Afghanistan News March 17, 2006

March 17, 2006

Deadly H5N1 Bird Flu Confirmed In Afghanistan
Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
KABUL, March 16, 2006 -- The United Nations and the Afghan government have confirmed an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu in Afghanistan.

In a joint statement they said H5N1 has been confirmed in six samples of dead birds. It wasn't immediately clear where the samples were found.

Experts earlier had said they were concerned that the H5N1 strain would appear in Afghanistan, given the country's poor infrastructure for animal and human health.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed millions of birds and about 100 people around the world 2003. Most of the human victims caught the disease from very close contact with infected birds.

Bird flu confirmed in Afghanistan
March 16, 2006
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Lab tests have confirmed the first outbreak of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu in Afghanistan, the government said Thursday. Sweden also announced an outbreak of the virulent virus after two wild birds were found to be infected.

In India, health workers slaughtered tens of thousands of chickens in dozens of villages Thursday to contain the country's second bird flu outbreak, a senior official said. The culling was to be completed Friday.

A joint U.N.-Afghan statement said samples taken from six birds in the capital, Kabul, and the eastern city of Jalalabad tested positive for the virus, raising concern about how the impoverished Central Asian nation's government will deal with the disease, which has ravaged poultry populations across the globe and killed at least 98 people.

"The H5N1 strain of avian influenza has today been confirmed in Afghanistan in six samples," the statement said. "Thus far in Afghanistan, avian influenza remains confined to the bird population, with no human cases reported. It is imperative that the human population is protected."

The government has already sought international aid to buy protective clothing for its staff, as well as chemical disinfectant and vaccines. Afghanistan's public veterinary system is weak and no quarantine system exists to check imported poultry at borders.

Bird culling will begin in affected areas, markets selling poultry will be closed and disinfected and a public awareness campaign will be launched to teach people about the dangers of the virus, the statement said.

Afghanistan lies at a crossroads for migratory birds, and its neighbors, including Iran and India, have already detected outbreaks of the virus, which has killed or forced the slaughter of tens of millions of chickens and ducks across Asia since 2003.

The disease has also spread to Africa, the Middle East and Europe, where on Wednesday a European Union laboratory confirmed that two wild ducks in southeastern Sweden were infected with H5N1, Sweden's National Board of Agriculture reported.

In western India, health workers culled 75,000 chickens in dozens of villages Thursday, said D.K. Shankaran, the state's chief secretary.

Four chickens in the Jalgaon district of Maharashtra state tested positive for the H5 strain of bird flu, and authorities were still awaiting the results of tests to determine if they had the virulent H5N1 variety.

India suffered its first outbreak of the H5N1 strain last month in Nandurbar, a poultry farming district 100 miles west of Jalgaon. It's unclear whether the Jalgaon and Nandurbar outbreaks are related.

"There is no sense of panic. Work is being carried out in a systematic manner," Shankaran said. "We were able to limit the spread last month and will do the same again."

Health officials fear H5N1 could evolve into a virus that can be transmitted easily between people and become a global pandemic, but there has been no confirmation of this happening yet.

FEATURE-Taliban, poverty fueling Afghan opium boom
17 Mar 2006 01:02:09 GMT By Yousuf Azimy
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, March 17 (Reuters) - Afghan farmer Abdul Ghani looks over his field carpeted in small, green plants and knows this crop will feed his family.

His field is covered in opium poppies, now only leaves about 10 cm (four inches) high and yet to flower.

Ghani explains his simple logic that makes him part of an illicit industry that the government says is funding terrorism and threatens to destroy the country.

"We're very poor people. To feed our families we grow poppies," said the weather-beaten 50-year-old with a grey beard and turban. His two sons, one 11, the other 12, stood by as they took a break from weeding.

Ghani said he grew wheat and vegetables such as tomatoes, but got a pittance from those crops compared with the opium he sold to traffickers, who appeared on motorbikes and in trucks at harvest time.

"We can't support our families with what we get for our wheat but we can with the income from poppies."

Ghani's field is at the epicentre of Afghanistan's drugs crisis, in the flat Helmand river valley in the southern province of the same name.

For hundreds of years networks of canals brought water to fields and orchards, producing rich crops, but the irrigation system has collapsed over years of conflict.

Now only opium brings wealth.

Taliban insurgents encourage opium growing and roam the mountains that rise from the valley in the north, and across vast tracts of lawless desert that stretch south to the Pakistani border, officials say.

Ensuring security so anti-drug efforts can go ahead in the province that produces a quarter of Afghan opium will be a main task of 3,300 British troops who will soon be based here.

They will have their work cut out.

"The Taliban have promised the farmers to protect their poppy fields," provincial governor Mohammad Daoud told a small group of reporters this week. "They have assured the farmers they will not allow the government forces for eradication."

"First security must be in place, there must be no Taliban there, then the eradication campaign will start."

ERADICATION EFFORTS
Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium. The heroin refined from it floods city streets across the world.

Production has ballooned since the Taliban, who banned opium at the end of their rule, were ousted in 2001.

The drug gangs have taken advantage of insecurity, weak or non-existent policing, rampant corruption and a reluctance to go after powerful figures involved in drugs but supporting the U.S-led war against the Taliban.

With international pressure mounting to tackle drugs, efforts to eradicate the $2.8 billion a year industry have begun early this season to allow farmers time to replant a legal crop.

Teams have been ploughing poppy fields under but only a fraction, at most 10 percent countrywide, can be destroyed, experts say.

The United States and Britain, which fund and oversee drug efforts with the government, also stress getting tough with traffickers and providing farmers with alternatives.

For now at least, they agree with President Hamid Karzai who has ruled out aerial spraying of herbicide over poppy fields.

Karzai's more gentle approach has had results.

Farmers planted more than a fifth less opium last year, largely because of his efforts to shame them and appeals that they stop, coupled with the threat and fear of eradication.

But the U.N. anti-drugs office says production is up again this season in almost half of provinces, including Helmand.

RAISING THE RISK
U.S. ambassador Ronald Neumann recalls his visit to Helmand in the 1960s - when his father was the envoy - and the United States helped rehabilitate the irrigation system that turned the valley green.

Now he's back and the United States is again helping Helmand fix its canals as part of long-term efforts to fight drugs and the Taliban.

"There is more linkage here in Helmand between the drug trade and the Taliban and terrorism than there is anywhere else in Afghanistan," Neumann told reporters during a visit to the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, this week.

Long-term, the answer to drugs was alternative livelihoods, meaning the restoration of the rural economy -- the canals, roads and electricity.

In the meantime, eradication and action against those involved had to convince farmers of the risks, he said.

"You have to raise the risk and the cost of growing poppy even as you provide alternatives," he said.

Farmer Ghani is not risking much: just the money and time spent on his field, if authorities destroy it.

He'd stop growing opium if he got help, he said.

"This isn't something we can eat and we're not opium addicts. If the government helps us, we won't grow it."

First Lady Toasts Afghan Author
Thursday, March 16, 2006
WASHINGTON, (AP) -- First lady Laura Bush gave her imprimatur to a best-selling book about family, life and children in Afghanistan, as the author of "The Kite Runner" described the return to his war-ravaged country after a 27-year absence.

In remarks at the Afghan Embassy, Mrs. Bush said she and President Bush "really, really enjoyed," reading the tender story of hope and renewal about two young brothers who bond by flying kites in 1970s Afghanistan.

The first lady, on hand for the Afghan Children Initiative benefit dinner, said she recommended the book Thursday at a White House tea.

Author Khaled Hosseini said that with democratic elections in Afghanistan and efforts to rebuild the country, "there is reason to be optimistic," but he said the key to the country's future lies in educating its children.

Mrs. Bush said, "Education will give them a chance to succeed. We can all have a great impact on all of these children and their families."

Among those at the dinner were the Afghan Ambassador Said T. Jawad; Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld; Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez.

The dinner was sponsored by the U.S. Afghan Women's Council.

Pakistan bans two Afghan TV channels
People's Daily - Mar 16 4:14 PM
Pakistan on Thursday put a ban on two Afghan private TV channels and asked cable operators in the southwestern Balochistan province to stop the channels from telecasting their programs as they were involved in anti-Pakistan propaganda.

Abdul Jalal Khan, an official of the Pakistan Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA), said in Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan, that the two Afghan stations were involved in baseless propaganda against Pakistan. PEMRA regulates functions of private TV and radio channels.

The private Tolo TV and Ariana TV channels blamed Pakistani security forces for trying to kill former Afghan President Sibghatullah Mujaddadi, the official said.

Mujaddadi survived a suicide attack in Kabul on March 12, which killed four people including two attackers. Taliban have claimed responsibility for the attack.

Jalal Khan said the Afghan TV channels were using abusive language against Pakistan in their programs.

Cable operators in Quetta said they stopped airing programs of the two stations on Thursday.

Cable operators in the northern city of Peshawar also air Afghan TV channels but the decision has not yet been extended there.

A PEMRA official said in Islamabad that Afghan channels had not got telecast rights and that was why they were banned.

Afghan refugees and Pashtoons in Pakistani's Balochistan and the North Western Frontier Province watch the channels.

The ban was imposed at a time when tension heightened after Mujaddadi blamed Pakistan's intelligence agency for the suicide attack.
Source: Xinhua

Afghanistan's feared woman warlord
Thursday, 16 March 2006 BBC News
By Tom Coghlan / In the Darisujan Valley, Baghlan province
Amid the brooding mountains on the borders of Baghlan province, Afghanistan's only female warlord clings to her remote fiefdom.

But the years are catching up with Kaftar, "The Pigeon", as Bibi Ayesha is known, and the Afghan government and its international backers want her to hand in her guns.

"My eyes have become misty," says Kaftar, complaining that she can no longer shoot straight.

But she has lost none of the enthusiasm for violence that fed her reputation for cruelty during Afghanistan's wars.

"I am still wishing for a fight," she said, dismissing any notion that women's roles in Afghan society would preclude front-line battle service.

"It makes no difference if you are a man or a woman when you have the heart of a fighter."

Her only concession to social mores is that she insists that a male relative accompany her into battle, in line with Afghan tradition for women outside the home.

Disarming 'the Pigeon'

At the end of a bone-juddering two-hour drive up a river bed from the nearest settlement, Kaftar's fortified house clings to the steep valley wall.

Inside the 55-year-old sat flanked by her four surviving sons; tough looking men who are her loyal lieutenants. Two others have been killed in battle.

She has fought the Taleban, the Russians and many a local rival in the mountains of Narin district, which is dotted with the wrecks of old Soviet and Taleban tanks.

She claims to have 150 men under her command, while the UN estimates that she has weapons for at least 50.

Now the officials of the UN Disbandment of Illegal Armed Groups programme (DIAG) say they are hoping to begin disarming her in the coming months.

Like many of the estimated 2,000 illegal armed groups in Afghanistan that are still resisting the call to disarm, Kaftar is unlikely to give up her weapons easily.

She insisted she has already given away all her guns, apart, she added, from the Russian Makarov pistol that hung in her shoulder holster.

She said she was particularly upset about giving up an ancient British Lee-Enfield rifle in a previous disarmament drive.

It was the weapon of choice across the region before the arrival of the ubiquitous Kalashnikov.

The DIAG inspectors are sceptical. Many a commander has attempted to fob off the disarmament campaign with ancient or unserviceable arms, whilst hiding their stocks of up-to-date munitions.

The home of one supposedly disarmed commander in Baghlan disappeared in a massive explosion last year, taking much of the surrounding village with it.

A stock of unstable ammunition hidden under the house was the cause.

"Zar, zan, zamin"

While the neon lights, internet cafes and mobile phone shops in Kabul point to a rush towards modernity in Afghanistan's cities, in remote rural Afghanistan the old feudal order persists; an often violent culture of blood feud and local justice where the reach of central government is weak or non-existent.

"Zar, zan, zamin" - gold, women, land - in the words of the old Afghan proverb provide the motivation for the violence that underpins local life.

"People get killed over little things, water and land," said Kaftar with a shrug. On the way up to her house we asked a local man if Kaftar was at home.

"She's up there alright," he replied darkly. It transpired that the man's brother had been killed by one of Kaftar's sons and the feud was unresolved.

"Once you give away your guns people don't care about you anymore," said Qari Alam, 50, who used to have command of a number of bands in the Northern Alliance that fought the Taleban, including that led by Kaftar.

He voluntarily handed in his weapons, including a number of tanks, a year ago and now helps to negotiate between the government and the many still armed commanders in the region.

"The commanders are afraid to disarm because they have so many enemies," he said, "and many people fear the return of the Taleban. Kaftar was a cruel commander. She has a great many enemies."

Bandits prey upon travellers in the area.

The most notorious, Abdul "Awal" (Abdul "Number one") is a second generation brigand; his uncle was caught and had his arm and leg cut off by a local commander as a warning to others.

But Abdul continues to ply the family trade regardless. Kaftar says she has no fear of him.

"The bandits are afraid of her and her sons, not the other way round," said Qari Alam.

Military watching for signs of Taliban offensive: general
Thu Mar 16, 1:54 PM ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US military is seeing the movement of unarmed military-age young men in Afghanistan as the snows melt in the mountains amid concerns the Taliban may step up attacks, a top US commander said.

It not yet clear whether the men, who have been spotted in groups as large as 10 to 15, are fighters or simply looking for work in rural areas, said Major General Benjamin Freakley, the US ground commander in Afghanistan.

"We don't know quite frankly if we're going to tag them as Taliban yet," he told reporters here in a video conference from Afghanistan.

"But we're certainly watching for indications of warnings of an increase in improvised explosive devices or suicide bombers and of direct fire attacks against the coalition and Afghan forces," he said.

Statements and open source reporting indicate the Taliban is stepping up its activities, he said.

"We haven't seen any legions of men moving around," Freakley said.

"When I say we've seen some military age men moving around that could be one to two that we are questioning, all the way up to maybe 15 to 20."

The Taliban has not attempted operations with large numbers of fighters for several years now because of the superior US firepower and intelligence capabilities, he said.

But improvised roadside bombs have become common and suicide bombings have been introduced as well, and the military is looking for links to Iraq.

"We continue to watch this," he said. "Some leaders like Mullah Omar, who is the Taliban leader, have been calling for suicide bombings to take place."

"With regards to IEDs clearly we're starting to see some tactics, techniques and procedures you could draw the conclusion that may have come from training in Iraq," he said.

"But how they got that, how that training was passed, where that bombmaker came from and how the bombmaker passed those techniques on we're still trying to get full awareness of," he said.

Afghan police arrest men with letters from Mulla Omar and Zawahri
Daily Times - Mar 16 3:27 PM
JALALABAD: Afghan police said they arrested two suspected Taliban insurgents on Thursday carrying letters from the movement’s fugitive leader and Al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri. The Afghan nationals were arrested separately close to the border with Pakistan in Nangarhar province, said Mohammad Ibrar, border security forces provincial deputy chief. “One of them was carrying letters from Mullah Omar and Ayman al-Zawahiri,” said Ibrar. The man had served as a district chief in Nangarhar during the 1996-2001 Taliban regime, he said. The second man was arrested with some 500 ‘night’ letters which asked people not to cooperate with the ‘illegitimate government’ and to obey orders of Mulla Omar and Ayman al-Zawahiri, he added. Night letters are anonymous leaflets which are occasionally distributed in Afghan towns and villages by militant groups. Ibrar said the men, whom he did not identify, did not appear to be linked but were carrying documents that could help to point to enemy networks in the country. AFP

Naghma in Kabul after 14 years
KABUL, Mar 16 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Prominent folk singer Naghma stepped in Kabul on Thursday after 14 years to add charm to the celebrations of Nawroz, the beginning of new Afghan year.

She kissed the soil as soon as stepped down from a passenger aircraft at the Kabul Airport. It was the same land she was longing for in her songs for 14 long years. Naghma was presented a bouquet of flowers by a group of children.

The smiling artiste expressed happiness on her coming back into Afghanistan. "May Allah Almighty bless my trip as a message of peace," she prayed, adding: "I shall present my songs as a gift to my countrymen."

Regarding her stay here, Naghma said she had not decided whether to settle here or move back to Islamabad. About separation from her spouse, the singer said she was happy to be in her own land. Therefore, she did not like to touch a melancholic chord. "This topic will be discussed later."

Shah Perai alias Naghma, was born in Kandahar in 1963. She was the first female from that province who earned a place among prominent singers not only on local, but national, regional and international level.

She had performed in Asia, Europe and the United States and received applause from her fans and music lovers. Before her arrival, another acclaimed Afghan vocalist Farhad Darya and Indian Ghazal maestro Jagjit Sing have also landed here in the morning.
Frozen Danish Rahmani
Translated and edited by Daud

UNHCR pledges to assist Afghan refugees' voluntary return
KABUL, Mar 16, 2006 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- The UN refugees'agency UNHCR would continue to support the voluntary repatriation of Afghan refugees as over 1,200 refugees have returned home with the agency's support so far this year, spokesperson of the agency said Thursday.

"Since the beginning of 2006, UNHCR has assisted more than 1, 200 Afghan refugees to return home voluntarily under its voluntary repatriation operation, now in its fifth year," Mohammad Nadir Farhad told Xinhua.

UNHCR expects to assist some 600,000 refugees to return from Pakistan and Iran in 2006, he said.

"More than 700 refugees have returned from Pakistan so far this year and the remaining 500 from Iran," Farhad added.

He also put the number of returnees from Pakistan since 2002 at as high as 2.7 million and the number from Iran at nearly 840,000.

Commenting on the slow return of refugees this year, the official said the repatriation program would get momentum in June, as the weather in Afghanistan is still cold now.

The UN Refugee Agency, he added, would pay a travel grant of between 4 U.S. dollars to 37 U.S. dollars depending on the distance to their destination inside Afghanistan plus 12 U.S dollars to each family to help them start their lives back home.

There are 2.6 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan currently and the UNHCR expects to repatriate 400,000 of them this year while more than 1 million others are in Iran.

The refugees'return began with the collapse of Taliban regime in late 2001 but the process has slowed down due to limited job opportunities and continued militancy in the country.

Even some of the returnees re-emigrated to neighboring countries for lack of shelters and high price of accommodation is beyond the reach of common people in the ruined Afghan capital Kabul.

"I am going to Iran to earn some money and support my family as I could not get a regular income in my country," said Ishaq, a man standing behind Iran's embassy gate to receive visa.