, in coordination with all NGOs. must not let anyone get into our organisations who could compromise their integrity.”
Some analysts speculated that Taleban and al-Qaeda members may indeed be posing as legitimate NGO workers or infiltrating aid organisations.
“Over the past three years the Taleban and al-Qaeda have changed their tactics,” said Ghulam Farooq Khepalwak, a political analyst and lecturer at Balkh University. “Infiltrating NGOs is a very dangerous trick. It allows terrorists easy access to government targets.”
Qayoum Babak, another political analyst in Mazar-e-Sharif, blames the government for allowing the unchecked proliferation of NGOs. This has provided an easy opportunity for terrorists, he said.
“There are countless NGOs in Afghanistan,” he said. “If someone tries to work as an NGO without any authorisation, it will take the government years to find out about it.”
But the government is confident that it has the situation under control.
The economy ministry recently completed a wholesale re-registration of NGOs in Afghanistan, stripping more than 1,600 organisations of their licenses in the process. The move was intended to give the government greater control over the NGO community and weed out those organisations that were merely a front for fraudulent or criminal activity.
“Terrorists may try in different ways to expand their activities throughout Afghanistan, but the arrest of the suicide attacker in Balkh as well as the arrest of some terrorists in Kandahar over the last month indicates that terrorists cannot escape,” said Yousuf Stanikzai, spokesperson for the Interior Ministry. “These arrests are a sign that Afghanistan’s security forces are getting stronger.”
But for those working for legitimate NGOs, the crackdown merely creates another hazard of working in Afghanistan.
“I feel that I’m in danger,” said an employee of a construction NGO in Mazar-e-Sharif, who declined to give his name. “Now that I’ve heard that terrorists want to carry out their attacks through NGOs, I am afraid that one day I will be accused of being an associate of terrorists.”
Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi is an IWPR staff reporter in Mazar-e-Sharif.
"Worse" Than Guantanamo: U.S. Expands Secretive Prison Inside Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan
Democracy Now Monday, February 27th, 2006
The U.S. is holding 500 at the base in wire cages at the Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul in Afghanistan. Some have been detained for up to three years. They have never been charged with crimes. They have no access to lawyers. They are barred from hearing the allegations against them. Officials describe the jail's conditions as primitive. We speak with human rights attorneys Clive Stafford Smith and Michael Ratner.
"While an international debate rages over the future of the American detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the military has quietly expanded another, less-visible prison in Afghanistan, where it now holds some 500 terror suspects in more primitive conditions, indefinitely and without charges."
That is the opening line of a front-page article in Sunday's New York Times detailing the US-run prison at Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul. The Times reports that some of the detainees at Bagram have been held for as long as two or three years. Unlike those at Guantanamo, they have no access to lawyers, no right to hear the allegations against them and only rudimentary reviews of their status as "enemy combatants." One Pentagon official told the Times the current average stay of prisoners at Bagram was 14.5 months.
The numbers of detainees at the base had risen from about 100 at the start of 2004 to as many as 600 at times last year. The paper says the increase is in part the result of a decision by the U.S. government to shut off the flow of detainees to Guantanamo Bay after the Supreme Court ruled that those prisoners had some basic due-process rights. The question of whether those same rights apply to detainees in Bagram has not been tested in court.
While Guantanamo offers carefully scripted tours for members of Congress and journalists, Bagram has operated in rigorous secrecy since it opened in 2002. It bars outside visitors except for the International Red Cross and refuses to make public the names of those held there. The prison may not be photographed, even from a distance.
Citing unnamed military officials and former detainees, the Times reports that prisoners at Bagram are held by the dozen in wire cages, sleep on the floor on foam mats and are often made to use plastic buckets for latrines. Before recent renovations, detainees rarely saw daylight except for brief visits to a small exercise yard. The U.S. military on Sunday defended Bagram air base saying detainees there are treated humanely and provided "the best possible living conditions."
But evidence of abuse of prisoners at Bagram has emerged over the years. In December 2002, two Afghan prisoners were found dead, hanging by their shackled wrists in isolation cells at the prison. An Army investigation showed they were treated harshly by interrogators, deprived of sleep for days, and struck so often in the legs by guards that a coroner compared the injuries to being run over by a bus. No one has been prosecuted for the deaths, though both were ruled homicides and the Army claims the men were beaten to death inside the jail.
We are joined on the line by Clive Stafford Smith, a British-born human rights lawyer who represents 40 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, many of whom passed through Bagram Air Base. He is legal director of the charity Reprieve. We are also joined by Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Clive Stafford Smith, a British-born human rights lawyer who represents 40 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, many of whom passed through Bagram Air Base. He is legal director of the charity Reprieve.
Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
AMY GOODMAN: We're joined on the phone right now from London by Clive Stafford Smith, a British-born human rights lawyer who represents 40 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, many of whom passed through the Bagram Air Base. He is legal director of the charity, Reprieve. He joins us on the phone from London. Welcome to Democracy Now!
CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH: Good morning.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Can you tell us what you know of Bagram?
CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH: Yes, and, of course, a lot of it is laid out in the New York Times, but there are some things that are considerably worse than represented there. For example, there is an area of Bagram that is not open to the Red Cross, as one of our clients, Mamdou Habib said. The most frightening moment he had in Bagram was when the Red Cross came and he didn’t get to see them. And there’s a cellar area in Bagram, a dark -- a place that’s kept perpetually dark, which is where a number of prisoners are kept away from the Red Cross itself. And, of course, if you think about being a prisoner in those circumstances, your natural assumption is if the military doesn't want the Red Cross to know you exist, then your fate is probably not going to be a very pleasant one, and naturally a number of those people have been moved off and rendered to other countries, where they have been abused. And some of them we’ve caught up with again in Guantanamo, but many haven't. They’ve disappeared.
AMY GOODMAN: We're also joined in our studio by Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Does the Center represent people at Bagram?
MICHAEL RATNER: Well, like Clive, the Center has many of the similar clients who have been through Bagram on their way to Guantanamo. And Moazzam Begg is another one whose story has just come out, how he was taken to Bagram, beaten, etc., and then went to Guantanamo. We are in contact with people who have family members, who have people in Guantanamo, and as Clive said, a lot of this has been known for a couple – more than two or three years. I mean, the people who were hung and tortured and killed. The underground prison has been known, and what’s really incredibly frustrating – you feel like Sisyphus, rolling the stone up the hill, when you think about finally getting some rights for people and visits to Guantanamo, and then what happens is the administration really goes and continues its illegality in other prisons around the world. So what it really says is that, yes, the struggle is around one prison like Guantanamo, but we have to really root out completely what this administration is doing around the world.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, can you, though, explain? I mean, it sounds like the reason Bagram is growing is because of all of the international outcry around Guantanamo, but also Guantanamo's legal relationship with the United States on a U.S. air base in Cuba. Can you explain the legality of Afghanistan, where Bagram is and Guantanamo, these two detention camps?
MICHAEL RATNER: Well, both Clive and I were in the early case about Guantanamo, in which the U.S. tried to say Guantanamo was like Bagram, that there were no legal rights there. You couldn't go to court for people in Guantanamo. They had no constitutional rights, and the U.S. said it could do what it wanted to people at Guantanamo. We won a big case in the Supreme Court, the Rasul case in June of 2004, that opened the courts to people at Guantanamo and opened them so people like Clive and Center lawyers could go to Guantanamo.
Even with that, those set of rights, the administration, in the Graham-Levin Bill and the Detainee Treatment Act, is trying to eliminate even those rights we won in the Supreme Court. But as far as Bagram is concerned, the legal position of the administration is similar to what it was about Guantanamo. There are no legal rights, but they have the additional argument, that they would make, that because it’s not on a U.S. permanent military base like the one in Cuba, that there’s even fewer rights.
I don't think they're correct. I think that any person detained anywhere in the world has a right to go into a court, has a right to be visited by an attorney, but the administration's view is whatever Guantanamo rights are, the rights at Bagram are nil, absolutely none, and so what they did, according to the Times report, was a few months after we won the Rasul case, they said they stopped sending people to Guantanamo and started to send them to other places – Bagram is the one that we know the most about at this point – because the administration's view is that no court, no lawyer, no one, has any right to visit anyone in Guantanamo -- anyone in Bagram, and that nobody --and that the people at Bagram have no legal rights at all. An extraordinary statement in today’s world.
AMY GOODMAN: Clive Stafford Smith, your response, and also what is the role, if any, of Britain in Bagram?
CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH: Well, my response is that I think, as Michael and I and many others have said for a long time, Guantanamo is something of a distraction. That people -- if you think people have been badly treated in Guantanamo, you should see what’s happened to them in other places, and what’s of real concern, arising out of the New York Times article, is this: The Times mentioned one flight. It was actually September 19, 2004 where ten people were brought to Guantanamo. I represent a couple of those. Of those ten, all of them are extraordinary cases where people were taken and abused horribly in other places.
One of my clients is Binyam Mohammed. He was rendered to Morocco. We’ve got the flight logs. We know the very names of the soldiers who were on the flight, and he was taken there, and he was tortured for 18 months, a razor blade taken to his penis, for goodness sake, and now the U.S. military is putting him on trial in Guantanamo. Hassin bin Attash, a 17 year-old juvenile who was taken to Jordan and tortured there for 16 months. There is a series of these people.
Now, what that prompts is this question, that the people who have been most mistreated in Guantanamo were mistreated elsewhere, and then the administration took a very small number of them to Guantanamo, but the vast majority of them are either in Bagram or in these secret prisons around the world. And most recently, we heard of Poland. We’ve heard of Morocco. We’ve heard of various places.
What I'm afraid is the truth is that the most shocking abuses have yet to come to light, that these people are in Bagram and have yet to talk to anybody, and what the administration is doing is hiding these ghastly secrets. Now, the question is: What are they going to do about that? What are they going to do when it becomes necessary at some point for these prisoners to be given lawyers? There’s a lot of horror stories, and the administration is just not going to want those horror stories to come out. So where are these prisoners going to be sent? Are they going to vanish forever?
And unfortunately, the U.S. administration has shown that it is willing to send people to Egypt, where they may disappear, to Morocco, where they get razor blades taken to them, and we’ve got to find out the names of these people first, because the government won't tell us, and then we’ve got to prevent them from being rendered to some country where they effectively die after a bit of torture.
I’ll be glad to go on to the British part, but I know I have talked too much. I don’t want to rant on forever.
AMY GOODMAN: Clive Stafford Smith, I wanted to ask you about a piece that appeared in a paper in your country in the Guardian by Suzanne Goldenberg and James Meek. It says, “New evidence has emerged that U.S. forces in Afghanistan engaged in widespread Abu Ghraib-style abuse, taking trophy photographs of detainees and carrying out rape and sexual humiliation. Documents obtained by the Guardian contain evidence that such abuse took place in the main detention center at Bagram, near the capital, Kabul, as well at a smaller U.S. installation near the southern city of Kandahar. A thousand pages of evidence from U.S. Army investigations released to the ACLU after a long battle, made available to the Guardian.”
And then inside, it says, “The latest allegations from Afghanistan fit a pattern of claims of brutal treatment made by former Guantanamo Bay prisoners and Afghans held by the U.S. In December, the U.S. said eight prisoners had died in custody in Afghanistan,” and this is according to you, “A Palestinian says he was sodomized by American soldiers in Afghanistan. Another former prisoner of U.S. forces, a Jordanian, describes a form of torture which involved being hung in a cage from a rope for days. Hussein Abdelkader Youssef Mustafa, a Palestinian living in Jordan, told Clive Stafford Smith he was sodomized by U.S. soldiers during detention at Bagram in 2002. He said, ‘They forcibly rammed a stick up my rectum – excruciatingly painful. Only when the pain became overwhelming did I think I would ever scream, but I could not stop screaming when this happened.’”
CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH: Yeah, you know, Hussein Mustafa, I met with him in Jordan, and he was an incredibly credible person. He is a dignified older gentleman, about now 50 years old, and he wanted to talk about what had happened to him, but he really didn’t want to talk about that sexual stuff, and in the end, you know, I said to him, “Look, you don’t have to, but it’s very important if things happened, that the story get out, so they don't happen to other people,” and in the end he did, and it was in front of half a dozen people who were just transfixed as he described how four soldiers took him, one on each shoulder, one bent down his head and then the fourth of them took this broomstick and shoved it up his rectum.
Now there was no one in that room -- and they were from a variety of places -- who didn't believe that what this man was saying was true, but I am afraid, I’ve got to tell you, that that’s far from the worst that’s happened. When you talk about Bagram, when you talk about Kandahar, those aren’t the worst places the U.S. has run in Afghanistan. The dark prison, sometimes called “Salt Pit,” in Kabul itself, which is separate from Bagram, has been far worse than that, and I can tell you stories from there that just make your skin crawl.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, why don't you tell us something about this place?
CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH: Yeah, I'll tell you some of the ones, for example, that Binyam Mohammed told me. He was the man who had the razor blade taken to him. He was then taken, and again, we can prove it. We’ve got the flight logs. He was taken on January 25, 2004, to Kabul, where he was put in this dark prison for five months, and he was shackled. You just get this vision of the Middle Ages, where he’s shackled on the wall with his hands up, so he can't quite sit down. It’s totally dark in that place.
When the U.S. says that people are being treated nicely in Bagram, you’ve got to be kidding me. It’s the middle of winter, and they're freezing to death, and this man was in this cell, no heating, absolutely freezing, no clothing, except for his shorts, totally dark for 24 hours a day with this howling noise around him. They began with Eminem music, interestingly enough; they played him Eminem music for 24 hours a day for 20 days. Seems to me Eminem ought to be suing them for royalties over that, but then it got worse and they started doing these screeching noises, and this is going on 24 hours a day, and in the mean time they would bring him out very briefly just to beat him, and this is to try to get this man to confess to stories that they now want him to repeat in military commissions in Guantanamo, and they want to say, “Oh, everything's nice now.”
And what he went through, he said, was far worse than the physical torture, this psychological torture that some pervert was running in the dark prison in Kabul was worse to him, and he still suffers from it day in, day out, because of what it has done to his mind, and this is the – what we have to remember is there is someone out there who is thinking this stuff up and who is then saying that we need to do it, and this isn’t some lowly guard who loses control and does something terrible that’s physical. I mean, that’s awful. But you’ve got someone out there who is thinking through how we’re going to torture these people with this excruciating noise and these other things, and they're doing this very, very consciously, and the story has a long way before it’s going to be out fully.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Michael Ratner, what oversight is there?
MICHAEL RATNER: Well, as Clive is saying, there isn't, and I think, you know, we’re putting this huge effort into closing down Guantanamo, which is crucial, obviously, to do. It will be a major victory, but what we’re running is these so-called “black sites,” torture chambers all around the world, and there isn’t any oversight. Our Congress is just sitting on its hands, not doing anything. The most they ask is they say, “Give us a report on black sites.” Even that isn’t getting through. We have nothing.
This country is running torture chambers around the world right now, and Clive's stories, our clients’ stories, are incredibly dramatic, and his point about the psychological torture is crucial. It’s what Clive is saying, people have thought about this, but this is something that has been U.S. policy for 40 years of how to really deal with people, not just physically, but with psychological torture, and one of your former guests, I think Al McCoy, had this on in A Question of Torture, saying, this is what really affects people. Physically, yes, hurts them, but the psychological marks of torture, and when you see the pictures from Bagram to Guantanamo, you know that this is stuff that is not just chance or random. This is going by the book.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to talk about this article in the New Yorker that Jane Mayer had written about Colonel Louie Morgan Banks, a senior Army psychologist who played a significant advisory role in interrogations at Guantanamo Bay. Asked to provide details of his consulting work, he said, quote, “I just don't remember any particular cases. I just consulted generally on what approaches to take. It was about what human behavior in captivity is like.” Banks has a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Southern Mississippi. A biographical statement for an American Psychological Association Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security, which Banks serves on, mentions that he, quote, “provides technical support and consultation to all Army psychologists providing interrogation support.” It also notes that starting in November of 2001, Banks was detailed to Afghanistan where he spent four months at Bagram Air Field, quote, “supporting combat operations against al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters.”
MICHAEL RATNER: Well, what’s remarkable about Banks is he also consulted on Guantanamo. So here you have this guy who is a psychologist, consulting really on how to break people through psychological -- psychological torture is what I would call it, and then he goes from Guantanamo to Bagram. This is not chance. This is not a few bad apples. This is high-level military people working with our military, our C.I.A., in how to break people through torture.
CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH: When you're talking “break people,” and I think that’s a very important word. You know, people bang on about whether it’s torture or whether it’s coercion. Well our highest officials have said that the purpose of all of this is to, quote, “break” somebody, and we get people to confess to stuff that’s absolute drivel. You take, for example, Binyam Mohammed, again. You have a razor blade taken to you, you have the psychological stuff, you’re going to say anything.
They got Binyam Mohammed to confess that he had dinner with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramsey bin al-Shaid, Abu Zubaydah, Sheikh al-Libbi, and Jose Padilla all together on April 3, 2002, in Pakistan. Well, you know, quite apart from anything else, two of them, Abu Zubaydah and Sheikh al-Libbi were in U.S. custody at the time when he confessed to that and at the time that he was meant to be having dinner, and you know, this is a guy that didn’t speak Arabic who was meant to be hobnobbing with half of al-Qaeda. You get this total drivel out of this breaking of people, and yet, for some reason, the people who are designing Guantanamo think we should carry on breaking them, as did the Spanish Inquisition. It’s very odd.
MICHAEL RATNER: That’s correct. I mean, it’s – they break them; they get drivel; they get false stories, and so what’s going on? What’s going on, I think, in part, is an attempt to terrorize people, terrorize the Muslim world and say, “You come into U.S. hands, and we will terrorize you.” And that’s what they’re doing.
CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH: Don’t you think though, Michael – I tell you, I think there’s a slightly bigger danger here, which is the people who are doing this abuse believe the stuff they get. This is what’s frightening to me, that we end up making decisions based on this nonsense.
MICHAEL RATNER: You know, it’s true. They do believe it. I think, when you talk to your clients or we talk to ours, the people who are interrogating them actually believe what they're telling them, even though it’s utterly and complete drivel.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there. Joining us next is Maher Arar. He is a Canadian citizen who was -- well, the U.S. government calls it “extraordinary rendition,” others call it “kidnapped” -- when he was transiting through Kennedy Airport from a family vacation to Canada and sent to Syria, was tortured there and held for almost a year. We have been speaking with Clive Stafford Smith, a British human rights lawyer. Michael Ratner will stay with us, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Conspiracy of Silence Over HIV/AIDS
Health officials fear HIV may be spreading rapidly, but ignorance and denial cloud the issue.
Institute For War and Peace Reporting By Amanullah Nasrat in Wardak (ARR No. 204, 24-Feb-06)
Najib is in hiding from his parents and siblings. The 23-year-old, a pleasant-faced young man dressed in traditional Afghan clothing, is living with his uncle while waiting to die. His extreme pallor reveals that he is ill, but most of those around him, even his uncle, are unaware that he has AIDS.
“All of my tribe would be shamed if they knew,” said Nasib - not his real name- his hands shaking slightly as he lit a cigarette. “I know I cannot be cured, so I will stay here. That way my family will not have to endure taunts after I am dead.”
Najib began to feel ill about 14 months ago. He was plagued with a permanent fever, pain in his feet and diarrhoea. “I tried a lot of medicines, and a lot of amulets,” he said. “Nothing helped.”
He finally went to a doctor, who tested him and told him he was HIV-positive.
Najob believes he contracted the virus from prostitutes in Pakistan, where he had been living with his family for the past 16 years.
“Two years ago, I was having illicit sexual relations with two girls,” he said. “They told me I was their first man, but I later found out that this was their profession.”
HIV/AIDS is little-known and misunderstood in Afghanistan. Some healthcare professionals are warning that the conspiracy of silence surrounding the virus could be one of the factors facilitating its spread.
“Afghanistan is facing an AIDS crisis,” said Dr Sevil Huseynova, who heads the HIV/AIDS section at the Kabul Office of the World Health Organisation, WHO, which has been working in the field of HIV awareness/prevention in Afghanistan since 2003.
“It has a very low number of registered cases, but now the disease could spread very quickly,” she said. “People do not know anything about it, and there are a lot of factors such as the use of illegal narcotics and the return of refugees from abroad which contribute to the situation.”
Dr Zalmai Khan Ahmadzai, head of the HIV/AIDS department at the public health ministry, says 51 cases have been recorded in the country to date. Of that number, 17 are women.
But according to Dr Abdullah Fahim, an advisor to the health ministry, the real number is much higher. He estimates that there are at least 1,500 people infected with HIV in Afghanistan at present, most of whom are either unaware they are carrying the virus or are hiding the fact out of shame.
“HIV/AIDS is spreading very quickly,” he said.
Ahmadzai says most of the cases involve people who have spent time in emigration. Refugees returning from neighbouring Pakistan and Iran during Afghanistan’s decades of war are bringing back foreign ways and disease, say medical professionals.
Other factors contributing to the rapid spread of HIV include needle-sharing among drug users; surgery where contaminated equipment is used; sexual relations; blood transfusions; and dirty razors in barber’s shops. Infected mothers can also pass the virus to their children in breast milk, said Ahmadzai.
“The illness does not have symptoms at the beginning, but it can kill a person in two to 10 years,” he said.
The government is developing a strategy for coping with the disease, helped by international organisations. WHO has designed a five-year programme that includes workshops for the public and overseas training for physicians.
The Ministry of Public Health has prepared a nationwide approach to HIV prevention, but it lacks the necessary funding. Health Minister Abdullah Fatimi told a press conference in January that the country needed about 15 million US dollars to mount an adequate campaign against HIV/AIDS.
“The World Bank said it would assist us, but they are going to give us the money over three years. That isn’t enough,” he said.
Abdul Wali Baseerat, a member of the Islamic studies section of the Afghan Academy of Sciences, advocates a return of traditional Islamic values as a way to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS.
“The virus is transmitted through the use of narcotics and through fornication,” he told IWPR. “These were forbidden by Islam 1,400 years ago. We have punishments, both in this world and the next, for the perpetrators of such acts, and if these sanctions are put into practice, we will never even hear about HIV and other diseases.”
HIV/AIDS awareness among the public is still at a very low level.
Mohammad Nadir, a resident of Kabul, expresses a commonly-held prejudice in associating the disease with Afghanistan’s fledgling democracy.
“It has been about two or three years since we started hearing about AIDS - the same amount of time we have had democracy,” he said. “Women’s liberation is bringing this disease to us.”
Amanullah Nasrat is an IWPR staff reporter in Kabul.
Should Opium Poppies be Legalized?
One international organisation argues it’s a better solution than attempting to eradicate the country’s primary cash crop.
Institute For War and Peace Reporting By Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi and Abdul Baseer Saeed (ARR No. 204, 24-Feb-06)
Illegal narcotic production has been named as Afghanistan’s number one problem, and the battle against poppy cultivation has consumed several years, many lives and hundreds of millions of dollars. Now an international organisation has proposed a radical solution: legalise poppy cultivation.
“More than two million people, or nine per cent of the population, rely on poppies for their livelihood,” said Emmanuel Reinert, executive director of the Senlis Council, a Paris-based drug policy advisory forum. “Without adequate measures to prevent illegal usage, eradication efforts will be useless.”
Instead of putting mammoth amounts of time and money into destroying the crop, argues Reinert, the international community should help Afghanistan become a legal opiate producer.
“Afghanistan and neighbouring countries need pain relief medication,” he said. “At present the country has to import such medications from abroad.”
According to a United Nations study released in 2004, almost 90 per cent of the world’s heroin originates in Afghanistan. In his inauguration speech, President Hamed Karzai declared a “jihad”, or holy war, on the poppy, and since then major efforts have gone into stamping out the plant.
But the efforts have been less than successful, say many. While land under cultivation has decreased by over 20 per cent in the last year, favourable climate conditions yielded a bumper crop, keeping production levels fairly steady. This year, according to some media reports, farmers are actually increasing the land under cultivation, convinced that the government will not destroy their crops.
The Senlis Council has worked on poppy legalisation in other countries such as Austria, India, Canada and Australia. Since September 2005, it has taken on the task of convincing the Afghan government, as well as international organisations, that legalising the crop is a good idea.
So far it has had limited success.
Sayed Azam, a spokesman for the Ministry of Counter-Narcotics, is sceptical that a legalisation scheme could work. “In the present situation, legalising poppy cultivation will never benefit Afghanistan. This is also a blow against the counter narcotics strategy,” he said.
According to Azam, Afghanistan does not have the capacity to ensure that poppies are grown and opium sold legally.
“In countries like Canada, Austria, India and Australia, the government can regulate the poppy crop,” he said. “It is very clear what percentage of the crop is legal, and the government can prevent the sale of illegal poppies to smugglers. This capacity does not exist in Afghanistan.”
General Mohammad Daud, deputy interior minister for counter-narcotics, is equally adamant that such legalisation is not in the country’s best interests.
“The Senlis proposal is unacceptable and is against the interests of Afghanistan as a whole,” he told IWPR. “Our police and security forces are not able to control the cultivation of licensed poppy. The government of Afghanistan cannot accept this idea, because it does not have the necessary capacity.”
Others, however, say the idea is worth considering. Lal Gul, head of the Afghan Commission for Human Rights, sees a clear benefit in the proposal.
“Legalisation means we take poppies off the black market,” he told IWPR. “We are never going to be able to stop the cultivation of poppies in Afghanistan. Trying to do so just deals a deathblow to Afghan farmers. Legalisation is a good option.”
But political analyst Karim Khuram said that giving licenses to poppy farmers would just give corrupt government officials another opportunity to exercise control over the process. “Corruption is rampant in the government,” he said. “Licenses will be given only to those farmers who have ties to government officials.”
Since some government officials are involved in the drug smuggling process, he said, it likely that some of the opium will be siphoned off to produce heroin.
There have been numerous reports in the media recently that government officials are engaged in the illegal narcotics trade, making many wonder whether any form of control is possible.
“If poppy were legalised, the government would not be able to control even Kabul,” said Khuram. “In places like Badakhshan or Helmand, it is out of the question.”
Licensing poppy-growing will just perpetuate the system of corruption that already exists within the country, agreed political analyst and member of the Academy of Sciences, Habibullah Rafi.
“In Afghanistan, privileges are awarded or revoked based on ethnic, tribal or linguistic relationships,” he said. “Licenses will be given to those with closer ties to the government.”
Control is at the heart of the debate over legalisation. Even those who agree in principle with the idea are wary of beginning the effort before adequate safeguards are in place.
“We must proceed step by step,” said political analyst Fazel Rahman Oria. “Illegal cultivation has made smugglers rich and provided funds for terrorists. It has resulted in the deaths of human beings, and it has perpetuated corruption in the government. Legalisation is a good idea, but it must be controlled by the world community as well as by the Afghan government.”
Doris Buddenberg, head of the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, UNODC, told IWPR that legalisation could be beneficial for Afghanistan, provided the government can prevent smuggling and illegal cultivation.
"It is not yet proven that Afghanistan has this capability,” she said.
And there is an economic side to the question as well.
According to Buddenberg, one kilo of legal opium for medicinal use costs 20 to 30 US dollars on world markets, while illegal opium used in producing heroin costs 150 dollars.
“In a country like Afghanistan, farmers will not want to stop dealing with smugglers, since they make more money. So it will be impossible to prevent illegal cultivation and smuggling,” said Buddenberg.
Some Afghan farmers are convinced that legalisation will solve their problems.
“Planting poppy is a gamble for me,” said Janat Gul, a farmer in Balkh province. “I am never sure whether or not the government is going to destroy my crop. But if poppy cultivation is legalised, then I will have peace of mind. I would not sell my crop to smugglers if the government did this favour for me.”
Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi is an IWPR staff reporter in Mazar-e-Sharif. Abdul Baseer Saeed is a freelance reporter in Kabul.
Disclaimer:
This news site is mostly a compilation of publicly accessible articles
on the Web in the form of a link or saved news item. The news articles
and commentaries/editorials are protected under international copyright
laws. All credit goes to the original respective source(s).