Afghanistan News March 24, 2006

March 24, 2006

Afghan FM says he declined another post in Karzai government
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Afghanistan's outgoing foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah, said he had been offered another position in President Hamid Karzai's government but declined.

Abdullah, whose ouster was announced while he was on a high-profile trip to Washington, said he had asked Karzai to hold off on any cabinet reshuffle until after he returned from a lengthy foreign tour.

"I was assured that it would not coincide with that trip, it would be after my return. But I think there has been perhaps some constitutional compulsion to do it earlier," Abdullah told an audience at the American University here.

Karzai called him in Los Angeles last week "and asked me if I was interested in any other post in the cabinet," Abdullah said, noting that he declined.

"That's the choice for the president," Abdullah said of the announcement in Kabul Wednesday that a new 26-member cabinet list had been sent to parliament for approval. It named chief international politics adviser Dadfar Rangin Spanta as foreign minister.

"He has made the choice. ... I respect it and I welcome it. Of course I would have preferred it in different circumstances," Abdullah said.

Afghan parliament mulls new cabinet
By Rachel Morajee March 24 2006 02:00 Financial Times
Afghanistan's parliament will begin this week debating the new cabinet line-up proposed by Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, including his replacement of Abdullah Abdullah, who has been foreign minister since the fall of the Taliban.

The reshuffle had been expected for weeks but the government must now get the new cabinet approved by the country's fledgling parliament, which will have its first chance to flex its muscles in a process that could take as long as six weeks.

The cabinet is to be cut from 27 members to 26. Fourteen ministers have kept their jobs, four have changed portfolios, and eight are new faces, according to a list from the president's office. Mr Abdullah will be replaced by Rangeen Dadfar Spanta, a presidential adviser on foreign affairs. Rachel Morajee, Kabul

Blast at Afghan arms dump kills two, injures 40
24 Mar 2006 06:12:00 GMT
KABUL, March 24 (Reuters) - An explosion at a store of confiscated weapons at an Afghan military base killed two people and injured 40, police said on Friday. The accidental blast on Thursday evening damaged houses near the base in the town of Jabul Saraj, north of the capital Kabul, said Abdul Rahman Sayedkhail, police chief of Parwan province.

The cause of the blast was being investigated but Sayedkhail ruled out sabotage.

"It was the carelessness of the soldiers that caused the explosion," he said.

The two people who were killed and 22 of the injured were civilians, he said. The rest of the injured were soldiers.

The base was used to store weapons confiscated under a government drive to disarm factional fighters.

Afghanistan is still rife with weapons after decades of conflict.

Afghan Christian convert will not face death penalty: Canada's PM
OTTAWA (AFP) - An Afghan man prosecuted for converting from Islam to Christianity will not face the death penalty, Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper said after speaking with Afghanistan's president.

"I phoned President (Hamid) Karzai personally yesterday to express our concern. He conveyed to me that we don't have to worry about any such eventual outcome," Harper told reporters in Ottawa on thursday.

"He had already spoken prior to my call with the attorney general of Afghanistan about dealing with the situation ... (He) assured me that what's alarmed most of us will be worked out quickly ... in a way that fully respects religious rights, religious freedoms and human rights."

Abdul Rahman, 41, was arrested just over two weeks ago, when his parents informed the police about his conversion in what Harper described as "a family quarrel".

Rahman is believed to be the first convert accused in Afghanistan under strict Islamic Sharia law for refusing to return to Islam since the fall of the Taliban regime.

Rice Phones Karzai Over Afghan Christian Case
By David Gollust State Department 23 March 2006 VOA
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Thursday telephoned Afghan President Hamid Karzai to raise concern about an Afghan facing the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity. President Bush has called the case deeply troubling.

The United States had raised the issue of the Christian convert, Abdul Rahman, through the U.S. embassy in Kabul some days ago.

But it has elevated the matter to the senior level amid an outcry over the case in the United States, and apparent inaction by Afghan authorities.

Rahman, 41, has been accused of apostasy, a capital offense, and jailed under Afghanistan's Islamic legal code even though the country's new constitution nominally guarantees freedom of religion.

He has said he converted to Christianity several years ago while working for a Christian aid group in Pakistan. His religious conversion became a legal issue when he went to court seeking custody of his two children.

Countries with troops serving in Afghanistan including Germany, Italy and Canada have all voiced concerns about the case.

U.S. Christian and conservative groups have urged the Bush administration to intervene, and President Bush said Wednesday he found the matter deeply troubling.

At a news briefing, State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack said Secretary of State Rice called in Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, who's visiting Washington, for a meeting on the issue late Wednesday, and followed it up with a telephone call to Afghan President Hamid Karzai Thursday morning.

The spokesman said the secretary told the Afghan officials the United States stands forthrightly for the principles of freedom of religion and freedom of expression, and urged a favorable resolution of the case at the earliest possible moment.

The Afghan embassy in Washington late Wednesday issued a statement urging public understanding of the sensitivity of the case, and also said Afghan authorities were evaluating questions about Rahman's mental fitness, giving rise to press speculation the case might be dropped on those grounds.

However Spokesman McCormack said the United States looks to a solution that would reaffirm Afghanistan's commitment to basic freedoms enshrined in its own constitution and in international human rights covenants:

"I've seen these news reports about this possible avenue to resolve the case. I think in our view, it's important that as this issue is resolved, and we do seek a favorable resolution to it at the earliest possible moment, that there be a reaffirmation of those principles which we do see in the Afghan constitution, and we share and are enshrined in documents around the world," he said. "These are universal values, as the president talked about yesterday, and they're fundamental values to any democracy and vitally important for emerging democracies as they struggle with these kind of issues."

In his remarks Wednesday, President Bush said the United States has influence in Afghanistan and intends to use it to remind Kabul authorities about the need to uphold universal values.

Spokesmen for U.S. Christian organizations say continued deployment of U.S. troops in Afghanistan would be hard to defend if a Christian convert was put to death.

The Council on American Islamic Relations, an American Muslim advocacy group, has also joined the call for Rahman to be released, saying Islam supports both freedom of religion and freedom of conscience.

The Afghan embassy statement reiterated that the country's constitution protects religious freedom and said the Kabul government will ensure that the constitutional rights of its citizens are respected. It urged that the judicial process be given time to resolve the Rahman case.

UN council presses Afghanistan to rein in Taliban
Friday March 24, 4:21 AM
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council, alarmed by rising violence in Afghanistan, pressed the government on Thursday to counter a growing threat from the Taliban and other illegal armed groups.

A resolution adopted unanimously by the 15-nation council also urged U.S.- and NATO-led forces in the war-torn central Asian nation to keep helping the authorities address the threat to stability and security posed by extremist groups.

The resolution, which extends the U.N. assistance mission in Afghanistan for a year until March 2007, expresses "concern at the increasing threat to the local population, national security forces, international military and international assistance efforts by extremist activities."

It urges the Afghan government and international supporters to "continue to address the threat to the security and stability of Afghanistan posed by the Taliban, al Qaeda, other extremist groups and criminal activities."

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in a progress report submitted to the council earlier this month, said a sharp rise in suicide bombings and attacks on schools in Afghanistan underscored the challenge facing the Kabul government as it struggled to become a viable democratic state.

Taliban guerrillas have been fighting the government since their regime was ousted from power after the September 11 attacks, But Annan's report said attacks by anti-government fighters had soared since mid-2005 and continued unabated throughout the winter, in contrast to previous years, when they tapered off during the harsh cold season.

The U.N. mission supports and advises the Afghan authorities on economic and political development, justice reform, humanitarian aid and anti-drug programs, with 189 international employees, 795 local staffers, 12 military observers, 8 civilian police officers and 29 U.N. volunteers.

For Afghans, Allies, A Clash of Values
Case Against Christian Convert Puts Pressure on Karzai -- and on Bush
By Pamela Constable Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, March 23, 2006
The case of an Afghan man who could be prosecuted and even put to death for converting to Christianity has unleashed a blizzard of condemnation from the West this week and exposed a conflict in values between Afghanistan, a conservative Muslim country, and the foreign countries that have helped defend and rebuild it in the four years since the fall of the Taliban.

The case of Abdul Rahman, a longtime Christian convert who lived in Germany for years and was arrested last month in Kabul, has also highlighted the volatile debate within Afghanistan over the proper role of Islam in Afghan law and public policy as the country struggles to develop a democracy.

Diplomats from several countries said yesterday that Rahman, 41, now seems unlikely to be tried or executed. Prosecutors in Kabul said he might be mentally unfit to stand trial, a sign that the government may be seeking to avoid confronting its Western allies without giving ground on Islamic law, under which conversion to another religion is punishable by death.

But the case, the first of its kind since the radical Islamic Taliban movement was toppled in 2001 by a U.S.-led military invasion, continued to draw protests from the governments of Italy, Germany, Canada and other NATO nations, at a time when NATO forces are beginning to replace tens of thousands of U.S. troops as the principal defenders of Afghanistan against Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents.

It also put pressure on President Bush, who visited Kabul last month to show support for Afghan President Hamid Karzai. A number of U.S. Christian and conservative groups demanded this week that Bush take action, and one organization accused him yesterday of propping up an Islamic fundamentalist regime in Kabul.

"This is an extremely sensitive issue here and an extremely serious issue back home," Abdullah, Afghanistan's foreign minister, said in an interview yesterday with Washington Post editors and reporters. "Every time we have a case, it is like an alarm. These contradictions will not go away with one or two cases."

Bush, on a visit to Wheeling, W.Va., said yesterday he was "deeply troubled" to learn of Rahman's possible prosecution. "That's not the universal application of the values that I talked about" while in Kabul, he said. He stopped short of calling for the case against Rahman to be dropped but said he would work with Karzai's government "to make sure that people are protected in their capacity to worship."

Bush's comments were tougher than those made previously by administration officials. On Tuesday, a State Department spokesman urged the Afghan government to "conduct any legal proceedings in a transparent and fair manner." R. Nicholas Burns, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, said that the Afghan constitution "affords freedom of religion to all Afghans" and that the U.S. government hoped for a "satisfactory result" of the case.

The initial low-key response apparently infuriated Christian conservative groups. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, complained in a letter to Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: "How can we congratulate ourselves for liberating Afghanistan from the rule of jihadists only to be ruled by radical Islamists who kill Christians? . . . Americans will not give their blood and treasure to prop up new Islamic fundamentalist regimes."

In another open letter to Bush, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said it was "the obligation of our government" to take action in the case. The group warned that in Afghanistan, there is no legal guarantee of religious freedom and the judiciary is instructed to enforce Islamic principles. "The door is open for a harsh, unfair or even abusive interpretation of religious orthodoxy to be officially imposed," it said.

Bush, a Christian, often talks about God, faith and respect for all religions, especially in relation to the war on terrorism. The White House has often portrayed Karzai as an example of a Muslim leader and ally who is working to hunt down Islamic terrorists and build a democracy based on the rule of law and human rights.

But Afghanistan is also a deeply traditional and tribal society, where 99 percent of the 25 million inhabitants are Muslims and no Christians worship openly. It is a capital crime under Afghan Islamic law to convert to Christianity, and prosecutors and judges in Kabul initially said Rahman might be sentenced to death.

The country's 2004 constitution, which was heavily debated and rewritten by Afghan officials after it was crafted with help from U.N. advisers, is an ambiguous document that endorses international human rights conventions but also says that no law shall contravene the principles of Islam.

"This case goes right to the heart of the contradictions in the constitution. Is Afghanistan a democracy that respects human rights and international norms, or is it an Islamic country with an extremely conservative judiciary?" said Alex Their, a senior rule of law adviser at the U.S. Institute of Peace. "The issues being raised will have an important impact on Afghanistan's ability to become a stable democracy."

Although Rahman is the first Afghan charged with converting since the fall of the Taliban, Afghan courts have recently prosecuted or harshly criticized individuals for other alleged anti-Islamic acts, including a presidential candidate in 2004 who questioned the right of Muslim men to have multiple wives and a magazine editor last year who challenged the doctrine that conversion from Islam is a capital offense.

The Supreme Court's chief justice, an elderly cleric named Fazl Hadi Shinwari, has issued religious decrees against such individuals. Karzai, a moderate who in Afghanistan is widely viewed as having ceded the judiciary to Islamic conservatives, renominated Shinwari this week. Abdullah, who was not renamed to his post in a cabinet shuffle this week, said the Afghan judiciary was in serious need of reform.

So far, the government has not invoked the extreme punishments ordained by Islamic law, or sharia , such as cutting off thieves' hands and stoning adulterers, which were frequently carried out by the Taliban and drew international condemnation. But most Afghans view Islamic law as absolute once it is invoked. And despite their gratitude for U.S. military and economic support, many remain leery of Western values and associate Christianity with fornication and drunkenness.

Under sharia, a convert to Christianity "should be given time to think," said Abdul Aziz, a professor of Islamic law who spoke by telephone from Kabul. "What he has done may damage Islamic society, so he should change his mind." If he does not, sharia prescribes the punishment of death. "Then, even a judge cannot change it. It is like doing a coup against the government," Aziz said. Rahman's case was brought by a public security court, not a regular criminal one.

The case against Rahman is complicated by personal aspects. His conversion was denounced by his family in Kabul after he was involved in a lawsuit and child custody fight with his former wife, and he has been described as perennially jobless and mentally unbalanced. He converted in 1990 while working with a Christian aid group in Pakistan and then moved to Germany, returning only recently.

Comments made this week in Kabul by judges, prosecutors, neighbors and Rahman's relatives illustrated the strong emotional and religious feelings such a case can evoke. His father expressed shame and bewilderment at his conversion. Guards refused to let journalists visit him in a Kabul prison, and one said, "We will cut him into little pieces."

But yesterday, Rahman was briefly brought before the news media. According to a report by the BBC, he said: "I am not an infidel or a fugitive. I am a Christian. If they want to sentence me to death, I accept that."

Afghan convert controversy mirrors cartoons row
By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor Thu Mar 23, 8:25 AM ET
ROME (Reuters) - The strong Western response to a threatened death sentence for an Afghan convert to Christianity looks something like a mirror image of the Muslim reaction to the Prophet Mohammad caricatures printed in the European press.

There have been no riots or sackings of Afghan embassies, unlike the violence that marked the uproar in Muslim countries after the Danish cartoons were published, but the shock and mutual incomprehension expressed in both cases are similar.

The difference lies in the issues at stake. In the cartoons row, Muslims stressed the sanctity of Mohammad, whom they say nobody -- even non-Muslims -- can criticize. The subtext was resentment against perceived Western prejudice against Islam.

Now, Western governments and societies are speaking out for religious freedom and against the death penalty. The fact many Western troops now help defend the Afghan government against al Qaeda and Taliban remnants heightened the outrage in the West.

Amin Farhang, the Afghan economy minister who lived in exile in Germany for 22 years before returning to Kabul in 2001, saw the parallels and warned against any escalation.

"Following the row about the cartoons, which has cost so many lives, we should look calmly at things and work for a fair solution," he told the German daily Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger.

But he stressed the gulf between western-style freedoms and traditional Muslim societies that consider conversion from Islam to be an insult punishable by death. "     Afghanistan cannot switch suddenly from one extreme to the other," he said.

FREEDOM A NORM, NOT AN EXTREME
The uproar sparked off by the case of Abdur Rahman, now on trial in Kabul for renouncing Islam, showed that Westerners saw religious freedom as a norm and not an extreme.

"It is deeply troubling that a country we helped liberate would hold a person to account because they chose a particular religion over another," President     George Bush said on Wednesday.

Some critics suggested     NATO states withdraw their troops from Afghanistan. A few even suggested that Western troops kidnap Abdur Rahman and bring him along when they leave.

Among the strongest critics are evangelical Christians in the United States, a core constituency that has backed Bush so far on the wars in Afghanistan and     Iraq.

"How can we congratulate ourselves for liberating Afghanistan from the rule of jihadists only to be ruled by Islamists who kill Christians?" Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council asked.

Another leading figure, Charles Colson, said: "If we can't guarantee fundamental religious freedoms in the countries where we establish democratic reforms, then the whole credibility of our foreign policy is thrown into serious question."

Canada's top Anglican prelate, Archbishop Andrew Hutchinson, said of the Islamic punishment for apostasy that Rahman faces: "I'm absolutely horrified to think that this kind of fanatical literalism would be applied in this day and age."

BITTER COMMENTARIES
European newspapers ran bitter commentaries. Munich's Sueddeutsche Zeitung said Kabul was "tolerant like the Taliban." Die Welt in Berlin wrote that Afghanistan faced "the dark ages of barbarity" if it executed Rahman.

"We have a duty not to cooperate in bringing back the burning of heretics at the stake," the Dutch daily Trouw wrote. Milan's Corriere della Sera said Western states helping Afghanistan should launch a movement to reform Islam there.

In Denmark, Jyllands-Posten, the daily that first ran the Mohammad cartoons, quoted Syrian-born member of parliament Naser Khader saying: "If necessary, Danish troops should liberate Abdur Rahman and Denmark should offer him asylum.

"This matter underlines that sharia (Islamic law) must be fought wherever it exists," he said.

France's Marianne magazine made clear Western critics might not be satisfied if the Kabul court arranges to avoid the death sentence by declaring Rahman insane and unfit for trial.

"If he is not tried, he will probably end up in a psychiatric hospital, which for a man of sound mind is sometimes worse than death," it commented.

Afghan Forces Destroy Suspected Taliban Command Post
March 24 (Bloomberg) -- Afghan army units destroyed a suspected command cell of the Taliban militia in an operation in the central province of Uruzgan, carried out with the support of coalition forces, the U.S. military command said.

Six fighters were killed in the incident yesterday in an area where Taliban operatives have bases, the Combined Forces Command - Afghanistan said on its Web site. Afghan soldiers recovered materials ``intended for the manufacture of improvised explosive devices,'' the command said.

The Afghan National Army, which has about 30,000 soldiers, is fighting with the U.S.-led coalition in regions of southern and eastern Afghanistan where suspected Taliban fighters operate. The Taliban militia had its stronghold in the south before it was ousted in the U.S.-led war on terrorism in 2001.

Afghanistan in 2005 had its worst year of violence since the Taliban regime was ousted, as suicide bombers increased their attacks. Tensions have risen between Afghanistan and Pakistan over Afghan charges that Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters use bases in Pakistan to carry out attacks on Afghan territory, a charge Pakistan's government denies.

Pakistan yesterday protested to Afghanistan over the killing by Afghan soldiers of 16 Pakistanis on March 21 near the southern town of Spin Boldak, Agence France-Presse reported. Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said the men were tribesmen. The Afghan government they were suspected Afghan Taliban fighters who crossed the border to carry out attacks, AFP said.

Tensions Rise

Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf said last month relations with Afghanistan are becoming tense because of Afghan criticism that Pakistan isn't doing enough to stop cross-border attacks. Pakistan has about 80,000 soldiers fighting terrorists in the border region, in an operation that began in 2003.

Al-Qaeda and other non-Pakistani terrorists hiding in Pakistan will be killed in the event they don't leave the country, Musharraf said yesterday at a rally in Lahore, AFP reported.

``These foreign militants are indulging in acts of terrorism not only in Pakistan but elsewhere in the world,'' the president said. ``I warn them to leave Pakistan, failing which we will eliminate them.''

Musharraf, in comments earlier this month, said intelligence reports on Taliban operatives provided by the Afghan government in February proved to be out of date. Afghanistan was wrong to blame all the problems on their 2,430-kilometer (1,510-mile) border on Pakistan, he said.

Afghanistan's Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah earlier this week called on Pakistan to do more to combat Taliban fighters on Pakistani territory.

Kabul Attack

Sebghatullah Mojadeddi, the leader of the Afghan upper house of parliament known as the Meshrano Jirga, escaped an attempt by suicide bombers on March 12 to kill him in the capital, Kabul. He later accused Pakistan of being behind the incident, a charge Pakistan's government on March 13 described as ``absurd and highly irresponsible,'' AFP reported at the time.

Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Taliban's fugitive leader, in a purported statement issued March 16 said fighters will intensify suicide attacks to make the country like a ``flaming oven,'' AFP reported at the time. Young people have ``filled lists'' volunteering for such attacks, he said.

Quebecer sells prefab houses to Afghanistan
Via Pak Tribune-Pakistan Thursday March 23, 2006
OTTAWA: Ottawa isn’t doing enough to help Canadian businesses tap into the massive market of rebuilding Afghanistan, according to a Quebec entrepreneur who could soon be shipping pre-fabricated homes to the war-torn country from his Eastern Townships plant.

"It’s deplorable (Canadian private enterprise) is nowhere in that country," Ivon Le Duc, president of Demtec Inc., said yesterday.

"If the Canadian government is supporting rebuilding with funding, it should ensure some Canadian companies benefit and encourage them."

Le Duc finds the situation unacceptable.

International Co-operation Minister Josee Verner and Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay announced March 9 the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) will contribute an additional $22 million to the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF), bringing Canada’s total contribution to date to $109.5 million.

CIDA spokesperson Michele Monette said the ARTF director wasn’t available yesterday to explain how the money is being used.

Le Duc decided to go on his own. He signed an agreement in principle last month with the owner of Wahid Construction in the Afghan capital of Kabul, where they plan to build a $5-million plant to make modular homes.

"It’s a huge market with an enormous amount to do as far as infrastructure, including housing, clinics, schools and electric power stations," the CEO said. "We are bringing them our expertise."

But it’s not the new market the Princeville firm had in its sights - ending up in south Asia rather than South America.

After buying the 20-year-old company last August, Le Duc contacted a CIDA consultant to discuss expanding into South America.

"He suggested instead going to a country where nobody else is and mentioned Afghanistan," Le Duc recalled. "When he said there was nobody else there, he wasn’t kidding. ... There was no one there."

Aside from the military, Le Duc said the only other Canadian presence he saw in Kabul was a small SNC-Lavalin office.

SNC spokesperson Gillian MacCormack confirmed the Montreal engineering firm has an office in Afghanistan, one of 30 countries around the world where SNC is present, "but we’re not involved in any (rebuilding) projects there that I’m aware of."

Le Duc, a former Montreal councillor and executive committee member responsible for housing, said he is still awaiting an answer from ARTF about a funding request for a feasibility study of the Kabul factory project.

His visa for the business trip was only the 262nd.

issued to a Canadian since January 2005.

While he acknowledged Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s visit to Afghanistan this month was good, Le Duc said Harper should also be doing more to stimulate investment in reconstruction.

In a February visit to Afghanistan, Le Duc saw other countries like the U.S., Japan and Germany taking advantage of the situation.

Le Duc said Demtec’s prefabricated wooden homes are ideal for Afghanistan because they are designed to resist earthquakes, strong winds, extreme temperatures and water infiltration.

Annual revenue of about $10 million expected to double

Demtec Inc., which employs 104 in the high season, is a leader in combining modular and panelized technologies for factory-built homes.

Modular construction saves on labour and assembly at job sites because most work in done in the plant.

Panelized technology allows for construction of a series of wall, partition and floor panels that can be easily shipped by truck or container.

Half of the existing production is exported to more than a dozen countries, with plans to eventually increase exports by 30 per cent.

Revolution in the Pakistani mountains
Asia Times Online By Syed Saleem Shahzad 3/23/06
KARACHI - The Taliban have established a foothold in the Pakistani tribal areas of North and South Waziristan along the Afghanistan border, but it is not simply a question of their having marched in and established their writ.

Their ability to impose themselves, which is the result of a virtual revolution in the region, has far-reaching consequences for both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

News reports tend to focus on the renewed capabilities of the Taliban, in terms of their reorganization, their base in Pakistan,

improved weaponry and their mass of suicide bombers. What is overlooked in the troubled tribal areas is an astonishing change in local dynamics, which neither the British Raj nor successive Pakistani or Afghan governments had been able to engineer, the ramifications of which threaten the existing order of the whole region.

The seeds of a revolution

The seeds of the revolution were sown by former Pakistani premier Nawaz Sharif in the late 1990s, who introduced electoral colleges in the tribal areas based on adult franchise. Previously, the tribal areas had representation in both the upper and lower houses of parliament, but the delegates were chosen by the jirga (tribal council) system.

In terms of this, a few tribal chiefs sat together and chose representatives from their ranks. As a result, the tribal chiefs held all the political clout, and they grew rich and powerful.

The electoral system broke this supremacy, and in the most recent general election, in 2002, the power and base of the tribal chiefs were destroyed. For the first time, downtrodden clerics, many of whom owned no more than an old bicycle or a mud house, were elected as members of the Senate and the National Assembly.

This coincided with the re-emergence of the Taliban, driven out of Afghanistan in 2001, and in effect the centuries-old tribal order was no more. Youngsters in their teens and early 20s became the new "chiefs", and even took over the jirgas. More than 100 tribal chiefs were killed; the remainder either fled to the cities or began a new life under the rule of poverty-stricken but highly religiously motivated youths.

Tangled tribal identities

Three major tribes live in North Waziristan, which has become the Taliban's prime stronghold outside of Afghanistan: the Wazirs, the Mehsuds and the Dawar.

British soldiers referred to the Wazirs as wolves, and the Mehsuds as panthers of the mountains. The Dawar have traditionally been peace-loving, preferring shopkeeping to guns and towns over mountains.

The Mehsud and Wazir tribes, though, have been arch-rivals for centuries. Traditionally, the Mehsuds have been part of the Pakistani establishment, and as recently as the past few years they supported the military's actions against Wazir tribes, who are mostly Taliban.

In today's North Waziristan, though, Maulana Sadiq Noor and Maulana Abdul Khaliq are the unbending leaders of the Taliban-led resistance. They are both Dawar and, even more startling, the Wazirs and the Mehsuds are under their command. The man in charge of launching mujahideen raids into Afghanistan is Maulana Sangeen, an Afghan from neighboring Khost province.

In South Waziristan, Haji Omar, a Wazir, is the leader of the resistance against Pakistani forces, while Afghan operations run from the area are taken care of by Abdullah Mehsud, of the Mehsud tribe.

"Nobody has seen such an arrangement in centuries, where the Mehsuds and Wazirs are fighting side-by-side, and more, under the command of the Dawars," said a local bureaucrat in Waziristan who spoke to Asia Times Online on the condition of anonymity.

Command and control system

The revolution that is sweeping across Waziristan is not confined to the region. It is on the march, with the eventual targets being Kabul and Islamabad.

The overall command center is in South Waziristan, where al-Qaeda No 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri calls the shots, while Tahir Yaldevish, leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and a key figure in the Afghan resistance, moves around Paktika province in Afghanistan.

Well-placed sources in the Taliban movement who spoke to Asia Times Online claim that the Taliban communicated "final messages" to Afghan and Pakistani officials, warning of direct attacks across both countries against top army and civilian officials. As a result, according to the sources, Pakistan stopped military operations in North and South Waziristan that were aimed at rooting out Taliban and foreign forces.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban strategy is to terrorize Afghan officials and prevent them from cooperating with foreign forces. And once the allied forces are alienated, attacks on them will be intensified.

In both Afghanistan and Pakistan, skirmishes have already reached some settled areas: Ghazni and Helmand have suffered direct Taliban attacks in the former, while in the latter Bannu and Dera Ismail Khan in Northwest Frontier Province have seen attacks recently. On Sunday, six security personnel and two passers-by were killed and six others injured when a remote-controlled bomb hit a police van in Dera Ismail Khan.

At the same time, the administrations in the capitals of the two countries are becoming increasingly isolated. The US-backed ruling royalists in Kabul are now threatened by Islamists who completely dominate parliament after recent general elections.

There is no doubt that radical Islamists, whether those of the Hizb-i-Islami, the Ittehad-i-Islami led by Professor Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, the alliance led by Yunus Qanooni or dozens of independent former Taliban, are now at the helm of political affairs in Kabul.

And the US-backed ruling and nominally secular officers of the Pakistani army are more on their own than ever before. A silent alliance of religious elements and religious parties is keeping a sharp eye on developments in the mountains, waiting for its chance to join in the revolution as it rolls off the mountaintops.

Slow Progress on Women’s Rights
The women’s affairs ministry is trying to combat centuries of mistreatment and violence, but many are demanding more rapid results.
Institute For War and Peace Reporting By Mohammad Jawad Sharifzada in Kabul (ARR No. 207, 19-Mar-06)
Women in parliament, girls in school, uncovered female faces on the streets – life has changed significantly for women in this country since the Taleban regime was ousted more than four years ago.

But few would dispute that Afghan women are among the most disadvantaged on the planet.

“A cruel joke has it that in Afghanistan, women never grow old,” said Massouda Jalal, Minister of Women’s Affairs. The reason? Women’s life expectancy is only 44 years, one of the lowest in the world.

Only 15 per cent of women are literate, compared with 50 per cent for men. Statistics show that those women who do work are paid only half as much as their male counterparts. Up to 80 per cent of marriages are arranged without the consent of the bride, and maternal mortality rates in some parts of Afghanistan are the highest ever recorded.

Most of these conditions pre-date the Taleban, and are more the product of deeply-rooted cultural traditions than a product of the fiercely fundamentalist but short-lived regime.

Because of this, Jalal and her ministry are taking a long-term approach to improving women’s lives.

Over the next ten years, Jalal said that if her policies are implemented; all girls under the age of five will be vaccinated against a range of diseases; 60 to 70 per cent of girls will attend school; maternal mortality will fall by 15 per cent; and the number of female teachers will increase by 50 per cent.

"The Ministry of Women’s Affairs has created a national work plan for women and tied it into Afghanistan’s national strategy,” said Jalal.

Jalal, a medical doctor, is the third woman to head the ministry, which was created in 2001. Sima Samar, the first person in the post, now chairs the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. Her successor, Habiba Sorabi, was appointed by President Hamid Karzai as governor of Bamian province, the first woman to be elevated to such a post.

Jalal, who finished sixth in a field of 18 presidential candidates in 2004, has been in charge of the ministry since December 2004.

She points to the ministry’s numerous achievements since she took office, such as encouraging women to run for parliament and the provincial councils in the 2005 elections and helping to form women’s councils and associations throughout the country.

Nor is she above taking more direct action to foster change, as when she led a group of women who went to pray in a Kabul mosque earlier this month. Mosques are generally all-male bastions.

Jalal’s high-profile actions seem geared to call more attention to her ministry’s role.

After the donors’ conference in London earlier this year, Jalal made a widely publicised plea for more funding for women’s projects. She recommended that up to 10 per cent of the 10 billion US dollars pledged for Afghanistan’s reconstruction at the conference be set aside for women. The suggestion met with approval at international level. but the Afghan government did not respond.

Some observers wonder whether the government is really serious about women’s rights.

“The Ministry of Women’s Affairs is just a symbol, a way for the government to say to the world community and to women within Afghanistan that women are important to it. The government does not take the ministry seriously,” said Soraya Parlika, head of the All-Afghan Women’s Union.

Last year the ministry had a budget of approximately 2.4 million dollars, out of the government’s overall 632-million-dollar spending plan.

With funding at the current level, the pace of reform is unlikely to accelerate.

“In the past four years the ministry has not been able to really tackle women’s problems,” said Parlika. “And without the support of the government, they won’t be able to do anything in the next 40 years.”

Experts disagree on whether the ministry is doing enough to help women.

“Women are the most vulnerable, they have sustained the major losses due to war and society’s problems,” said Bashir Bejan, a political analyst. “But since its creation, the women’s ministry has done nothing to resolve the problems of women.”

But Angeles Martinez, the head of Medica Mondiale, a non-governmental organisation that specialises in women’s affairs, told IWPR that she was quite satisfied with the ministry’s performance.

“We launch all of our projects in conjunction with the ministry of women’s affairs,” she said. “The ministry is cooperating with us in all fields.”

But many ordinary Afghan women say the ministry’s programmes have done little to improve their lives.

"I have not seen any effect from this ministry yet, so it doesn’t matter to me whether it exists or not,” said Anis Gul, 46, a housewife buying vegetables from a market stall in central Kabul.

Najibah, 34, who teaches at the Wazirabad Middle School, is a widow. “Sometimes I have nothing to feed my children for days on end,” she said. “I don’t even let my neighbours know about this. What has the ministry done for me? Afghan women have many problems, and the ministry must look into them.”

Fahima, 36, a teacher at Tajwar Sultana High School, complained that the ministry’s main accomplishment has been to promote itself on television. But she said she believes it still fulfilled a valuable function in giving women a forum to air their difficulties.

"The existence of this ministry serves as a haven for women, a place where they can go to talk about their problems,” she said.

Jalal seems unruffled by the criticism, although she acknowledges the difficulties she and her ministry face, and cautions against over-inflated expectations.

“If we work together to make the situation better, it will take two or three decades,” she said. “If we don’t, it will take two or three centuries.”

Mohammad Jawad Sharifzada is an IWPR reporter in Kabul.

NATO Troops To Destroy 15,000 Landmines in Afghanistan
Thursday March 23, 2006 (2343 PST) PakTribune.com, Pakistan
WASHINGTON: The largest cache of hazardous explosives ever found in Afghanistan - 80 tons of TNT, as well as 15,000 anti-personnel and anti-vehicle landmines, detonators, and other explosives - have been discovered in old storage bunkers, according to a U.S. State Department report.

The five bunkers full of explosives are located near the town of Sheberghan, in Afghanistan’s Jowzjan province, says the report, released Monday.

The entire store of land mines, the largest ever found in the country, along with the other explosives are now in the possession of NATO troops that make up the International Security Assistance Force. NATO will destroy the cache to keep them from harming people and the environment.

The discovery and securement of the explosives is due to the persistence of a UXB International contractor employed by DynCorp International, which is working for the Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement in the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs to support Afghan explosive ordnance disposal teams.

The bunkers came under scrutiny when a United Nations official told the private U.S. contractor about them.

The contractor later met with the Governor of Jowzjan Province, Roz Mohammad Nur, presented him with a bouquet of flowers, and discussed the Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement’s efforts to safeguard abandoned or otherwise poorly secured arms and munitions.

The governor then permitted the contractor to enter the bunker complex where everyone’s fears were confirmed.

In one bunker, long rows of abandoned crates of munitions, and anti-vehicle mines loosely stacked on top of some of the crates, sat in the dark, vulnerable to theft.

A huge heap of uncrated anti-vehicle mines was found abandoned in another of the bunkers.

These mines were dangerous for two reasons. First, they were vulnerable to theft by criminals and terrorists. Second, improper storage of such munitions can result in spontaneous, catastrophic explosions that harm nearby residents and scatter unexploded ordnance and toxic debris in the adjoining area.

That scenario poses a persistent physical threat and may also create an environmental hazard, the State Department said.

The UN Development Programme will arrange for the DynCorp/UXB team to destroy some of the landmines as part of Afghanistan’s celebration of International Day for Mine Awareness and Mine Action on April 4.

The rest of the munitions will be disposed of later.

The United States has helped to clear landmines and unexploded ordnance in Afghanistan since 1988.

Since 1993, when the inter-agency U.S. Humanitarian Mine Action Program was established, the United States has invested over $152 million to help Afghanistan develop a national humanitarian demining capacity for which it is now well known. The funds have been spent to teach mine risk education, provide assistance to survivors of landmine and unexploded ordnance accidents, and secure and destroy excess and abandoned arms and munitions that are found in the country.

Mines pose the severest kind of environmental danger. Mines and unexploded ordnance are located in almost every conceivable type of terrain in Afghanistan. Major military and civilian positions were mined, including the cities of Herat, Kandahar, Jalalabad and Khost. The capital Kabul is the most heavily mined capital city in the world, according to the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines.

Mines pose a great danger to refugees returning home by passing through provinces bordering Pakistan and Iran. According to the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, mines were most usually deployed along unused footpaths, tracks and roads; on the verges of tracks and roadways; in vehicle turn-around points; near culverts and bridge abutments; along damaged building walls; in the doorways and rooms of deserted houses; in and around wells and access points; around military posts; on or near destroyed vehicles; and in areas where people might hide.

Karzai seeks greater cooperation against terrorism
ANKARA, Mar 23 (Pajhwok Afghan News): President Hamid Karzai Thursday stressed the need for concerted efforts to root out the scourge of terrorism and secure a peaceful world.

Speaking at a conference titled Global Terrorism and International Cooperation in this Turkish capital, Karzai called terrorism a universal challenge and said the menace could be eliminated with sincere efforts and close cooperation among countries across the globe.

"States must be sincere in their support for the common fight and must pursue zero-tolerance policy towards individuals, groups and governments that may be complacent," Karzai said.

He said Afghanistan was a good example to go by in the war against terror. It was international cooperation in fields, from military and security to diplomacy and development that had led the country to overcome the challenge of terrorism. Such cooperation had been instrumental in the transformation of Afghanistan over the past four years, continued the president.

"We live in an interdependent world and it is true that no one is secure if there is violence and terrorism in any part of the globe," he warned, adding: "Since terrorism is a universal threat, I believe it is only through international cooperation that we can defeat this common enemy. Once again the experience of Afghanistan is a good model."

He noted that despite the international determination and support to eliminate terrorism in Afghanistan, the country was still undermined by the menace with killing of innocent people in attacks everyday. "Afghanistan is determined to play an active role in our collective effort to build a peaceful world," he vowed.

The president appreciated Turkey for its support to the reconstruction and peacekeeping efforts in Afghanistan. He said deployment of Turkish troops as part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan represented a valuable contribution to the security of that country.