Afghanistan News March 5, 2006

March 5, 2006

Canadian soldier attacked during meeting with Afghan elders north of Kandahar
LES PERREAUX Sat Mar 4, 9:33 PM ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (CP) - Militants tossing a grenade and firing small arms attacked Canadian soldiers at a meeting with Afghan village elders Saturday but it was a lone man wielding an axe who caused the serious casualty among Canadians.

Lieut. Trevor Greene of Vancouver sat down for a meeting with village elders Saturday afternoon when a man suddenly struck him with an axe.

"He came out of the crowd and pulled out an axe from underneath his clothing and lifted it above his head standing right behind Trevor," said Capt. Kevin Schamuhn, the platoon commander who was sitting at Greene's side.

"The guy lifted up the axe and cried out the 'Allah Akbar,' the jihad prayer before they commit suicide. And he swung the axe into Trevor's head."

Schamuhn and two other soldiers each fired a volley into the attacker, killing him instantly.

A melee ensued, with local residents running in every direction and more attackers firing small arms from across a river.

Canadian and Afghan soldiers fired their own assault rifles and the Afghans added rocket-propelled grenades.

Moments later, another insurgent threw a grenade at Canadian and Afghan forces. The grenade exploded harmlessly a distance away. Soldiers returned fire at the man. They believe the man was wounded but he escaped.

The meeting was one in a series for the platoon based at a forward staging camp about 60 kilometres north of Kandahar.

Greene, Schamuhn and a security detail were meeting with local elders to talk about possible reconstruction projects when the attack took place.

The two officers removed their helmets and set down their arms as a gesture of trust for elders who traditionally guarantee security at such meetings, known as shura.

"We were completely vulnerable to them and they took complete advantage of that," Schamuhn said.

Greene was evacuated by U.S. Blackhawk helicopter to the Canadian hospital at Kandahar Airfield. He emerged from surgery Saturday afternoon and remains in serious but stable condition.

"We would classify it is absolutely cowardly, a maniac I guess is safe to say," said Col. Tom Putt, the deputy commander of Canadian forces in Afghanistan.

The soldiers are camped out at a forward operating base near Gumbad, north of Kandahar, a hotbed of anti-government activity. The small encampment surrounded by farmers' fields had previously come under rocket attack and several U.S. soldiers died in the area last year.

"The area in question has been one of the transit routes for some time for the Taliban," Putt said.

Greene, a reservist with the Seaforth Highlanders, is an author and journalist based in Vancouver. He has written a book about the missing women of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and also co-wrote Closing Bigger: The Field Guide to Closing Bigger Deals with Shane Gibson.

"Trevor is a talented author, an amazing dad and partner, the kind of person you can count on always," Gibson said in a statement.

"He is deeply committed to protecting and preserving the freedoms we enjoy as Canadians...keeping in the strictest confidence the nature of his military responsibilities and past experiences while serving our country," Gibson said.

Former Seaforth Highlanders officer John McKenzie told BCTV News on Global the married father of one is a likeable man.

"He's a soldier first but he's one of those people who would always see the good in others, so to be caught off guard like that, I could see happening to him and it's sorry to say."

A journalism graduate of the University of King's College in Halifax, Greene, speaks three languages.

Upon graduation, he spent seven years in Japan, working for the Tokyo bureau of Bloomberg News and Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper.

He went on to write a book about Japan's homeless and then worked as a research editor with the securities branch of a U.K. investment bank.

Greene returned to Canada in 1995 to join the navy.

After settling in Vancouver and transferring to the army reserves, Greene joined the Vancouver bureau of Bloomberg News as a general-assignment reporter on business and finance in Canada and Asia.

It's the second injury in Afghanistan for Greene, who suffered whiplash in February when his convoy was struck by a roadside bomb.

Schamuhn said he was impressed by Greene's conviction that the army could help the Afghan people.

The attack came as Canadian troops face increasing danger in the restive Kandahar region, including four in the last week alone.

Five Canadians were wounded in a suicide bombing Friday, one seriously.

Master Cpl. Michael Loewen will need major reconstructive surgery to save his arm but he will survive, a surgeon said.

Loewen was on his way Friday night to the U.S. combat casualty hospital at Landstuhl, Germany.

Four others had minor wounds and will be allowed to return to duty.

Cpl. Paul Davis died in a roadside accident Thursday. A suicide bomb killed Canadian diplomat Glyn Berry six weeks ago.

Two Canadians have died and at least 21 have been injured in action and accidents this year, as the Canadian military ramped up its small presence in Afghanistan to about 2,200 troops.

Pakistani Forces, Militants Clash; 49 Dead
By BASHIRULLAH KHAN, Associated Press Writer Sun Mar 5, 2:30 AM ET
MIRAN SHAH, Pakistan - Pakistan's army retaliated with helicopter gunships and artillery after pro-Taliban tribesmen clashed with security forces Saturday near the Afghan border. At least 49 people were killed in the fighting, a spokesman said.

Anger has been stirring among the tribesmen since a military strike on a suspected al-Qaida camp earlier this week in the nearby village of Saidgi.

Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, the army spokesman, said 25 militants were killed in Miran Shah and 21 in Mir Ali, but he added the toll could be higher. Three government troops also died and about 10 were wounded, he said.

An intelligence official in the area said a fourth soldier was killed late Saturday in Miran Shah, and the body of a fifth was found in Mir Ali on Sunday. The fighting petered out early Sunday, the official said on condition of anonymity because of the secretive nature of his job.

Intercepts of radio communications between militants involved in the fighting in the towns of Miran Shah and Mir Ali in North Waziristan tribal region suggested 80 or more fighters had died, security and intelligence officials said on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to comment to media.

The violence came as President Bush visited the capital, Islamabad, about 190 miles to the northeast, and voiced solidarity with Pakistan's President Gen. Pervez Musharraf in fighting terrorism.

Pakistan has deployed about 80,000 troops along the Afghan frontier but has failed to establish government control in tribal regions that have resisted outside influence for centuries.

Waziristan is known as a hotbed of al-Qaida and Taliban militants who draw support from the local Pashtun tribal people. Many of the rebellious tribesmen involved in Saturday's unrest were believed to be Islamic students who are sympathetic with the hard-line Taliban militia.

Military officials said 45 people, including foreign militants, were killed in Wednesday's attack by helicopter gunships and ground forces on Saidgi, about 10 miles from Miran Shah. The tribesmen claim local people died in the attack.

Saturday's fighting began in Mir Ali, when tribesmen opened fire on vehicles carrying paramilitary rangers, an army officer said.

The fighting spread to nearby Miran Shah, where about 500 tribesmen traded fire with paramilitary forces in the bazaar and, according to security officials, occupied some government buildings. Both sides could be seen firing mortars and assault rifles. Some mortar shells hit closed shops.

Soon after the clashes started, phone lines to the town went dead.

The army spokesman said the tribesmen started firing rockets at a Frontiers Corps base in Miran Shah and the army responded with artillery fire. Officials said helicopter gunships also targeted the tribal fighters' positions.

"We think about 25 militants have been killed. It could be higher," Sultan told The Associated Press.

A senior intelligence official, who declined to be identified, said the army had destroyed a hotel in Miran Shah bazaar that the tribal militants had used as a position for firing rockets.

Sultan said the militants were led by a local cleric Maulvi Abdul Khaliq, who this week called for a jihad, or holy war, against Pakistan's army.

Earlier Saturday, Khaliq had demanded that authorities stop killing "innocent" people in military operations and urged local elders, in an announcement broadcast from mosques and loudspeakers mounted on pickup trucks, to stop contact with the local government as a protest against the Saidgi operation.

Bazaars and government offices closed after the announcement and 500 families left town fearing a showdown, said a local intelligence official, who declined to be named because he is not authorized to comment.

Another official in the town said many families had left in haste, without packing many belongings.

Pakistan battles militants near Afghan border
Sun Mar 5, 2:40 AM ET
MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani army helicopters pounded mountains near the Afghan border on Sunday after nearly 50 people were killed in clashes with pro-Taliban militants, a resident of the area said.

The violence in the remote, semi-autonomous tribal region awash with weapons underscores the problems President Pervez Musharraf faces on his front in the U.S.-led war on terrorism.

The violence erupted on Saturday as U.S. President George W. Bush met Musharraf in the capital, Islamabad, 300 km (200 miles) to the northeast of Miranshah. The presidents reaffirmed their commitment to the war on terrorism.

"Fighting continued throughout the night with both sides using heavy weapons," a resident of Miranshah, the main town in the North Waziristan region, said on Sunday.

A military spokesman said 46 militants and three government troops were killed in Saturday's clashes.

The overnight exchanges of fire eased off in the morning but helicopter gunships later fired rockets into mountains to the east of Miranshah, sending plumes of smoke and dust into the sky.

Virtually all of the town's shops were boarded up and streets and markets deserted. The ruins of a bank attacked and set on fire in Saturday's fighting smouldered, the resident said.

Ethnic Pashtuns inhabit Waziristan as well as Afghan areas on the other side of the border and many people support the Taliban, most of whose leaders and rank-and-file are Pashtun.

Many al Qaeda members fled to Waziristan after U.S. and Afghan opposition forces ousted the Taliban in late 2001, and they were given refuge by conservative Pakistani Pashtun clans.

The Pakistani government has been trying to clear foreign militants from the border and subdue their Pakistani allies and hundreds of people have been killed in clashes since late 2004.

The army said 45 militants suspected of links to al Qaeda, including Chechens, Uzbeks, Tajiks and Afghans, were killed in a security force raid on a hideout in the same area on Wednesday.

Thousands of people fled Miranshah after Wednesday's violence and many of those who stayed on were streaming out on foot on Sunday, the resident said.

POWERFUL CLERIC
Most of the Pakistani militants are young Pashtun men, many of them loyal to a powerful Islamist cleric, Maulana Abdul Khaliq Haqqani.

An intelligence official said on Saturday government forces had attacked Haqqani's headquarters, an Islamic school known as a madrasa, but his fate was not known.

The top government official in North Waziristan, Zaheer-ul-Islam, said authorities would not tolerate militant opposition.

"We have forcefully responded to their attack and any place which the militants used as a base to launch attacks will be wiped out," he told Reuters.

The toll in Saturday's fighting in Miranshah and the nearby town of Mir Ali might have been higher than about 50 as militants were believed to have taken away and buried their dead, he said.

Most of Miranshah's population of more than 300,000 people had fled, residents said. Many people had left after last week's fighting, with most families leaving only a man or two behind to look after their property.

In December, the pro-Taliban militants battled rivals in and around Miranshah, beheading and stringing up several bodies in a gruesome show of strength. The government played down the violence saying traditional tribal councils would sort it out.

Afghanistan's U.S.-backed government has often complained of Taliban and other militants infiltrating from Waziristan and other Pakistani border areas to attack its forces and U.S. and other foreign troops.

Afghanistan begins polio immunisation drive
Sunday March 5, 09:58 PM
KABUL (AFP) - Afghanistan, one of only four countries where polio is still endemic, began vaccinating millions of children in what it hoped would be the start of a final push to eradicate the disease.

Tens of thousands of health workers and volunteers across the country kicked off a three-day campaign expected to immunise more than 7.2 million children under the age of five against the crippling disease, officials said.

The number of polio cases in Afghanistan had steadily declined from 137 in 1997, when the immunisation campaign was launched, to just five in 2004, health ministry advisor Abdullah Fahim told AFP on Sunday.

However the number of cases increased to seven last year, although they were localised to Helmand and Uruzgan provinces.

"It is a good sign that the virus is contained to these two provinces," Fahim said.

The reasons the disease was lingering in these areas included the influx of people from neighbouring Pakistan, where polio was also endemic, and violence that had hampered immunisation programmes in past years, he said.

The violence is mostly linked to an insurgency launched by remnants of the the Taliban after the regime was toppled from government in 2001.

However the past four immunisation drives, which are carried out twice annually, were able to have 100 percent reach in the provinces, Fahim said.

War-ravaged and destitute Afghanistan suffers a multitude of health problems, but its fight against the crippling disease is important from a global perspective, he said.

"It is a disabling disease. We have a lot of killing diseases in Afghanistan but we don't want to be a reservoir for a disease that the world wants to eliminate," he said.

Polio is endemic in Nigeria, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, according to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative spearheaded by the World Health Organization.

"Hopefully Afghanistan will be the first among them to be free of polio," said Fahim. "I hope we will stop the wild virus transmission this year or next year.

Another eight countries have imported cases, according to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.

French soldier dies in Afghan clash
Aljazeera - Mar 04 9:34 AM
About 200 French special force troops are in Afghanistan
Taliban fighters have killed a French special force officer in a clash in southern Afghanistan, and a roadside bomb has killed an Afghan intelligence agent and four other Afghans.

In Saturday's other incidents, a Canadian soldier from the US-led foreign force was seriously wounded in a clash in the Shawali Kot district of Kandahar, Lieutenant Mark MacIntyre, Canadian spokesman, said.

Colonel Jim Yonts, US spokesman, said at least one Taliban fighter was killed in that clash and two were killed in the one in which the French officer died. The French Defence Ministry said he was a naval officer with special forces.

The wounded Canadian would be evacuated to a US military hospital at Landstuhl in Germany, the US spokesman said.

Saturday's bloodshed came as George Bush, the US president, was in neighbouring Pakistan discussing ways to improve co-operation in the US-led "war on terrorism".

Qari Mohammad Yousuf, Taliban spokesman, said the insurgents planted the bomb which killed the Afghans in Helmand province, neighbouring Kandahar, as part of a campaign to overthrow the US-backed government. He said nine people were killed.

Remote device

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

"It was a remote-controlled bomb," Sherzad told Reuters, adding that an Afghan electrician who had been travelling in the same vehicle as Borak and his three bodyguards were also killed.

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

The Canadian casualty was just the latest suffered by their 2300-strong contingent in Kandahar this week.

On Friday, five Canadian soldiers were hurt, one seriously, in a suspected suicide car bombing that followed a wave of such attacks in recent months that had killed dozens of people.

On Thursday, a Canadian soldier was killed and seven hurt when their vehicle overturned. Police said it was an accident and brought Canadian fatalities in Afghanistan to at least 10 since 2001.

The violence in Helmand comes as the British troops set up bases as part of an expanded Nato deployment intended to allow Washington to cut its troop numbers in Afghanistan.
AFP

US Army probes whether Tillman death was homicide
By Will Dunham Sat Mar 4, 11:42 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon has directed the U.S. Army to launch a criminal investigation into whether the friendly fire death of Army Ranger and former professional football star Pat Tillman in Afghanistan in 2004 was a homicide, the Army said on Saturday.

An Army official said the Army Criminal Investigation Command would seek to determine whether one of the handful of fellow soldiers involved in the incident committed negligent homicide or some other crime in Tillman's death.

The official said he "wouldn't want to speculate" as to whether the investigation was focusing on the actions of a particular soldier.

The Army, despite knowing almost immediately Tillman was shot by fellow soldiers, initially stated publicly that his death in a remote canyon near the Pakistani border on April 22, 2004, was the result of enemy fire.

Weeks later, after Tillman's nationally televised funeral, the Army acknowledged he had been the victim of friendly fire in a wild spree of gunfire amid much confusion among U.S. soldiers at the scene, and later admitted that soldiers had destroyed evidence.

The Army official, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the investigation, said the Pentagon inspector general's office late on Friday gave initial notification to the Army Criminal Investigation Command to conduct "a criminal investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Cpl. Pat Tillman."

Tillman is the best-known of any American service member killed in the wars in either Afghanistan or Iraq. He walked away from his National Football League career and a $3.6 million contract to join the military along with his brother, a fellow Ranger, in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. He was widely hailed as a hero and role model.

The criminal investigation is the latest in a series of official Army probes into his death.

PARENTS CRITICAL
Tillman's parents have sharply criticized the Army's actions following the death of their 27-year-old son. They have accused Army officials of lying and sought a more rigorous investigation in the case.

The Army official said there was no timetable for completing the probe, and said that potential charges like negligent homicide "are the sorts of things that will be looked into." Asked if any specific person was under investigation on suspicion of wrongdoing, the official said, "No one person."

An Army investigative report last year stated that the day after his death, U.S. military personnel burned Tillman's bloody body armor and uniform, which the chief investigator called the destruction of evidence. Army officers also told soldiers knowledgeable about the incident to keep quiet for fear the news media would learn the true nature of his death, the report found.

His father, Pat Tillman Sr., last year assailed as "shams" and a cover-up the Army's investigations into his son's death. His mother, Mary Tillman, said it was "disgusting" the Army lied about it.

Army spokesman Paul Boyce said, "The U.S. Army has conducted repeated investigations into the death of Cpl. Patrick Tillman and we will continue to do so to thoroughly look into the circumstances."

An investigative report by Brig. Gen. Gary Jones of the Army Special Operations Command last year described confusion among U.S. soldiers during the incident, and said fellow Rangers failed to identify at whom they were firing when they shot toward Tillman. It said Tillman waved his arms and threw a smoke grenade to try in vain to show he was not the enemy.

The U.S. soldiers who shot at Tillman, the report found, described poor light as the sun set, and said they targeted the same place as their team leader, assuming he was shooting at the enemy.

Australia to send 200 more troops to Afghanistan
Sunday March 05, 2006 (0154 PST) PakTribune.com, Pakistan
SYDNEY: Australia’s Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, says the Federal government will contribute another 200 troops to assist the Dutch military in a former Taliban stronghold. Australia also pledges $150 million in aid for the reconstruction of Afghanistan.

"We have 190 at the moment, special forces, we’ve got another 110 going there to provide additional support for them with two helicopters, and this would be another 200 on top of that." Mr Downer said.

Speaking outside a two-day international donors conference in London, Mr Downer said Australia’s commitment to Afghanistan was not as large as some countries, but it would nevertheless make a big difference.

He said Australia would build on the millions it has already spent in Afghanistan, with a new pledge of $150 million over 5 years through aid agency AusAID. Canberra has spent 110 million dollars in the war-torn country since the coalition invaded in late 2001.

Mr Downer joined world leaders in London for the signing of the Afghanistan Compact: "a road-map for international donors and the Government of Afghanistan to work together to rebuild the country into a stable and democratic state."

Australia’s latest troop commitment, for a provincial reconstruction team in conjunction with the Netherlands, will take its total in Afghanistan to 500 troops. Downer said that the troops would probably be sent to take part in a proposed provincial reconstruction team with Dutch soldiers in the southern province of Uruzgan as early as July.

"July, August would be the pencilled-in planning at the moment, so that would involve Australia sending around 200 troops over and above the troops we already have in Afghanistan," he said.

Mr Downer said Afghanistan still had a security problem but things were going in the right direction.

"We know how important it is for the new democratic government in Afghanistan and the new free and democratic processes there to survive, and every country that possibly can needs to give support to Afghanistan," he said.

Under the compact, Afghanistan has pledged to meet targets in security, governance, rule of law and human rights, and economic and social development in return for military and financial aid from its international partners.

Australia also has about 900 troops in Iraq. About 450 of the soldiers are guarding Japanese forces in southern Samawa, which Japanese media reports said could end by May.

Downer said Australia would "wait and see" what Japan would do before deciding whether to bring its Samawa troops home or redeploy them elsewhere in Iraq.

Australia has already committed some 300 troops and support personnel to Afghanistan.

New health clinic inaugurated in Paktia
GARDEZ, Mar 5 (Pajhwok Afghan News): A health clinic, built with financial assistance of $90,000 from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), has been inaugurated in the southeastern Paktia province.

The 12-room clinic, equipped with requisite instruments, opened in the Ibrahimkhel area near Gardez on Saturday, Dr. Mohammad Khan told Pajhwok Afghan News on Sunday.

He added the Ibn-e-Sina health organisation was funding the clinic and paying the salaries of its eight-member staff, including two vaccinators and a midwife.

Inaugurating the health facility, Paktia Governor Hakim Taniwal said a large number of mothers and babies died owing to a shortage of clinics and hospitals in the backward province. He urged residents to fund the construction of the clinic's perimeter wall.

Dr Nazar Mohammad Ahmadzai, Paktia's public health director, told Pajhwok Afghan News the USAID had so far constructed 13 clinics that benefited around 20,000 residents of the area, with each of the facilities providing medical treatment to 25 patients on a daily basis.

A lady doctor at the clinic, Nazifa, said they handled at least two delivery cases every week and gave visitors information on the importance of family planning.

With the opening of the clinic, Haji Yahya Khan, a dweller of Ibrahimkhel, said they had been spared the trouble of taking mothers-to-be to the Gardez hospital.

Spike in attacks impedes NATO task in Afghanistan
Threat looms as troops from Britain prepare for a project in lawless area
Houston Chronicle By GREGORY KATZ 3/3/06
LONDON - As President Bush arrived to discuss the war on terror with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, problems were mounting in neighboring Afghanistan, where terrorist attacks are on the upsurge.

Al-Qaida fighters and remnants of the ousted Taliban regime have developed havens inside lawless parts of Afghanistan and the tribal regions in Pakistan, launching increased attacks against coalition soldiers, NATO officials and independent analysts said Friday.

The latest incidents occurred Friday in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar, when a suspected suicide car bomber wounded five Canadian soldiers, and in neighboring Helmand province when Taliban gunmen killed a chief government official in a district, according to Reuters.

The rising threat to Western troops comes as Britain is preparing to send an estimated 4,000 soldiers into one of the most lawless regions of Afghanistan, and Prime Minister Tony Blair is facing opposition in Parliament from legislators who argue that Britain cannot sustain forces to fight a "two-front" war against terror in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The British troops will be part of a NATO force that will extend a nation-building project into dangerous areas of the country, including the regions where warlords have developed vast poppy fields used for heroin production.

"The security situation has changed in the last few months," said Lt. Col. Riccardo Cristoni, spokesman for NATO forces in Afghanistan. "There are more attacks and more suicide attacks."

Suicide attacks' impact

The insurgents, he said, "are not able to conduct face-to-face attacks, or organized attacks, but these suicide attacks are very cost-effective, because one man doing it can have more impact than a conventional attack."

The NATO force — separate from Operation Enduring Freedom, the U.S.-led effort to track down and apprehend al-Qaida and Taliban fighters hiding in Afghanistan — is to concentrate on extending the central government's reach into the countryside and help rebuild the society. But the steady increase in attacks by Taliban and al-Qaida fighters has complicated the mission.

The Pakistani government has little authority in its tribal areas and the border region with Afghanistan. Small, well-armed groups are able to launch hit-and-run attacks almost at will.

"They have a sanctuary, they have a logistical framework, and they have a recruiting base in Pakistan, and that is essential for a successful guerrilla struggle," said Ahmed Rashid, the Pakistani author of Jihad and other books about the Taliban.

He said the Taliban militants are aided by friendly state authorities in Pakistan who embrace the Taliban's fundamentalist views.

British troops are preparing to step into Helmand province, but some experts warn that the deployment overextends the British army because of London's troop commitment in Iraq.

"It's a vicious circle," said analyst Charles Heyman, editor of the periodical The Armed Forces of the United Kingdom. "It's quite obvious that the forces are stretched too thin, with 40 percent of the army deployed on active operations. That is far too much."

He said a field force of 4,000 actually represents a commitment of 12,000 soldiers. While 4,000 troops will be deployed for six months, he said, 4,000 will be training to replace them and another 4,000 that had just left the conflict zone will not be ready for reassignment.

Lacks history of success

He also pointed out that the British army does not have a history of success in Afghanistan. "The terrain in Afghanistan is against us," he said. "It's easy to ambush people on the roads, and the Taliban and al-Qaida are using more and more roadside bombs."

Recent setbacks in Iraq make it impractical to consider reducing the British contingent of roughly 8,000 troops there, he said. So far, Britain has lost more than 100 soldiers since the invasion began, including two killed this week.

Some in Parliament have complained that Britain's ability to respond to any new crisis has been compromised by the decision to fight the "two-front" war. Opposition leaders warn that the Afghan mission will turn into a fiasco unless the task force is beefed up with more troops and firepower.

Bush praises Pakistan terror role
Saturday, 4 March 2006 BBC News
US President George W Bush has praised Pakistan's role in the war on terror, but said more needed to be done to defeat al-Qaeda.

Speaking during a 24-hour visit, Mr Bush reaffirmed a "broad and lasting strategic partnership" with Pakistan.

He also said he believed the future of Pakistan lay in democracy.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said he looked forward to a new era of co-operation between his country and the US.

There was, however, no sign that the US was ready to provide the same nuclear assistance to Pakistan as Mr Bush agreed to do with India, just two days previously.

"Pakistan and India are different countries with different needs and different histories," Mr Bush said.

"As we proceed forward, our strategy will take in those well-known differences."

Under the accord with India - Pakistan's main rival - India will get access to US civil nuclear technology in return for opening up its nuclear facilities to inspection.

Mr Bush did, however, drop previous objections to a proposed pipeline supplying Iranian gas to India via Pakistan.

"Our beef with Iran is not the pipeline, our beef with Iran is in fact they want to develop a nuclear weapon and I believe a nuclear weapon in the hands of the Iranians will be very dangerous for all of us," said Mr Bush.

'No backing down'

Mr Bush praised Gen Musharraf for his "bold decision" to fight terror following the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US.

He said the Pakistani president "understands the stakes, he understands the responsibility, the need to make sure the strategy is able to defeat the enemy".

Mr Bush said more work remained to be done to defeat al-Qaeda.

The best way to achieve this, he said, was to "share good intelligence, to locate them [al-Qaeda], and then be prepared to bring them to justice".

He said: "We will win this war together."

President Bush said a large part of his discussions with Gen Musharraf had been on democratic reform.

"President Musharraf understands that in the long run the way to defeat terrorism is to replace an ideology of hatred with an ideology of hope," he said.

President Bush said presidential elections planned for 2007 in Pakistan were a great opportunity but they needed to be "open and honest".

Gen Musharraf, who seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999, conceded that his military post and uniform were still an issue that needed to be addressed.

But he said he was the one responsible for bringing to Pakistan the "essence of democracy".

Security blanket

The Pakistani president acknowledged there had been some "slippage" in his country's fight against al-Qaeda, but he said "we will succeed".

Reaffirming his support for Washington, Gen Musharraf said it was "absolutely clear - that we have a strategic partnership on the issue of fighting terrorism".

The BBC's Jonathan Beale, who is travelling with President Bush, says as the two leaders emerged from more than two hours of talks, US Black Hawk helicopters hovered in the distance - the heavy security presence further evidence that their declared war on terror has not been won.

There was intense security in and around the capital, with a no-fly zone for commercial flights and private aircraft, and thousands of riot police and paramilitary troops on guard.

Several conservative Islamic parties and student organisations have rallied supporters across the country for anti-US marches over the past week, with many demonstrators also condemning Western countries for printing cartoons that satirised the Prophet Muhammad.

Pakistani opposition leader Imran Khan was detained ahead of a march he was due to lead on Saturday, his spokesman said.

Is history about to repeat itself as the Great Game starts again?
The Times Online-UK By Richard Beeston in Nadali 3/4/06
Britain's biggest mission in the country since the loss of 1,000 soldiers in 1880 is a gamble

IN A mud-brick fort bristling with modern weaponry, the latest chapter in Britain’s long and painful relationship with Afghanistan was being played out this week in a scene that could have been taken straight from a Kipling novel.

In halting Pashtun, Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Worsley, a lean and tanned British Army officer, was trying to charm a daunting group of tribal elders, who treated with polite but ill-disguised suspicion the prospect of 3,000 British troops moving into their province.

Had it been the Great Game — the deadly 19th-century power struggle for the control of Afghanistan between the competing British and Russian empires — Colonel Worsley’s address would probably have started with a message from the great Queen across the seas and ended with a warning of what to expect if her wishes were not obeyed. He instead tried to overcome the piercing stares of his turbanned audience with promises that today’s British soldier was interested only in their safety and welfare, not in occupying their lands.

“The British soldiers coming here respect your culture,” he assured the clerics, farmers and officials. “You’ll see a very compassionate, caring soldier in Helmand province,” he said, using a description not often made of the Paras, who will spearhead the force that starts arriving in the coming weeks.

If there is one issue that all sides agree on it is that the three-year British deployment, the largest in Afghanistan for more than a century, is a hugely ambitious operation fraught with dangers and with no guarantees of success.

In interviews with aid workers, soldiers, diplomats and dozens of local Afghans, the consensus is that the largest British military expedition since the invasion of Iraq is a risky and ill-defined mission.

The British, working beside a newly formed Afghan army brigade, are trying to reimpose law and order on a remote and deeply conservative Islamic community, occupying a province the size of Wales that has been cut off from the outside world for much of the past three decades of conflict.

They will come up against some powerful vested interests, including the remnants of the militant Taleban movement, ousted from power five years ago, and the hugely powerful drug barons, who stand to lose most from the presence of a rival power.

Helmand is the largest province in Afghanistan with rugged mountains in the north, a fertile river plain in the centre and flat desert in the south stretching to the Pakistani border. Currently 1,000 police are responsible for its security, but most locals rely on their own private arsenals for protection. The terrain is ideal guerrilla country, as the Russians learnt to their cost during the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.

Contacted by mobile telephone, a local Taleban leader said that preparations were under way for the arrival of the British. “We are prepared to meet them,” he declared. “We are waiting for his excellency Mullah Omar (the fugitive Taleban leader) to start the jihad. We will fight any foreign force that comes to our country, whether British or Dutch or any other infidels. We are just waiting for the order to go.”

The threat cannot be taken lightly. The Taleban is more active than at any time since it was ousted from power by US-led forces five years ago and appears to be copying the tactics of Iraq’s bloody insurgency.

Helmand is one of the provinces where its fighters have stepped up their operations. The recently appointed governor narrowly escaped a suicide bomb attack and the small contingent of British forces to have arrived regard the roadside bomb as their biggest threat.

For the local authorities the dangers are much greater. Several police officers, teachers and other officials representing central government have been killed. Local security sources said that arms and ammunition, normally widely available on the black market, had been bought up by local fighters. “The word on the street is that they are preparing for the British,” a security source in the regional capital, Lashkar Gar, said.

Certainly in the town’s main market there was clear evidence of Taleban support. One music shop openly played songs praising Mullah Omar, who paradoxically banned music during his short and eccentric ultra-conservative Islamic rule over Afghanistan.

“We will not tolerate foreigners on our land. We will fight them. We are Muslims,” Sayed Jumma Agaha, a Taleban activist wearing the movement’s trademark black turban, said.

He pointedly recalled what happened the last time the British came in numbers to the area, in June 1880.

A force under the command of Brigadier George Burrows was defeated by Ayub Khan in the battle of Maiwand, about 40 miles (64km) north of Laskhar Gar. Locals say that the bones of the more than 1,000 British soldiers killed still turn up in the fields and irrigation canals. “We do not want British guns here. They should remember what happened the last time they came to Maiwand,” Mr Agaha said with a grin. But ancient rivalries are less of a threat to the British mission than the modern curse of drugs, and Afghanistan’s dominant position as the main supplier of heroin to the streets of British cities.

Opium accounts for more than half of Afghanistan’s annual gross domestic product, with exports worth nearly $3 billion (£1.7 billion).

Helmand province, now regarded as tribal and backward, was once the main supplier of agricultural produce to the rest of Afghanistan. Today it has the dubious distinction of having the largest poppy harvest, which accounts for a quarter of all the country’s opium production.

Last year the province recorded a bumper crop. This year the expectation is that it will break new records with double the area being cultivated for poppy plants. The scale of the problem is obvious. Just 15 minutes from Lashkar Gar the first green tufts of the next crop, at this stage resembling lettuce leaves, are planted by the road.

There is hardly a farmer who has not devoted some of his land to poppy cultivation. Mirza Mohammad, 50, who was weeding his field with his two sons, said that he knew that growing poppies was bad but he had no choice.

“The plant contains poison and destroys lives,” he admitted. “It is against Islamic law. But I have to feed my children. The poppy is the only crop that brings me enough money.”

Next week 1,500 Afghan troops and special police are due to start eradicating poppy fields across Helmand province in a military operation likely to be resisted by the heavily armed local population, who have been offered Taleban protection.

British forces insist that they will not become directly involved in the eradication process this year. It is an open secret, however, that the deployment of such a large British force by the summer is intended to give the Afghan security forces the muscle to crack down hard on poppy growers next year and to take on the drug dealers who transport the opium across the open southern border with Pakistan.

The danger for British forces will be that their arrival will further cement the fledgeling alliance between the Taleban and the drug barons. As Colonel Worsley prepared to leave his meeting with the village elders and return to his base, protected by a large convoy of heavily armed British troops, locals predicted that little good would come of the latest British foray into this hot and dusty corner of Central Asia.

“We are very suspicious about the arrival of more foreign troops on our land,” Haji Abdul Qadr, a village elder, said. “We are suspicious because for 30 years Afghanistan has been a chess game for outsiders like the Russians, the Pakistanis, the Arabs and the Americans. We are afraid. When people talk about things as black and white we do not see good and evil. We see the head of a cobra.”

THE MISSION
This year, 3,300 British troops from 16 Air Assault Brigade will be sent to Helmand as part of Nato's expansion into the south of the country

1,000 troops will go to Kabul to form the headquarters for Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), commanded by a British Lieutenant-General

A further 300 will train the Afghan Army and 1,000 engineers will build camps.

As well as attempting to bring stability, it is hoped troops can help to tackle the opium trade

Troops will stay for three years at a cost of £1 billion

HISTORY OF VIOLENCE
Even in pre-Islamic days, Afghanistan was overrun by numerous invaders, who were met with violent revolts.

King Darius the Great of Persia extended his empire into Afghanistan in 500BC and was supplanted by Alexander the Great

In the 7th century it was invaded by Arabs, who introduced Islam, which eventually became the dominant religion

In the 13th century the Mongols, led by Genghis Khan, invaded on their way towards Europe. Much of the population was slaughtered. After Genghis’s death, the country was rocked by a series of petty revolts and violent power struggles in the 14th and 15th centuries

The Moghuls became a dominant force in the 16th century, taking control of Kabul in 1504 and eventually much of Afghanistan. Hinduism was introduced, triggering more revolts

In the so-called “Great Game” of the 19th century, the British and Russian empires competing with each other for influence, leading to the First Anglo-Afghan War (1838-42), which resulted ultimately in British withdrawal. The final peace treaty that ended the Afghan Wars brought the country independence

Became a focal point of the Cold War after the Soviet invasion in 1979 in support of a communist regime. Soon after, the Mujahidin gained support from the USA and UK. The Soviet army withdrew in 1988. The Mujahidin took over Kabul in 1992, only to be ousted by the Taleban

Where the Taleban Train
Quetta serves as training ground and staging post for insurgents on their way to Afghanistan.
Institute For War and Peace Reporting By Abdullah Shahin in Quetta (ARR No. 205, 3-Mar-06)
The turbans in black or white, the long beards and the omnipresent "pirhan-tunbon", the baggy trousers and long shirts that are the traditional Afghan dress, tell me I'm in Afghanistan in the late Nineties, during the Taleban regime.

But this is 2006, and I am in Quetta in Pakistan.

Quetta, the capital of the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, lies about 200 kilometres southeast of Kandahar, across a porous border. Many of my fellow countrymen have made the journey here. In fact, some sections of the city seem to be populated almost entirely by Taleban who fled after the United States-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001.

Now they lie in wait in Quetta, plotting their return.

Over the last year, Kandahar has seen an alarming rise in suicide bombings and attacks on troops and government installations. In the past three months alone, there have been more than 20 acts of violence, leaving dozens dead, hundreds wounded, and an entire province terrorised.

Quetta provides a ready supply of young men prepared to wreak havoc in Afghanistan, local observers tell me. There are eight major madrassas or Muslim religious schools in Quetta, each with over 1,000 students or "taleban" in the original sense of the word. In addition, there are hundreds of private madrassas, some with just 100 students, often occupying unmarked, rented houses.

It is these private schools that are a major source of the fighters who are now carrying out insurgent operations inside Kandahar, according to these observers.

One 23-year-old madrassa student, wearing the characteristic black turban of the "taleb", spoke to me on condition of anonymity.

“I am preparing for jihad here, until I am sent to Afghanistan,” he said. “Jihad is my duty and martyrdom my hope.”

Another Taleb, 25-year-old Saadullah, explained why he had decided to wage jihad in his homeland.

“I was recruited by one of my friends who told me terrible things about the Afghan government,” he said. “I was also told that the Americans were always abusing people, killing them, going into their homes and insulting their religion.”

Mullahs did their part, too, he added, preaching fiery sermons against the Afghan government and the American occupiers during Friday prayers.

Saadullah said he was dispatched on a mission to Kandahar to fight both Afghan and foreign troops.

“I was to carry out a suicide attack on an Afghan National Army base in Kandahar,” he said.

But at the border, the friend who was supposed to be accompanying him on the mission gave him 30 US dollars, wished him luck, and headed back to Quetta.

“I thought, ‘Why am I to die while you go back to Quetta?’” Saadullah recalled. “Why are these people not doing jihad themselves? They're just taking advantage of the emotions of young people. They are liars.

"I came back and I will never have anything to do with them again.”

With Pakistani police a rare sight in much of this city, Quetta residents say that the Taleban operate with impunity. They run offices and openly recruit candidates for insurgent operations in Kandahar.

One resident called Abdullah, 40, said the city contains a number of prominent Taleban leaders such as military commanders Mullah Dadullah and Mullah Abdul Ali Dubandi.

“The whole world knows that the Taleban are trained in Pakistan but they ignore it. The Taleban are all over Quetta,” he said.

When you walk through the streets of Quetta, you hear Taleban religious songs blaring out of music stores. These incendiary chants, called "tarana", call on youths to join the jihad, kill infidels and repel the occupiers. Such recordings were banned a few years ago, but now they are back.

“Pakistani police used to close down shops that played Taleban songs, but now no one is afraid. The mullahs are very strong,” said one shop owner.

A bookseller who did not want to be named said, “The Taleban are putting out magazines. These publications used to be banned, but now they're published openly and we sell them in our stores.”

The magazines, like the songs, contain open calls to violence.

“When you read them, you just want to grab a gun and go to jihad,” said the bookseller.

Mullahs here openly incite their followers to attack the current Afghan government. In Friday sermons, they encourage the congregation to join the struggle.

“These attacks should continue. Our struggle is legal. We want to install an Islamic regime in Afghanistan,” said one mullah in the Chawlo Bawlo area of the city.

Some city residents claim that the Pakistani military is playing a role in training the would-be insurgents.

“The Pakistani military headquarters in Quetta is the main Taleban training base,” said Tariq, 31, a resident of the Askari Park area. “I've seen with my own eyes that Taleban were taken there for training. One of my relatives was among them.”

Military officials refused to comment on the allegation. Governor Owai Ahmad Ghani, speaking on Pakistani television, flatly denied that the Taleban were operating in Quetta and rejected claims that Pakistan was interfering in Afghanistan.

“The Afghan government is weak. It can't control the remote areas of its country, so it accuses Pakistan of meddling in its affairs,” he said.

Taleban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, in an exclusive interview with IWPR, said the stories of Taleban bases inside Pakistan were just propaganda.

“People think Pakistan is our friend, but it is not true,” he said. “Pakistan is an ally of America, not of the Taleban.”

The Taleban had no need of foreign bases, he insisted, adding, “The Taleban are sons of Afghanistan. They are in Afghanistan and they will fight in Afghanistan.”

But Afghan officials remain convinced that Pakistan is serving as a major operations base for the increasingly frequent insurgent attacks that threaten to destabilise the southern part of their country.

In mid-February, Afghan president Hamed Karzai led a high-ranking delegation to Pakistan, telling officials there that Afghanistan would no longer tolerate support for terrorists from across the border. While he stopped short of outright accusations, Karzai made it clear that he expected Pakistan to make serious efforts to halt the flow of personnel and weapons across the border.

“If [the attacks] don’t stop, the consequences… will be that this region will suffer with us, exactly as we suffer. In the past we suffered alone. This time everybody will suffer with us,” Karzai told reporters.

Assadullah Khalid, governor of Kandahar province, has repeatedly alleged that Pakistan is behind the recent wave of attacks. In particular, he blamed Pakistan for a suicide bombing that killed 27 and wounded 40 in Spin Boldak in January.

“Pakistan is responsible for the past two decades of war,” he said. “Pakistani police are guarding the houses of the Taleban. We have evidence indicating that memorial services for the suicide bombers are being held in Pakistan.”

Even some Pakistani politicians and analysts agree that their country is heavily involved in creating mayhem on its neighbour’s territory.

“Pakistan does not want stability in Afghanistan,” said Hasel Bizenjo, leader of the Baluch National Party, which represents ethnic Baluchis. “Pakistan wants Afghanistan under its influence.”

Awrangzeb Kasi, a Pakistani political analyst in Quetta, said he believes that there are special terrorist training camps in Pakistan.

“There have been terrorist camps in Pakistan for 26 years, where Inter Services Intelligence [ISI] provides training” he said. “The Pakistani government is always saying that it supports peace in the region, and that it will arrest al-Qaeda leaders, but it is really not doing anything.”

Abdul Rahim Mandokhel, the Quetta-based deputy leader of Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami, an ethnic Pashtun party in Pakistan, agrees.

“It is clear that these terrorists are trained and supported by Islamabad,” he said. “Pakistan can stop these terrorists, but it doesn’t want to.”

Abdullah Shahin is a freelance reporter in Kandahar.

Back to School for Afghan Turkmen?
The first-ever ethnic Turkmen education minister takes steps to get his people to go to school.
Institute For War and Peace Reporting By Muhammad Tahir in Faryab, Afghanistan (ARR No. 205, 3-Mar-06)
Shaziya was recently forced to leave the village in northeast Afghanistan where she was born and grew up.

The 40-year-old primary school teacher fled Ghorghan Tepe in Faryab province in fear of her own life and those of her two children, after the schoolhouse which also served as her home was set on fire one night.

Luckily, neither she nor her children were in the building at the time. But the arson attack meant Shaziya had to find a new home and look for another source of income.

As she had already lost her husband in one of Afghanistan’s many wars, her last hope was her uncle. But he was afraid of sheltering her because of pressure from the local community.

What scared him was Shaziya’s connection with a local non-government organisation, NGO, called Negahban (the Guardian), which seeks to promote awareness of education among rural populations.

“Activists with NGOs are seen as being like Western agents,” said Halim Asefi, the head of Negahban. “Whatever you do, you’ll never satisfy people. They’ll see you as an enemy installed by the West to destroy community values.

“So it's very hard to find activists, especially female ones like Shaziya.”

Shaziya has since found temporary with Asefi’s family.

Asefi says the kind of community suspicion and pressure that Shaziya was subjected to is by no means specific to the ethnic Turkmen of Afghanistan, who number about two to three million and live in the north and northwest of the country.

But what he finds so disappointing is the unusually strong resistance to social change he observes among the Turkmen – his own people. He warns that this could hamper their progress in the new Afghanistan.

Asefi was inspired to set up Negahban after seeing a rural women's initiative in Turkey while he was at university there. After graduating, he decided to return home - now that the Taleban regime had fallen in late 2001 - and began putting his idea into practice, with the help of funding from international donor agencies.

Founding his NGO was hard enough, but keeping it going was even harder, as the entire tribal system in his community seemed to be against his aims. Tackling any issue to do with the family - particularly education for girls - was taboo in a society, which sees such matters as essentially private.

Unusually in Afghanistan, there is even resistance to the idea that boys should attend school.

“My father is an uneducated man,” said Asefi. “But it's not because he had no opportunity to study. At that time, there were two schools built by the central government, but no one was interested in sending their kids.

“When the authorities spotted this, they made basic education compulsory. But instead of leading to progress, the move opened new paths for corruption in the village: people who didn’t want to send their children to school started to bribe the teachers. And anyway, the project didn’t last long, as schoolteachers were the first to be targeted by the mujahedin when they reached our town [in the early Nineties].”

Negahban is not the only group facing problems in Turkmen areas. Local media recently reported that a women was abducted shortly after starting work as a teacher for another NGO.

Jamahir Anwari, who leads the Turkmen Peace Council, which represents the large refugee population in Pakistan as well as those in northern Afghanistan, believes the high levels of suspicion of innovation and outsiders stems from conservative Islamic values that have been “imposed” on the Turkmen by other Afghan groups over the years.

In principle, he says, Turkmen are not against education – everyone knows the basics of reading and writing, if not from normal schooling then from attending a madrassa or religious school.

But as Nadir Turkmen, a young journalist based in Kabul, points out, the level of education offered by madrassas has not provided the skills needed to help aspiring Turkmen leaders navigate their way through the decades of conflict.

“Because of the lack of intellectuals, the Turkmen were always ignored and were ruled by others in Afghanistan,” he said. “There was no one able to talk about the rights of the Turkmen people, so they were never represented properly in the overall [governing] structures.”

The bulk of Afghanistan’s Turkmen population dates from the 1920s, when the many people fled their homeland in Central Asia as the Soviets invaded and took over the territory that is now the republic of Turkmenistan.

As they remained somewhat apart from the social and political mainstream of Afghanistan, they found themselves excluded from decision-making. This lack of engagement extended to the decades of conflict, in which the Turkmen mainly sought to remain neutral, and as a result they now have no former warlords at the table exerting political leverage.

Spread across the northern provinces of Faryab, Jowzjan, Balkh and Kunduz, the Afghan Turkmen are famous for their handmade carpets - often deep red in colour - which for decades have provided their main source of income alongside farming. When a boy went out to work on the farm at the age of 12, his sister would be expected to look after her younger brothers and sisters while her mother wove rugs from dawn to dusk.

There may now be a golden opportunity to address the issues facing the Turkmen, since one of their own, Nur Muhammad Qarqin, was appointed Afghan education minister in last cabinet.

Qarqin seems keen to bring change to the way Turkmen view education and aspiration.

He recently announced a project to provide school textbooks in the Turkmen language for the first time. Turkmen generally study in Dari, which serves as lingua franca for many Afghan minorities.

The challenges are immense - so far the minister has not been able to find anyone sufficiently expert in the language to devise the teaching material. But many people believe the project could be just the right thing to change attitudes to education - which in turn could help this community gain more of a voice in Afghanistan.

Muhammad Tahir is a journalist and broadcaster based in Prague.

A Day at the Races
It may not be Ascot – but fans of donkey-racing take the contest seriously.
Institute For War and Peace Reporting By Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi in Mazar-e-Sharif (ARR No. 205, 3-Mar-06)
Dozens of people surround the winning steed as it’s fanned and massaged after crossing the finish line. But the black donkey, owned by Khwaja Sultan Mohammad, just looks tired after having completed the 30-kilometre course in about 90 minutes.

The Khar Paiga, or donkey races, are a revered tradition in Mazar-e-Sharif, helping the residents of the northern Balkh province pass the winter months.

There are four races, held in January and February every year, which attract specially trained donkeys from all over the province. Donkey experts select two animals from the scores of possible entries to compete in each race.

Thousands of spectators turned out for the final race of the year on February 17. And this being the relatively freewheeling Mazar, many of the fans were eager to place a bet on their favourite.

The festivities actually start the night before the race, with owners and spectators holding parties at local hotels and restaurants. So there were more than a few bleary eyes among the crowd that assembled at the starting line in Tashqurghan, about 50 kilometres east of Mazar, on Friday morning.

The two donkeys, ridden by local village boys who are usually no more than seven years old, set off across an open field. They’re followed on horseback by two referees and by the donkeys’ owners armed with a supply of fresh fruit to quench their animals’ thirst. Spectators climb into the ubiquitous Toyota Corolla or the occasional Land Cruiser to follow the race in progress.

“Little village kids know how to ride a donkey,” said Sultan. He said he paid his rider the equivalent of 60 US dollars for the race. “In addition to the fee, the winning rider gets about 200 dollars from the spectators,” he said.

The owner of the winning donkey receives 700 dollars' worth of oats, the cost of which is borne by the loser. That may explain why Popal, whose donkey came in second, looked pretty angry and refused to be interviewed.

“This is a wonderful spectacle for us. I take part in all of the races each year,” said onlooker Ahmad Fardin, 25.

Fardin had reason to be excited. He said he had wagered 100 dollars on the winning donkey. He insisted that this counted as entertainment and not gambling, which is a sin according to Islam.

“I am not a gambler,” he said. "These races are held only four times a year and when we young people take part, we have to bet. If we don't, we aren't ‘kaaka’.”

"Kaaka" is a very big concept in Mazar. It means that a young man is generous, brave, and ready to throw his money away.

It’s clear that raising a champion is important to Sultan, 60. He has been breeding racing donkeys for 40 years, and considers himself an expert.

“It is a matter of honour for me. I win every year,” he said. “I am proud to keep people happy for one day,” he said.

Sultan says the secret to raising a winning donkey is pampering it, so he employs a trainer to care for his animal.

The trainer’s duties include wrapping the donkey in blankets when it’s cold, giving him cool baths when it’s hot, and feeding him princely rations – at least compared with the ones other animals gets.

“One week prior to the race, we start feeding the donkey pears, bananas, apples and other fruit so he'll get stronger,” he said. “My rival lost because he did not take better care of his donkey.”

As part of the tradition, the donkey owners also hire cooks to prepare khar pilaw, or "donkey pilaff" - a famous local rice-and-meat dish – to serve to spectators after the race.

Mohammad Nazar, a resident of Mazar-e-Sharif, spoke to IWPR as he headed for Sultan’s house.

“I'm neither a donkey owner nor have I bet on any of them,” he said. “But I like the races a lot. And I love donkey pilaff.”

Not everyone went home happy, however. Shamsullah from Shiberghan, the capital of Jowzjan province, said he lost 40 dollars on the race.

“From now I am just going to watch,” he said. “I am not going to bet one afghani on any donkey.”

Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi is an IWPR staff reporter in Mazar-e-Sharif.