Afghanistan News March 4, 2006

March 4, 2006

Roadside bomb kills five in Afghanistan
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A roadside bomb killed an Afghan intelligence official, three bodyguards and one other man in southern     Afghanistan on Saturday, officials said.

The blast in Nadali district of Helmand province killed Mohammad Ali Borak, a local official of the National Security Administration, said Asadullah Sherzad, head of national security in the province.

"It was a remote-controlled bomb," Sherzad told Reuters. He blamed Taliban guerrillas.

Sherzad said an Afghan electrician who had been traveling in the same vehicle as Borak and his bodyguards was also killed.

The attack was the latest in a spate on insurgent violence to hit Helmand. On Friday, Taliban gunmen killed the chief government official in Sangin district, hours after police killed eight guerrillas and arrested 10 in a two-hour battle.

Saturday's bloodshed came as U.S.     President George W. Bush was in neighboring Pakistan discussing ways to improve cooperation in the U.S.-led war on terrorism.

Bush made a brief stop in Afghanistan on Wednesday and ahead of his visit the Afghan government repeatedly complained that Taliban guerrillas had been able to operate from Pakistan.

BIN LADEN
U.S.-led forces overthrew the Taliban in 2001 for refusing to give up     Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders responsible for the September 11 attacks.

Four years on, bin Laden remains at large and an intensified insurgency has claimed more than 1,500 lives since the start of last year.

On Friday, five Canadian soldiers were wounded, one seriously, in a suspected suicide car bomb attack in Helmand's neighboring province of Kandahar that followed a wave of suicide bombings in recent months in which dozens have died.

The violence in Helmand comes as British troops set up bases as part of an expanded     NATO deployment aimed at allowing the United States to trim its troop numbers in Afghanistan in the in coming months.

In Islamabad, Bush said he was convinced of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's commitment to the war on terrorism, despite ongoing militancy in Pakistan and the presence of al Qaeda members.

However, Bush suggested he and Musharraf talked about the need to improve intelligence sharing.

Taliban claims responsibility for new attack on Cdn soldiers in Afghanistan
Canadian Press Fri Mar 3, 3:48 AM ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (CP) - A suicide bomber in a car hit a Canadian armoured vehicle outside Kandahar on Friday, killing himself and wounding one Canadian soldier, an Afghan soldier said.

A Taliban spokesperson who called the Associated Press said three Canadian soldiers had died, but this could not be independently confirmed immediately. It was the second serious incident in as many days involving Canadian troops in the region. Qari Mohammed Yousaf, who claims to speak for the Taliban militia, told AP the bomber was an Afghan from Kandahar province, a former Taliban stronghold.

An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw the wrecked car used for the attack. The Canadian vehicle sustained flat tires and other damage.

Jumat Gul, an Afghan army soldier at the scene, said the attacker was in a Toyota Corolla that hit the armoured vehicle when the explosives detonated.

Canadian military officials would not immediately comment.

Canadian soldiers have been dogged by tragedies and near-misses since they recently began to take over control of the Kandahar mission from the United States.

Cpl. Paul Davis, 28, was killed Thursday when the 21-tonne armoured vehicle he was riding in collided with a taxi, swerved into a ditch and overturned.

Seven people were injured, two critically. Four were taken by helicopter to Kandahar Airfield - including Davis, who later died.

Medics drove the three other injured soldiers and an injured Afghan interpreter to Camp Nathan Smith, where a Canadian medical team was waiting.

The most seriously injured Canadian, Pte. Miguel Chavez, was flown to a U.S. hospital in Landstuhl, Germany.

The 2,200 Canadian troops in southern Afghanistan are led by Canadian Brig.-Gen. David Fraser, who took command of a multinational brigade in the Kandahar region earlier this week.

Fraser and others have warned that Canadian troops will face dangerous conditions in Kandahar, a region that has seen a rapid growth in the number of suicide attacks and roadside bombs over the last several months.

Ten Canadians have died in Afghanistan since 2002, including Davis.

Four soldiers were killed by friendly fire, two by anti-tank mines, one at the hand of a suicide bomber, one in another road accident, and a senior Canadian diplomat was killed in January in a suicide bomb attack.

As well, at least 11 people have been injured in three military vehicle accidents.

Canadian soldiers have been dogged by tragedies and near-misses since they recently began to take over control of the Kandahar mission from the United States.

Cpl. Paul Davis, 28, was killed Thursday when the 21-tonne armoured vehicle he was riding in collided with a taxi, swerved into a ditch and overturned.

Seven people were injured, two critically. Four were taken by helicopter to Kandahar Airfield - including Davis, who later died.

Medics drove the three other injured soldiers and an injured Afghan interpreter to Camp Nathan Smith, where a Canadian medical team was waiting.

The most seriously injured Canadian, Pte. Miguel Chavez, was flown to a U.S. hospital in Landstuhl, Germany.

The 2,200 Canadian troops in southern Afghanistan are led by Canadian Brig.-Gen. David Fraser, who took command of a multinational brigade in the Kandahar region earlier this week.

Fraser and others have warned that Canadian troops will face dangerous conditions in Kandahar, a region that has seen a rapid growth in the number of suicide attacks and roadside bombs over the last several months.

Ten Canadians have died in Afghanistan since 2002, including Davis.

Four soldiers were killed by friendly fire, two by anti-tank mines, one at the hand of a suicide bomber, one in another road accident, and a senior Canadian diplomat was killed in January in a suicide bomb attack.

As well, at least 11 people have been injured in three military vehicle accidents.

French special forces officer killed in Afghanistan
PARIS (AFP) - A French special forces officer was killed in clashes with Taliban forces in southern Afghanistan, the defence ministry and the military said in a joint statement.

The statement gave no details of the death of the officer of a marine commando unit, the second French soldier to be killed in action in Afghanistan.

Some 200 French special forces troops under US command are fighting guerrillas of the former Taliban regime in southeast Afghanistan, the statement said.

Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie had sent her condolences to the family of the dead officer, who was not identified.

Eight Taliban fighters killed in southern Afghanistan
By DPA Mar 3, 2006, 19:00 GMT
Kabul - Eight Taliban loyalists were killed on Friday after the insurgents ambushed a group of Afghan police in Afghanistan\'s southern province of Helmand, officials said.

According to Muhaiuddin, the spokesman for the provincial governor, ten Taliban fighters were also arrested Friday morning during the armed clash that lasted for at least one hour, adding that the incident occurred in the Sangin district of the province.

'The Taliban fighters were killed in return fire,' he said. Muhaiuddin also said that four Afghan police were injured during the clash. Qari Yousif Ahmadi, who claims to be the spokesman for the ousted Taliban regime, confirmed the armed clash, but said that only two Taliban fighters were killed.

Thousands of US-led coalition forces are currently hunting the remnants of the Taliban and their allies from the al-Qaeda terrorist network, mainly in the south and southeastern region of the war-torn country. Meanwhile, five coalition service members were wounded Friday in a suspected car bomb attack in Afghanistan\'s southern province of Kandahar, US-led coalition forces and local police said.

The coalition forces were travelling in an armoured vehicle to the Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) site at around 10:30 a.m. when the attack occurred, according to a statement issued by the US-led coalition.

'All four service members received on-scene medical care and were evacuated to the military hospital at Kandahar Airfield for further treatment. One service member was listed in serious but stable condition. Information on the condition of the other four service members was not available,\' the statement said.

The site was secured by a reaction force from Kandahar Airfield, joined by Afghan National Army soldiers. The circumstances of the attack were being investigated.

According to local police in Kandahar, a suicide car bomber hit the Canadian military vehicle, killing himself and injuring several others. The Taliban, through its spokesman Ahmadi, claimed responsibility for the attack and said that an insurgent from Kandahar carried it out.

The attack took place a day after one Canadian soldier was killed and seven others were injured when their armoured vehicle rolled over in the same province. More than 2,000 Canadian troops are currently serving as part of a NATO-led peacekeeping force and US-led coalition forces in southern Afghanistan.

India's Work In Afghanistan
Voice of America 02 March 2006
President George W. Bush says the United States is "encouraging India to work directly with other nations that will benefit from India's experience of building a multiethnic democracy that respects the rights of religious minorities." Mr. Bush says Afghanistan is one of those nations:

"India's work in Afghanistan is a good example of India's commitment to emerging democracies. India has pledged five-hundred-sixty-five million dollars to help the Afghan people repair the infrastructure and get back on their feet."

India is helping Afghanistan build roads, hospitals, and government buildings. Indian-donated Tata buses are a key part of Kabul's public transportation system. India is making important contributions to Afghan education, including rebuilding Habibia High School in Kabul. President Bush says India is helping Afghanistan establish democratic institutions:

"Recently, India announced it would provide an additional fifty million dollars to help Afghans complete their national assembly building. India has trained national assembly staff, and it's developing a similar program for the assembly's elected leaders."

David Mulford is the U.S. Ambassador to India. In a recent article in The Times of India newspaper, Mr. Mulford said, "India's role in supporting the Afghan people on this path to democracy has been critical, providing needed supplies and training to ensure the successful conduct of the 2004 and 2005 election." Mr. Mulford said that "the United States remains firmly committed to building a stable and peaceful environment for the Afghan people to live their lives free of terrorism."

Masood Khalili served until recently as Afghanistan's ambassador to India. He recently told an Indian online newspaper that Afghans are grateful for the U.S. presence. "Al Qaida was there [and] the Taleban was there. It was hell in Afghanistan," he said. "Was it in our interest that they [the Americans] help the Afghan people? Yes," said Mr. Khalili.

President Bush says India and the U.S. have a stake in freeing Afghanistan from terror:

"The people of America and India understand that a key part of defeating the terrorists is to replace their ideology of hatred with an ideology of hope."

That is why, says Mr. Bush, the U.S. and India "will continue to work together to advance the cause of liberty."

The preceding was an editorial reflecting the views of the United States Government.

Four years after fall of Taliban, leader's power barely extends beyond the capital
Declan Walsh in Kabul and Ewen MacAskill Thursday March 2, 2006 The Guardian
Standing behind George Bush inside his Kabul palace yesterday, Hamid Karzai radiated the trappings of a powerful president: a confident smile, massed security guards and the legitimacy bestowed by the 2004 election in which he won 55% of the vote. He appeared proud as Mr Bush praised Afghanistan for its progress over the past five years.

But outside the palace walls, Mr Karzai's hold on power vacillates sharply. Kabul is a showcase for post-Taliban achievements - growing school attendance, women freely walking the streets and a billion-pound aid industry. But for all its progress, the capital feels like an overcrowded garrison town. Electricity is sporadic, crime is soaring and running water is scarce. Taxis from other cities are turned away at the city limits for fear they might carry militants or suicide bombers. At night the streets are largely deserted, save for twitchy policemen.

Beyond Kabul, Mr Karzai's control ranges from minimal to non-existent. "You have a government but you do not have a state, with institutions and infrastructure," Ayesha Khan, an associate fellow at the foreign affairs thinktank Chatham House, based in London, said yesterday.

Afghanistan is important for Mr Bush and Tony Blair. It is difficult for them to claim the 2003 invasion of Iraq as a success, given the daily horrors. But Afghanistan is not so out of control. There has been visible progress since the 2001 US-led occupation. The biggest success has been the presidential election, in which voter turnout was 70%, of which 42% were women, and the parliamentary and provincial elections in October and November last year, which attracted a turnout of 53%, of which 43% were women. Fears that the remnants of the Taliban and other fighters would disrupt the polling proved groundless.

Other successes include the return of millions of children to school, the rebuilding of 72 hospitals, clinics and women's healthcare centres and health programmes and campaigns which have led to the near-eradication of polio. About 3.5 million refugees, emboldened by news of relative peace, have returned home.

A Kabul to Kandahar highway is a testament to western aid, a smooth corridor of tarmac replacing a bone-jarring track. But as the road heads south, Mr Karzai's grip on power shifts from a sweaty handhold to virtual lawlessness.

North of Kabul security appears better, maintained by the US-trained Afghan National Army, which has more than 30,000 soldiers, backed up by Nato peacekeepers. The British patrol Mazar-i-Sharif, the Germans are in Kunduz, where a bicycle bomb killed a German soldier and two Afghan civilians last week, and the Italians in Herat, where business with nearby Iran is prospering.

But the relative stability of the north is illusory. Mr Karzai has yet to confront the warlords who control most of Afghanistan and have a track record of double-dealing. His inner circle promised that if he won the election he would rid the government of these warlords. But they remain in place. The Uzbek leader, Abdul Rashid Dostum, has the ministry of defence, while the "Lion of Herat", Ismail Khan, was handed the ministry of energy. Mr Karzai has brought them into the political centre, but there has been no reciprocity: Kabul's power does not extend to their fiefdoms.

The violence-ridden southern and eastern provinces are largely devoid of international aid and funded by drug money. The ubiquitous poppy fields feed the heroin habits of Europe and Russia. UN surveys - a new one is to be published today - show huge increases in production since the fall of the Taliban.

The last year has seen a surge in attacks that have killed almost 100 Americans. Aid workers barely venture beyond the cities of Kandahar and Jalalabad. Schools have been attacked and teachers killed.

Testifying in Washington on Tuesday, the director of the Defence Intelligence Agency, Lieutenant General Michael Maples, told Congress: "We judge insurgents now represent a greater threat to the expansion of Afghan government authority than at any point since late 2001, and will be active this spring."

The insurgency is part-Taliban and Pashtun resistance against Kabul and part inspired by al-Qaida, whose leadership, including Osama bin Laden, is thought to be hiding on the border with Pakistan.

One piece of good news for Mr Bush is that the US military presence will drop this spring from 19,000 to 16,000, to be replaced in the south by Nato forces, mainly British. General James Jones, Nato's supreme commander, said on Tuesday he expected these troops to be attacked as their mission expands. "It's logical to say that we will be tested. I think we will pass that test," he said.

Unlike the US military in Iraq, he was optimistic about Afghanistan. "I do not believe there is the capacity for an insurgency of a cohesive nature in this country. The will of the Afghan people is to do exactly what we are helping them do," he said. The point was reinforced by Hikmet Cetin, the Turkish diplomat who is Nato's senior civilian representative in Kabul, who noted the sudden appearance of suicide bombing as a tactic in Afghanistan in January. "Suicide bombing is not part of the culture of this country. They are trying to train people to do it, but I don't think it will be like Iraq," Mr Cetin said.

Body to be brought back from Afghanistan
Pak Tribune Friday March 03, 2006
KATHMANDU: The process to bring the body of a Nepali worker, who died on Monday in the Afghani capital Kabul, while in captivity of an unknown group, is underway.

According to Pushkar Man Singh Rajbhandari, Royal Nepalese Ambassador to Pakistan, the Armour Group that employed Chet Narayan Pun of Jaljala, Baglung, is working on sending the body to Kathmandu.

Pun, who was abducted by an unknown group along with another Nepali (Thaman Singh Rana of Butwal) on February 11, died in captivity of heart-related ailments on Monday, a day after his employer held negotiations with the captors for their release. "The negotiations were in the final stage and they were about to be released," Rajbhandari said.

After Pun’s death, his colleague Rana was released. The employer is also going to provide compensation to the next of kin of the deceased as per its rule and contract agreement, said Rajbhandari.

UNHCR to assist Afghan refugees return from Iran
ANKARA, 2 Mar 2006 (IRIN): The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says that based on last year’s returns it is budgeting to assist an estimated 150,000 Afghan refugees to voluntarily return to their homeland this year from Iran, host to one of the largest refugee populations in the world. UNHCR Iran adds that should the number of voluntary returns increase, it will adjust its programmes accordingly.

"The main challenge is to be able to merge desires and aspirations of Afghans to go back with the very difficult conditions in Afghanistan and the ability for many to establish sustainable living conditions and livelihoods upon their return," UNHCR country representative, Sten Bronee, said from the Iranian capital, Tehran, on Thursday.

"It is also crucial to sustain the understanding and appreciation both within Iran and Afghanistan for the predicament of the Afghans in making this difficult choice," Bronee added, referring to some of the challenges facing the effort.

Since the UN refugee agency began its voluntary repatriation programme for Afghanistan in 2002, more than 3.5 million Afghan refugees have returned to their homeland - the vast majority from Pakistan and Iran - the two largest host countries to the Afghan diaspora. More than 1.4 million Afghans have returned to their homeland from Iran, 844,000 of whom have received assistance from UNHCR.

In 2002, the refugee agency in Iran assisted 260,000 to return; followed by 142,000 in 2003, 378,000 in 2004, and 64,000 in 2005. This decrease in return numbers is seen as natural following several consecutive years of high return rates, according to the agency.

As part of that assistance effort, returnees register at one of 10 voluntary repatriation centres (VRCs) located throughout Iran - including the cities of Mashhad, Qom, Esfahan, Kerman, Shiraz, Yazd, Arak, Zabol, Zahedan, and Tehran, as well as a dispatching station in Khravan. In Iran they are provided with an assistance package, including a small monetary grant to facilitate their return.

Karzai launches anti-polio campaign
Pajhwok report
KABU, Mar 4 (Pajhwok Afghan News): President Hamid Karzai Saturday launched the anti-polio campaign by administering drops to some children in the Presidential Palace, says a press release issued here.

The release said about 7.2 million children, below five years of age, would be administered polio drops across the country during the recent campaign.

The three-day anti-polio drive will launch from Sunday during which 40,000 volunteer will go from door to door to give anti-polio drops to children. The drops will help strengthen resistance power of children against polio.

The president urged parents to cooperate with the visiting teams by giving drops to their children to avoid them from the disease. Polio attack can create permanent disability among children.

Lack of funds hits Pakistan, Afghanistan food aid
03 Mar 2006 22:39:06 GMT
UNITED NATIONS, March 3 (Reuters) - A falloff in contributions for impoverished Afghanistan and earthquake-ravaged Pakistan is forcing the World Food Program to cut back on aid to the needy Asian neighbors, the U.N. aid agency said on Friday.

In Afghanistan, which is recovering from decades of conflict, the program will have to reassess its presence in a number of provinces if it fails to get more funding in the next two months, WFP spokesman Trevor Rowe said.

Donations of $11 million are urgently needed to keep feeding 3.5 million people for the next three months, he said.

In Pakistan, the WFP already has begun cutting back on its use of costly helicopters to deliver food to remote areas hit hard by an Oct. 8 earthquake that killed some 73,000 people and left 3 million homeless, Rowe told Reuters.

"We need to sustain those helicopters for the next few months to keep feeding villages in the remote and inaccessible mountains and to preposition food in the quake-devastated areas, so that those people who have sought refuge in camps will return home and start rebuilding their lives," he said.

The agency needs another $24 million to keep the helicopter operations going through the end of August.

"We don't see any of it now," Rowe said. "We've been waiting and appealing and it is not coming in."

The helicopter fleet serving the earthquake zone peaked last month at 20 and has been scaled back this month to 17. Without fresh funds, the number of helicopters will fall to 13 by March 23, he said.

The cutbacks are coming during a brutal winter in an area where road access has always been a problem.

In the past two weeks alone, the region has had more than 50 landslides, some of them fatal, leaving the roads in extremely poor condition and in many cases impassable, Rowe said.

942kg of narcotics torched in Herat
HERAT CITY, March 4 (Pajhwok Afghan News): About 942 kilograms of narcotics seized in a string of raids by law-enforcement personnel were torched in the western Herat province on Saturday morning, officials said.

The drugs, mostly opium, were burnt in the presence of Afghanistan's deputy interior minister, the UK ambassador, a US embassy representative and a number of local officials

Deputy Counternarcotics Minister General Daud said: "I laud Herat police and other officials who successfully preventing poppy cultivation and took measures to contain drug-trafficking. Poppy cultivation was still on in three districts of the province, which can affect other areas."

He added the government was determined to banish poppy cultivation and crack down on the drug commerce: "Some police officials were also arrested for involvement in the illicit business," he revealed, without giving their names.

UK Ambassador to Kabul Rosalind Marsden, who described the burning of the narcotics a success in the fight against drugs, said: "Poppy cultivation was a big challenge to Afghanistan's stability and I assure you the UK, with the cooperation of the US, is supporting Afghanistan in curbing the drug trade."
Ahmad Qureshi

Non-payment of salaries: Teachers boycott classes
LASHKARGAH, Mar 4 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Teachers at the largest high school for boys in the southern Lashkargah city Saturday boycotted classes to protest non-payment of salaries over the last three months.

About 20 teachers went on strike, refusing to teach around 2,000 pupils at the main school of Helmand. The schoolteachers complained they had been going without pay for the last three months.

One of the striking teachers, Shah Wali, said they could not afford to continue with their jobs in the prevailing circumstances. He argued teachers were paid ridiculously low salaries ($60 a month) and that too after inordinate delays.

Another teacher, Abdul Wahid Khan, remarked: "We have to feed our children and meet other family needs. We will be better-off doing manual jobs in the city instead of teaching that doesn't guarantee in-time salary payment."

Mahmood Shah, who asked the students this morning to leave the school, told Pajhwok Afghan News they would not resume their duties unless the government cleared their salaries.

The school headmaster Shadi Khan defended the boycott, contending he could not force the staff to teach without payment.

Students warned they would stage demonstrations if their teachers were not paid. Burhan, heading home before the school was closed for the day, vowed: "We will hold marches in support of the teachers if their boycott continues."

However, Helmand Education Director Haji Muhammad Qasim claimed the teachers' salaries were released regularly, and that their protest was unjust. He explained the teachers were demanding payment for extra coaching (overtime).

The director said he was awaiting a response from the Education Ministry to a letter he sent to Kabul on the issue of extra payment to the teachers. But in Kabul, Deputy Education Minister Seddiq Patman said they had released more than enough money to the Helmand Education Department.

Education remains in a perilous state in the lawless southern zone including Helmand, where schools lack even basic facilities. To make matters worse, insurgents have stepped up arson attacks in recent months, torching schools and warning teachers and students to stay away from educational institutes.
Abdul Samad Roohani

Feature: Dog fight - a new pastime for old commanders
LASHKARGAH, March 4 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Dog fighting is a source of entertainment for a large number of people, especially former regional commanders, in southern Afghanistan despite being pronounced by clergies as against Islam.

Once the stronghold of hardliner Taliban, who forced men to sport beards and pray five times a day and banned women from coming out of their houses without veil and a male member of their families, people in southern provinces gather for dog fighting.

Local ulema (religious scholars) say the practice is un-Islamic. But their voice is ignored by the cheering crowds, who gathered each Friday from 9am to 1pm on bank of a river in the Mukhtar village of this provincial capital to enjoy themselves with the cruel hobby.

Mohammad Nasim (38), resident of the Mukhtar village, is one of the hundreds of audiences who regularly come to see the beasts tearing apart each other. "I used to go there. Besides local people, commanders from other provinces, including Kandahar, Nimroz and Uruzgan, also come and fight their dogs here."

Thirty-three-year-old Shakir of the Babajee area also have a passion for the barbarian pastime. He says: "I prefer to see the fight instead of having my lunch."

The dog fighting has roots in Helmand as back as 11 years. It was started during the mujahideen era and a number of former commanders still taking enjoyment from the activity by putting their favourite pits in the competition.

Tracing back the history of the pursuit in Afghanistan, Haji Gulalai, a former commander, said it was started during the communist regime. Two commanders Allah Noor and Khan Mohammad, belonging to the Khalq faction, had started the activity, which is still going on, Gulalai recalled.

Not only that the number of fans of the bloody entertainment is on the rise, dogs of a good breed had become unavailable and some have prices in lakhs. Shah Agha, resident of the Nawa district of Helmand, said a fighter dog was sold at three lakh rupees in his village.

Religious scholars, on the other hand, say dog fighting is prohibited by Islam. Chief of the Helmand Ulema Council Haji Maulvi Ahmad said the activity was against Islam. "Friday is a sacred day but a large number of people waste their time in useless engagements."

Hasamuddin, another cleric in this provincial capital, said: "Dog fighting is haram (forbidden) because dog is a beast and forcing one animal to fight with another is against Islam." Counting demerits of the pastime, he said the pursuit not only resulted in waste of time but it was also a gamble which is not allowed by Islam.

Director of the Information and Culture Department Jan Gul Khan, when approached for comments, said he knew about the activity in the area. Several provincial officials and members of the provincial councils also come to enjoy the fight, he added.

Reported by Samad Rohani & translated by Daud

Gen. Hillier speaks to The Globe on Afghanistan
Globe and Mail -Canada 3/3/06
The following is an edited transcript of a discussion Thursday between Chief of the Defence Staff General Rick Hillier and The Globe and Mail editorial board.

OVERVIEW
"We have come out of a decade of darkness. We have been disowned, abandoned, divorced by the population of Canada.

Canadians need to take ownership and be engaged [with the military]. There won't be public support to transform the military unless we have the support of the pouplation. And we can't get the support for the missions unless people see the necessity of doing these kinds of things which will help recruitment. We are transforming the military.

We are conducting operations all over the world in 19 countries. And at home. Canadians don't see this part. We do commmunity events, we respond to natural disasters.

Internationally, most of our operations are small. We have 15 people in the Congo, supporting the UN mission. They are very effective. We get back kudos. They say, can you send me 10 more? In Africa, we are in Darfur, helping bring stability and security. We have 65 people there."

LOGISTICS OF AFGHAN MISSION
"When I was in Afghanistan, the first thing the president [Hamid Karzai] said was: 'My greatest threat is our lack of capacity to handle our own threats.' Part of the reason was because those very visionary and extremely intelligent leaders I saw — starting with Karzai — had zero capability to turn their vision to a strategy to a policy to a plan.

There was no bureaucracy, no public service. They were either dead or living in the West because of the 25 years of brutality.

Kabul, and the northeast, north-central, and northwest have made enormous strides . . .

The real need is in the south, to make sure it does not again become a fertile ground for terrorists to breed and recover and recruit and reconstitute and resource themselves and then project their violence.

I'm there to help Afghans rebuild their families and communities and become part of something more stable and get on with life.

It takes a while to build an army. It takes us a while to build a new unit, and we're an army in longstanding. They're starting from a clean sheet of paper."

ON THE NEW CANADIAN FORCES
"People try to put us in a niche: You're not conducting peacekeeping or you are conducting war-fighting operations or you are conducting combat. Here's what we're doing, because the terms are not necessarily helpful.

We're doing the entire spectrum of operations, from straightforward negotiation and dealing with folks to training police, training the army, to helping work with the international community, right through to firefights with the Taliban, to ensure they're not going to be able to stop the progress.

So to describe that as war is actually, it's really 1940, 1950s terminology."

ON AFGHANISTAN
"You're living with people who desperately want you there — and the Afghans do. I mean, they say: 'The only thing between us and chaos again is you.'

You're living with people who are benign or neutral or slightly hostile, and you're living with a small group of people who actually want to kill you.

That's a completely differnet dynamic than what we trained, prepared, structured for over 50, 60 years of the Cold War, when — we aim for the North German plain, countering that armoured thrust in the Warsaw Pact — everything we've done in structure . . . was all designed for that fight . . .

Everything we're doing in transformation is designed to shape out our structrue, training, equipment, organization, leadership, how we approach things, how we work with people."

PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE?
"The great thing about being a chief of defence staff is I don't have to feel anyway about that or make a comment on it.

We have a saying in the army . . . we defend democracy, we don't practice it.

Polls, shmolls, geez, after a while you start to get a little tired of them because you can get any spectrum you want depending on the question you ask

In my heart of hearts, I believe this: Canadians in vast numbers support our men and women in uniform."

THE ARMY HAS FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGED ALREADY
"What is occurring now is a crystallization of the kind of operations that have taken place the last 15 years, since the Cold War.

If anyone thinks that what we were doing in the Balkans in the early to mid 1990s was peacekeeping, they simply do not understand whatsoever what you had to do on the ground."

CANDID TALK ABOUT MISSIONS
"The Canadian Forces have actually been in a survival mode for the last decade and our ability since the Somalia affair — and that crystallized a whole bunch of other things — when our population, in the view of many soldiers and sailors and airmen and airwomen, disowned us, divorced themselves from us, led us into a situation where our survival was the only priority which we had.

So now we're out of that. And one of the aims is to make sure that never occurs again.

But I also throw the ball back in the other court. Canadians disowned their Canadian Forces in one respect back in the early to mid 1990s. And have never been engaged in the way they needed to shape it going forward. So it's a responsibility I throw back into normal Canadians' laps and say: 'It's your armed forces, you get engaged.'

We do live in a very nice, luxurious, safe, stable, fat and easy country, right? It's easy to get myopic and navel-gazing and think the rest of the world is like us. We're part of 1 per cent of the world that's like this.

Canadians need to wake up to the fact that we are viewed by the rest of the world as luxurious, decadently so perhaps."

CASUALTIES
"We've taken casualties on every mission we've been on . . .

You simply cannot sit down and formulate any percentage that you might or might not expect in terms of casualties. So what you do is shape and learn and reduce the risk to the lowest level . . . but you cannot project."

ROAD ACCIDENTS IN AFGHANISTAN
"There's an operational driving that occurs here when you get from Point A to Point B — it's not just that you get up to 30 km/h and stay there and slow down. Because if you do, you become predictable and more easily targetted.

We've done a lot of training and work to get them ready, but there is always that last piece of acclimatization which you have to do and that's probably caused one or two of the accidents we've had.

To describe many of the routes that we are on as roads is kind indeed.

You are on a side of mountain somewhere and you are trying to get through a flock of sheep or pass a donkey train or in the middle of a camel train, and on your left-hand side it's 2000 feet down and you're in the middle of something that's maybe as wide as your vehicle, eroded by water, and they call that a road.

You know, my heart was in my throat 80 per cent of the time in when I was in a vehicle in Afghanistan.

The chain of command wears my bootmarks down their back on this, we're talking about men's and women's lives here.

But the reality is we are in that theatre and there will be some accidents."

LIGHT ARMOURED VEHCILE LOGISTICS — BELTED?
"In a LAV . . . what you will have is your driver who is buttoned down, your commander who will have his head and eyes out in all probability, he can slide down and be buttoned down, and in the back you will have a minimum of two up, possibly a third, covering the quarters at the rear with their weapons and their observations, ready to respond. And a third guy, actually probably a third and fourth on each side, looking at the upcoming sides for any indication of something that's abnormal.

We had cases where a LAV coming along with guys in the back fired rounds at a vehicle that came up real close — we have warning signs, warning actions that communicate this a lot. But we still get people — these could be Montreal drivers, I've got to tell you — skyrocketting up and ignoring all these warnings.

Occassionally LAV troops fire shots into motors of such vehciles."

THE ACCIDENT THURSDAY THAT KILLED A CANADIAN SOLDIER
"We still don't have all the details on this accident.

The commanders and the chain of command are onto it. But the reality is we lost a soldier."

"I get a call a 2:30 in the morning and nobody every calls me with good news, right? When the phone rings [at that time], it's an event."

KANDAHAR REGION
"Parts of the region have really been left free and easy, so now there's very much an international presence in those places. So automatically you get events.

The Pakistanis have really conducted a lot of significant operations along their border. (Waziristan, Khyber Pass)

The ground there is actually incredibly difficult — 18,000-foot mountains, no infrastructure . . . to think you could actually shut down that border in any effectively way is but to dream.

"As a result they [the insurgentsw] have hidden away into the highlands in the north part of Kandahar . . . so as a result they are there now and they are conducting operations."

Coalition forces have been going into those areas "and are coming face-to-face with them."

"As a result of those two things, you are seeing a greater amount of activity. You are not seeing the Taliban being left alone . . .

What we do is, we train those Afghan units and we go with them and support them as they go into those areas . . . so our job is to support the Afghan army national battaliions."

IS IT A CLASSIC GUERRILLA WAR?
"Hard to say. The Taliban, obviously, have some longstaying power . . . eventually you reach a crossover point, where instead of these guys needing to be contained by the police and army, supported by military forces from the West, they actually have the capability to train and build to this level at the same time the Taliban has been worn down. So now you have the upperhand.

There has certainly been a correlation between common criminals in the drug trade, the drug traffickers themselves, and the Taliban/terrorists. There is no question there is a money link that goes from one to the other.

All that crap about the Taliban saying one of the good things they did was suppress opium production, that was bull. What they did was constrain the growth to increase the price and make more money from it."

IS PAKISTAN DOING ENOUGH?
"I'd never be satisfied they are doing everything they can, I'd never be satisfied they are doing enough.

Some people say the answer to a more stable Afghanistan is a actually found in Pakistan.

But they've done a lot, you got to give them full kudos, they continue to do a lot."

TREATMENT OF PRISONERS
"We hand them to the Afghan national police or the Afghan national army . . . We're trying to build a country, you've got to help build their rule of law, a justice system . . . Surely this is one of the basic precepts of how we do it."

EXIT STRATEGY?
"One of the most frustrating things of all when you are in Afghanistan . . . is to have various countries come in, or their organizations, and immediately start talking about exit strategy.

That communicates a message to the Taliban and the terrorists . . .

There's a saying that the Taliban used to use: 'You may have the watches but we have the time.' But we probably help them believe that saying.

You've got a country that's been actually devastated, brutalized, destroyed by 25 years of war. It was turned from a relatively advanced country back to the Stone Age. And it was done by the process of that destruction.

You are not going to have any success rebuilding that country in three or four or five years. So people who think in those terms don't understand the scale and scope of what's been done in that country.

From NATO's perspective, they look at this as a 10-year mission. Right? Minimum.

There is going to be a huge demand on Canada to contribute over the longer period of time, on the developmental parts, diplomatic efforts. And there will be continued pressure, from NATO, from the United Nations . . . and not least there will be huge pressure from the Afghans. They say the only thing between us and chaos is you."

So the mission from every perspective in the international communtiy is going to be longer term. Canada will decide in coming months what it is going to do in the longer term.

But the pressure on Canada to be engaged in a significant way — whether it's only military, of course, is not necessarily guaranteed — there will be significant pressure.

PRIORITIES
"Helping the fledgling state forces take down the threat."

Train that police force, build that police force, train that army, build that army."

Build that government structure. The lack of capacity to govern the country is huge."

Infrastructure development"

"Three to five years out from now, you'll start to see the dynamic change dramatically [as the international community becomes less needed.]

Afghanistan will need support for a long time. 25 years of war, and it really did destroy the place, its quite incredible."

Go into Kabul, you say: 'Oh My God, this is terriible, the place was destroyed.' You go out of Kabul and you come back and say: 'God Almighty, why are we wasting our time and money here? We're already there. Let's get into other places, Kandahar."

DRUG TRAFFICKERS
"There's no single easy solution to that one. You can't just go in and eradicate everything, you would make hostile to you a good chuck of the population who are surviving growing the crops . . .

But you've got to build economic activity in lieu of that one.

The Afghans themselves are placed, with support from us, to do that . . .

At some point in time, you've got to move the per-capita income from $300 a year to somewhere around in plus of $1,000. The United Nations drug programs say a country that is above $1,000 a year in income is not an exporter of drugs."

BUREAUCRATIC MONEY BATTLES
"Actually I don't think I have anything to deal with. I have no fight. I have no dog in that hunt, so to speak.

The Conservervative Party of Canada's election platform said they are going to increase the regular force to 75,000 . . . That is their platform, their commitment, and their responsibility to deliver.

My job is to implement when those investments come.

I come at this from the moral high ground: Here is what the country of Canada has been asking from the men and women in uniform over this past decade, and looking forward they are going to have nothing less, probably much more. Here is what we are going to need to be able to do that. And we really do need that.

This is not about Hillier. This is about men and women in uniform who risk their lives for our country.

I am the individual who pins memorial Silver Crosses on young widows and mothers, so I have a remit to each one of them . . . and I intend on meeting that remit."

POLLS
"If we're not in Afghanistan and the international community is not there, the Taliban will overwhelm the fledgling government we're going to need to be there — the 'we' being the international community.

If the Taliban do overwhelm the fledgling government because the international community abandons them, as they were abandoned in 1992 by the international commmunity, the Taliban will be back in, will control the southern part of Afghanistan, will give support to al-Qaeda and other ideologically similar groups . . . . and allow them recruit, prepare and plan around the world and hide, and project their violence around the world, that will directly affect Canada.

We're on a target list. That's been well-communicated by al-Qaeda . . . [abandoning Afghanistan] it's kind of like that view that if you give Czechoslovakia to the Germans, they'll stop everything in 1938, when actually their goals are much greater than that."

WAR ON TERROR
"I go by what the soldiers see and feel and say. Protect the weak and vulnerable. They actually believe in that, and that's why they're there. Maybe you can get security to a level where you don't risk getting killed every time you go shopping for food or maybe you can get security to a level where medical clinics can be built . . . so children don't die before the age of five in a 25 per cent range.

There are those who would say it's an American mission, un-Canadian, and we're there to hunt down for the Americans people on their list.

What I say is 80 to 90 per cent of the information that we use and analyze and coalesce and use to focus our operations, 80 to 90 per cent of it comes directly from the Afghans . . .

Over the last days and weeks, the number of people that have come and said: 'There's an explosive device over here' or 'There's a small cache of explosives over here', or 'There's a vehicle parked down here' — that happened in one case — that's got something different about it, and we search and find a nubmer of explosives in it, the number of people that have come forward is quite incredible on a increasing basis.

That reflects the fact that they need us there, they want us there, and what we're doing is seen by them as exactly what they need."

OVERSTAYING THE WELCOME?
"What you want to do is make sure the moment never comes. The minute they no longer need us, we've got to be out of there. I don't think that will be an issue, truthfully . . .

We have to be very careful in the perception we create. And that includes taking some risk initially and being out amongst that population. You cannot do your job in an armoured fighting vehicle going at high speed to an area, weaving in and out with your helmet on, your sunglasses on, you're quickly seen as a best an irritant, bringing no or little value, and you go from benign hostility to hostility to where people will actualy attack you.

You gotta have your sunglasses off and look 'em in the eye, so they see you as people and see you as people who are there to help them.

[We'll leave] the minute that they can stand on their feet with minimal assistance. But we want to do that without talking [now] about exit strategies."

Afghan mission: 10 years
Canada's top soldier Rick Hillier says rebuilding shattered nation will take decade or more
COLIN FREEZE 3.3.06 Globe and Mail
TORONTO — Canada needs to be in Afghanistan for the long haul, according to General Rick Hillier, who says the mission is part of an international reconstruction effort that will take at least a decade — and probably a lot longer.

"It was turned from a relatively advanced country back to the Stone Age ," the Chief of Defence Staff told The Globe and Mail's editorial board yesterday. "You're not going to have any success rebuilding that country in three or four or five years.

"From NATO's perspective, they look at this as a 10-year mission, right? Minimum. There's going to be a huge demand for Canada to contribute over the longer period of time."

A growing insurgency in Afghanistan has many Canadians questioning Ottawa's decision to station its troops around Kandahar. The redeployment has had an ominous start. Yesterday, a 28-year-old corporal was killed and six other Canadian soldiers injured when their light-armoured vehicle crashed outside the city.

Ten Canadians have been killed in Afghanistan since 2002, most of them in accidents. More casualties are anticipated, especially now that 2,300 troops have set up shop in the country's most lawless region. "The reality is we're in the theatre and there will be some accidents," the Chief of Defence Staff said.

While he said he could not estimate how many soldiers will die, he stressed that the Canadian public needs to gird itself for a long mission, one that will probably involve development work beyond the military's current mandate to post troops there until 2007.

There is no need to discuss an exit strategy, Gen. Hillier said, adding that such talk would only buoy the spirits of an enemy that makes up in zealotry what it lacks in hardware.
"That communicates a message to the Taliban, and the terrorists who want to wait out activities, that they could," he said. "There's a saying that the Taliban used to use: 'You may have the watches, but we have the time.'"

The plain-spoken general made headlines last year for his macho pledge that his forces would kill terrorist "scumbags." But he also has a thoughtful side, which leads him describe his mission in more far-reaching terms.

Canada is "there to help Afghans rebuild their families and communities and become part of something stable, and get on with life," Gen. Hillier told The Globe. He added that terms like "war" and "peacekeeping" are outdated, at least when it comes to describing the long list of jobs his soldiers will be doing.

Decades of civil war and occupation have laid waste to Afghanistan, where warlords and ethnic groups have frequently fought among themselves in the periods when Soviet, U.S. or Arab fighters have not staked any claims to the country. A U.S.-led coalition ousted the fundamentalist Taliban regime in 2001, just months after Afghan-trained al-Qaeda terrorists killed 3,000 people in U.S. cities.

With Western help, a democratically elected Afghan central government is forming, but remains fragile as it lacks strong security forces needed to fight insurgents.

Canada can help create conditions that will curb Afghanistan's high infant-mortality rate, Gen. Hillier said, and help increase the average annual income of $300 to the point where farmers are less tempted to cultivate opium. But any development is contingent on security, the general said, and that's why the Canadian military's most crucial job is to help Afghans police themselves.

"We're doing an entire spectrum of operations, from straightforward negotiation and dealing with folks, to training police, training the army, to helping work with the international community. ... Right through to firefights with the Taliban, to ensure they are not going to be able to stop the progress."

No insurgent forces were involved in yesterday's collision, which took place on a routine patrol a few kilometres west of Kandahar. The Department of National Defence said that a light-armoured vehicle (known as LAV III) struck a taxi on a newly paved highway, causing the army vehicle to flip over. The force sheered the gun turret and rear axle from the 21-tonne vehicle.

The soldiers were all from the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. An interpreter with the soldiers was also hurt. The most seriously injured were airlifted to hospital.

The military identified the gunner killed in the crash as Corporal Paul Davis of Nova Scotia. His father in Bridgewater said his son died doing what he loved.

"When he decided to go to Afghanistan, that really impressed me because he loved his family and his two children but he had the sense of duty, and comradeship with the other people he had been training with," Jim Davis said.

Cpl. Davis was a 10-year-veteran, who had served with the Canadian Forces mission in Bosnia. He recently had spurned a promotion that would have taken him out of Afghanistan. "He said, 'I turned that down, Dad, because I want to be with the chaps,'-" his father said.

Two soldiers were seriously injured in the collision: Master-Corporal Timothy Wilson of Grande Prairie, Alta., and Private Miguel Chavez, who was born in El Salvador.

The road conditions in Afghanistan are notoriously dangerous, and the accident happened on Highway 1, which links the capital Kabul to Kandahar. Much of the highway has been recently paved, but the upgrade has actually led to an increase in fatal road accidents, as drivers travel at a higher speed. With reports from Tim Albone in Kandahar and Canadian Press

Cost of Afghan mission
$2B and rising: Tally includes only a fraction of new costs in Kandahar; Forces could be there for years - David Pugliese, The Ottawa Citizen Friday, March 03, 2006
Canadian taxpayers have spent more than $2 billion on the country's ongoing military mission to Afghanistan, with the cost of the latest deployment to Kandahar largely still to come.

So far, the Canadian Forces commitment to Afghanistan, which started ramping up in late 2001, has cost $1.7 billion, according to figures provided by the Department of National Defence. But that overall figure, which represents what the department calls "incremental costs," does not include the wages of military personnel or wear and tear on aging equipment used overseas.

It also doesn't include the purchase of major new equipment for the mission. So far the Canadian Forces has spent or set aside another $330 million for emergency equipment purchases for Afghanistan, ranging from new armoured vehicles to surveillance drones.

In addition, Afghanistan has also become Canada's single largest recipient of bilateral aid. According to figures provided by the Canadian International Development Agency, Canada will have provided $616 million in aid to Afghanistan by 2009. In the years immediately preceding the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., Canada had given about $10 million in annual aid to Afghanistan.

Over the last four years, Afghanistan has become the major focus of Canadian defence and foreign affairs policy. More than 7,000 military personnel have served in that country so far.
Details of the costs come as Canadian casualties mount in Afghanistan. But Prime Minister Stephen Harper reiterated his strong support for the mission yesterday, saying it is important to global security.

The $2-billion-plus pricetag, however, could only be the tip of the iceberg on the actual cost of the Afghanistan mission.

The full costs of the deployments won't be released by the Defence Department until this fall. Estimates of the cost of keeping 2,300 troops in Afghanistan over the next year are also not being released at this time.

The Foreign Affairs Department would not provide the amount it has spent on Afghanistan, but an official noted that a large number of resources and personnel are involved in the file.
Liberal Senator Colin Kenny said the Canadian public deserves to be fully informed as to what the Afghan mission is expected to ultimately cost, both financially and in the number of casualties to troops. He also questioned the effectiveness of the money being spent on aid to Afghanistan.

"You can't get figures from CIDA for the current year," said Mr. Kenny, the former chairman of the Senate defence committee. "More than that, you can't get figures that break it out on what we're spending in terms of aid in Kandahar."

Mr. Kenny noted that most of the aid is being funnelled through United Nations organizations. "There's no way on God's green earth we'll be able to measure if those programs are worth a damn," he added.

CIDA said that its officials who deal with Afghanistan were tied up in meetings yesterday and could not immediately respond to the senator's concerns.

The $1.7 billion the Canadian Forces has spent so far includes estimates of the cost of the latest Afghan mission to Kandahar, Operation Archer, but only up until the end of the month, because the government's fiscal year ends March 31. So far that operation has cost $286 million.

Canadian troops will be operating in Kandahar until at least next February but military officials have suggested in the past that the commitment to Afghanistan will continue for years. On Tuesday, Canadian Brig.-Gen. David Fraser assumed command of the multinational brigade responsible for southern Afghanistan. The brigade includes 6,000 soldiers from Canada, Britain, the United States, the Netherlands, Australia, Denmark, Romania and Estonia.

The new equipment purchased by the military for Afghanistan could be of use in other missions. Some of it had already been on the military's wish list but not planned for acquisition until after 2010. Because of the Afghan mission, the purchase of that gear was fast-tracked.

The figures provided by the Defence Department also do not account for the wear and tear on Forces equipment. But in the U.S., congressional budget experts have determined that the war in Iraq is using military equipment at five to 10 times the peacetime training rate. Pentagon officials have asked for billions of dollars in emergency funds to replace wornout gear.

While Canada's military effort is nowhere near that of the U.S. in Iraq, it is considerable nonetheless. For example, by last March, Canadian Hercules transport planes had flown 5,000 hours in support of Operation Athena, an earlier mission to Afghanistan.

The office of the Auditor General, the watchdog of the government purse, has never done an audit of the Afghan mission. A spokeswoman for the Auditor General's office declined to say whether there were any plans to do so.

Short visit but a long haul
The Guardian, UK 03/02/2006
George Bush's flying visit to Afghanistan yesterday took him to the first place outside the US where the world really changed after the 9/11 attacks. A failed state that was criminally neglected after the end of the Soviet occupation, was ruled by the reactionary fundamentalists of the Taliban, and gave shelter to Osama bin Laden, fell easily to an unbeatable superpower which manipulated local allies to win the war. Building something better on the ruins was always going to be harder than that swift military victory.

The president's impressions during his four-hour stay were limited to Bagram air base and a flight via armed helicopter over dusty plains and mud-brick homes to the presidential palace and the new US embassy in Kabul. "It is possible to replace tyrants with a free society in which men and women are respected, in which young girls can go to school and realise their full potential, in which people are able to realise their dreams," said Mr Bush. His words about the progress made in the last four years were not empty, though they skirted over some very grave problems.
Compared with the disaster in Iraq, Afghanistan is a success story: over 4.5 million refugees have returned home. Presidential elections in October 2004 were followed by parliamentary ones last September. The Pushtun leader Hamid Karzai is a dignified figure with shrewd political instincts which he has used to co-opt or neutralise powerful warlords and others who impeded or undermined him.

Still, there are worries. The under-five mortality rate in Afghanistan is the fourth highest in the world. More than 3 million people need feeding by the UN. Just 13% of Afghans have access to safe water and 12% to adequate sanitation; only 6% have access to mains electricity.

Economists do see signs of recovery but the overall situation is extremely fragile. Security is threatened by Taliban insurgents and al-Qaida militants who have been increasing attacks in recent months, especially in the south and east, where the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom continues to hunt Osama bin Laden. Mr Bush's pledge that the al-Qaida leader and the Taliban's Mullah Omar will be caught smacked of braggadocio. Insistence from Pakistan - the president's last stop on his South Asian tour - that it is doing all it can to stop cross-border incursions was unconvincing. But Mr Bush might usefully have regretted the collateral damage to innocent Pakistani villagers caused by US air strikes.

Another significant difference with Iraq is that the US is not alone or supported only by a dwindling number of allies. Nato, which until recently was floundering for a purpose in the post-cold-war world, was left out of the war for Afghanistan and split over Iraq, has found a challenging new mission. Its 9,000-strong force is about to expand to 15,000. All 26 allies and 10 other non-members are helping the Karzai government to extend its authority.

Afghanistan's biggest single problem is narcotics. Opium poppy cultivation fell by 20% in 2005 but the heroin yield was up by 7% and is set to rise again this year. Opium still generates over half the country's GDP and is one of the greatest threats to the establishment of the rule of law and effective governance. Drugs traffickers need to be tried and jailed in secure conditions and not bribe their way out of trouble.

January's London conference on Afghanistan produced a "compact" that sets out a multi-billion dollar blueprint for partnership between Kabul and the international community to bolster security, economic development and counter-narcotics efforts. That was due acknowledgement, by the US and others, that nation-building has to be a long-term commitment. The world failed Afghanistan for too many years and Afghanistan then caused great damage to the world. Even the shortest presidential visit is enough, so long as it helps ensure that that vital point is not forgotten.

Afghan minister named among leading scientists for 2005
Pajhwok Report
KABUL, March 2 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The UK-based International Biographical Association (IBC) has nominated Minister for Higher Education Amir Shah Hasanyar as one of the Leading Scientists of the World for the year 2005.

In a letter of commendation addressed to the Afghan minister, IBC's Director General Nicholas S. Law said he had been nominated on basis of thousands of biographies from a wide variety of sources.

It said the IBC select people for significant contributions in their field and awards them the distinction. "You are one of these contributors to excellence," said the letter.

The letter further says: "This accolade is credited to those individuals that have fulfilled a standard of merit in the eyes of their peers that is beyond the norm."

Amir Shah Hasanyar was appointed as Minister of Higher Education in President Hamid Karzai's cabinet in December 2004.

He was born in 1942 in the Panjab district of the central Bamyan province. Hasanyar graduated from Kabul University in agriculture in 1955. He got his Master's degree in agriculture from a US university.

He served as agriculture professor in Kabul University from 1969 to 1972. He remained Chancellor of Kabul University from 1992 to 1996.

Work resumes on Kunar - Jalalabad road
JALALABAD, March 2 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Construction of the Kunar - Jalalabad road, which was halted for some time, was resumed on Thursday.

Contract of the 122-kilometre road was earlier awarded to a Turkish company, CBS but the rest of the work will be completed by an Indian company.

The project would be completed at the cost of $40 million, which is being provided by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Director of the Public Works Department engineer Arif criticised the CBS for its sub-standard work. He said officials of the company would not consult the provincial government.

He said the Indian company was also constructing the third class road. Highways linking provinces must be first class, he suggested.

Speaking to Pajhwok Afghan News, project manager of the Indian company hoped they would complete the work in 13 months if the security situation remained satisfactory. He said their company was busy reconstructing roads leading to Helmand, Taloqan, Kabul and Kandahar.

Residents of the area have welcomed resumption of construction work. Hafizul Haq Qarizada, resident of the Behsud district of Nangarhar, told this scribe despite lapse of two years, only five per cent work had been done.

He said due to the uneven road, not only transporters overcharging them, but the less than 20 kilometres distance take them more than one hour to reach Jalalabad.
Ezatullah Zawab