Afghanistan News March 6, 2006

March 6, 2006

Pakistan's Musharraf slams Afghanistan's Karzai
Mon Mar 6, 5:19 AM ET
ISLAMABAD (AFP) - Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf called neighboring President Hamid Karzai oblivious to events in     Afghanistan, stepping up a war of words between the two US allies in the "war on terror".

Musharraf renewed a months-long row with Afghanistan over cooperation in the search for     Osama bin Laden and remnant Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants, just days after US     President George W. Bush visited both countries.

He said that a list which Afghan officials gave to Islamabad containing details of Taliban militants allegedly in Pakistan, including the regime's fugitive leader Mullah Omar, was "nonsense".

"There is a very, very deliberate attempt to malign Pakistan by some (Afghani) agents, and president Karzai is totally oblivious of what is happening in his own country," Musharraf told CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer" on Sunday.

Afghanistan's foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah last week told AFP of his concern that Islamabad was not following up on a list of Taliban rebels, which was handed over when Karzai visited Pakistan last month.

But military ruler Musharraf, who abandoned Pakistan's support for the Taliban after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, said he was "totally disappointed" by the intelligence the Afghans had provided.

"We've already gone through it, this list. Two-thirds of it is months old, and it is outdated, and there is nothing," Musharraf said.

"What there was, the telephone numbers that they are talking of, two-thirds of them are dead numbers, and even the     CIA knows about it, because we are sharing all this information with them.

"The location that they are talking of Mullah Omar is nonsense. There's nobody there."

Musharraf also complained of a conspiracy against Pakistan within Karzai's defence and intelligence departments, adding: "He better set that right."

Afghan officials have repeatedly accused Pakistan of turning a blind eye to Taliban training facilities on Pakistani soil and also alleged that some circles in Pakistan support and finance Islamic radicals behind the insurgency in Afghanistan.

"We have had it up to our ears with this campaign to malign Pakistan," a senior Pakistani official close to Musharraf told AFP on condition of anonymity.

"We have provided sufficient evidence to     President Bush what certain Afghan officials are doing to fund and supply arms to militants in Pakistan," the official said.

"One Afghan commander in Jalalabad is sending arms into Pakistani areas, for example. As a result our soldiers are dying and their soldiers are dying too."

Bush said on Saturday during his visit to Pakistan that Musharraf remained committed to the "war on terror" but added that more work needed to be done to defeat Al-Qaeda.

Islamabad has for about two years had tens thousands of troops in its restive tribal regions bordering Afghanistan to root out militants. At least 50 insurgents and five Pakistani troops died in a battle there at the weekend.

Despite this, and the nearly 30,000 foreign troops helping Afghan security forces on the other side of the border, key Taliban and Al-Qaeda leaders have escaped capture.

Pakistan leader derides Afghan security complaint
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf stepped up a war of words with Afghanistan, deriding accusations the Taliban leader was in Pakistan as nonsense and questioning the Afghan president's leadership.

Musharraf in an interview with CNN late on Sunday, said relations with neighboring Afghanistan were growing tense and President Hamid Karzai was "totally oblivious" to efforts by elements in his government to malign Pakistan.

U.S. President George W. Bush visited both major allies in the war in terrorism last week and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United States was trying to promote cooperation between the often uneasy neighbors.

"President Karzai is totally oblivious of what is happening in his own country," Musharraf told CNN.

Afghanistan is facing an increasingly vicious insurgency by the Taliban, who have been fighting since they were ousted shortly after the September 11 attacks when Pakistan dropped support for the radical Islamists.

Although Pakistan officially ended its support, many Afghans are convinced the Taliban could not survive and fight without the benefit of Pakistani refuges from where they plot and launch attacks into Afghanistan.

Pakistan has long rejected such accusations.

Karzai visited Pakistan last month and handed over what Afghan officials said was detailed information about Taliban members and activities in Pakistan, including telephone numbers and the location of supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.

But Musharraf said much of the information was old and useless. "Two-thirds of it is months old, and it is outdated, and there is nothing," he said.

"The location that they are talking of Mullah Omar is nonsense. There's nobody there. We've gone there exactly and seen that there are families living there and there's no sign of Mullah Omar," he said.

"UNDIPLOMATIC"
In Kabul, an official in Karzai's office said Musharraf's comments were "highly undiplomatic and inappropriate" but cooperation was "the only way forward."

Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah echoed the call for cooperation. "Despite these remarks we believe Afghanistan and Pakistan should have honest cooperation ... based on the two countries' long-term interests," he told a news conference.

Musharraf said he believed there was a conspiracy against his country within Afghanistan's Defense Ministry and intelligence agencies, which are dominated by members of the old Northern Alliance.

The alliance, which helped U.S. forces oust the Taliban, is made up of ethnic Tajik factions traditionally close to Pakistan's old rival, India. "I feel there is a very, very deliberate attempt to malign Pakistan," Musharraf said.

"He should pull up his intelligence, he should pull up his ministry of defense, he should coordinate with our intelligence," Musharraf said, referring to Karzai.

"Let me tell you that I passed on a lot of information to him ... what is the conspiracy going on against Pakistan in his ministry of defense and his intelligence setup.

"He better set that in order before accusing Pakistan."

Afghanistan's relations with India are blossoming, much to the suspicion of Pakistan which recently accused India and Afghan drug lords of meddling in an insurgency in Pakistan's Baluchistan province.

Asked about tension with Afghanistan, Musharraf said: "Well, unfortunately, it is developing in the last one or two months."

(Additional reporting by Sayed Salahuddin in KABUL)

Pakistan choppers attack militants on Afghan border
By Zeeshan Haider
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistani security forces battled Islamist rebels holding out in a town near the Afghan border on Monday, killing 19 of them as the toll from three days of clashes rose to more than 120, the military said.

The pro-Taliban rebels launched attacks on government positions in Miranshah town on Saturday as U.S. President George W. Bush was meeting Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in the capital and the fighting has raged since then.

"Helicopter gunships have been pounding militant positions around Miranshah," a resident of the main town in the North Waziristan tribal region said on Monday. "The situation is very tense."

The semi-autonomous ethnic Pashtun lands along the Afghan border are Pakistan's front line in the war on terrorism.

Many al Qaeda militants fled to the area awash with weapons after U.S. and Afghan opposition forces ousted the Taliban in late 2001, and were given refuge by Taliban supporters among the Pashtun clans.

Pakistani forces have been trying to clear foreign militants from the border and subdue their Pakistani allies since late 2004 and hundreds of people have been killed.

Government forces faced stiff resistance as they tried to clear the last of the rebels from Miranshah on Monday, said military spokesman Major-General Shaukat Sultan.

"Troops engaged the miscreants and killed 19 of them," he said.

Militants launched attacks and seized government buildings in Miranshah on Saturday in revenge for the killing on Wednesday of 45 of their comrades in a government attack.

The toll from the first day of fighting had gone up to more than 100 militants from 46 as more detailed reports came in, Sultan said. Two militants were killed on Sunday.

Five troops were killed and two wounded over the three days, he said.

Thousands of residents had left Miranshah since last week's violence and the exodus was continuing on Monday, said the resident who, like many people in the town, is fearful of militant reprisals and declined to be identified.

Sultan said government forces had retaken control of the town. The region's security chief, Arbab Shehzad, said a curfew had been lifted for three hours to let people find food.

VIOLENT HISTORY
The town's telephone service had been partially restored after the army took back the exchange and troops were in control of the main market, the resident said.

Waziristan has a long history of military intervention.

Britain won over some Pashtun tribes and made the region its first line of defense from perceived Russian designs on British India in the nineteenth century.

In the 1980s, a flood of U.S.-funded weapons and Islamist fighters poured into the area to bolster the Muslim holy war against Soviet forces occupying Afghanistan.

Today, Afghanistan complains of Taliban and other militants infiltrating from Waziristan and other Pakistani border areas to launch attacks against the U.S.-backed government and U.S.-led foreign troops there.

The Afghan violence has strained relations between the uneasy neighbors, with Musharraf on Sunday deriding accusations the Taliban leader was in Pakistan as nonsense, and questioning Afghan President Hamid Karzai's leadership.

A U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan declined to comment on the row but welcomed the Pakistani action in Waziristan.

"We see this as a very positive move," Colonel Jim Yonts told a briefing in Kabul. "This issue in Waziristan is an example that they are fighting the war on terrorism."

Pakistan said on Sunday for the first time the Waziristan violence was directly related to the Taliban insurgency and Pakistani areas would only be brought under control when the Afghan side of the border was stable.

Hundreds Flee Northwestern Pakistan Unrest
By BASHIRULLAH KHAN, Associated Press Writer Sun Mar 5, 1:30 PM ET
MIRAN SHAH, Pakistan - Hundreds of Pakistanis lugging bags and bundles of clothes fled a northwestern town Sunday after pro-Taliban tribesmen and foreign militants battled security forces in clashes near the Afghan border that left at least 53 people dead.

The fighting, which started Saturday and largely died down early Sunday, was the worst in two years in the lawless North Waziristan region, where well-armed, fiercely independent tribes have long resisted government control.

Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said sporadic gunfire broke out Sunday afternoon in Miran Shah, the main hotspot of the unrest. But the fighters retreated from government buildings they had occupied, and soldiers controlled the town again, he said.

Sultan said foreigners involved in the fighting had come from neighboring Afghanistan and would be "confronted and eliminated."

The fighting came as President Bush made a 24-hour visit Saturday to the capital of Islamabad, about 190 miles northeast of North Waziristan, and declared his solidarity with Pakistan in the war on terror.

Sultan said at least 46 fighters and five soldiers were killed in the fighting.

Miran Shah's hospital said two civilians were killed — a 25-year-old man who died when a shell hit his home and a 50-year-old homeless man.

The fighting came just days after the army attacked a suspected al-Qaida camp in the village of Saidgi near the Afghan border.

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 are believed to be Islamic students, referred to as "local Taliban," reflecting their sympathies with the hardline militia in Afghanistan.

Miran Shah's streets and bazaars were empty. Smoke billowed from a bank building hit by an artillery shell. Another shell tore a hole in the home of a doctor who lived on the premises of a state-run hospital. Shells also pocked the side of the hospital.

Both sides were using mortars and other heavy weapons, and it was not known who hit the buildings or whether they were targeted or hit by accident.

Security forces fortified themselves inside a heavily guarded base Sunday after the fighting died and troops fired into the air if anyone came within 300 yards.

Hundreds of villagers — men, women and children — were seen fleeing Miran Shah on foot Sunday, carrying suitcases and bundles of clothes. Vehicles weren't allowed in or out of the town, so they had to walk nine miles to a security checkpoint, where they could find transport.

Noor Nawaz, 25, who runs a shop selling auto parts, said he and his family spent a sleepless night because of the fighting. Mortar and artillery fire thundered overnight, and helicopters could be heard flying until dawn.

"People are extremely scared. Nobody has slept. Children were crying," he said as he fled from the town with his wife and three children. His veiled wife was carrying their 3-year-old son.

Intercepts of radio communications between militants Saturday in Miran Shah and nearby Mir li suggested 80 or more fighters had died, security and intelligence officials said.

A man who claimed to speak for the militants called The Associated Press by satellite phone from an undisclosed location and said that fighters killed 55 soldiers and captured 14 others, but that could not be verified.

The purported spokesman, Maulvi Abdul Ghafoor, warned that fighting will spread to other areas of the region if troops do not withdraw.

Pakistan has deployed about 80,000 security forces along the Afghan frontier, but has failed to assert the government's control in these tribal regions which have resisted outside influence for centuries.
___

Associated Press reporter Riaz Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan, contributed to this report.

Afghan UN worker killed in western Afghanistan
06 Mar 2006 09:39:19 GMT
KABUL, March 6 (Reuters) - An Afghan working for the United Nations was shot dead in the west of Afghanistan at the weekend, a provincial governor said on Monday.

The killing took place in the Zairkoa area on the border between Farah province and neighbouring Herat on Sunday, Farah Governor Ezatullah Wasfi said. The victim worked for the U.N. HABITAT agency, he said.

The governor said it was unclear if the killing was the work of Taliban insurgents, or provoked by a tribal rivalry.

Two U.N. staff members were killed in Afghanistan last year, but attacks by Taliban insurgents on aid workers have declined while those on government officials and security forces have increased.

A U.N. spokesman said he was not immediately able to comment.

Afghan, US troops capture militants in southeast Afghanistan
People's Daily
Troops of Afghan army backed by the U.S. military captured Sunday several anti-government militants in the southeast Khost province close Pakistan, spokesman of the U.S.- led coalition troops said Monday.

"Members of an insurgent cell believed to be responsible for a series of improvised explosive device attacks were detained yesterday in an operation planned, led and executed by Afghan security forces in Khost. Coalition forces participated in a support role only," James Yonts said.

He declined to give the exact number of the militants arrested in the operation. However, he added that troops had seized a number of small arms including two rocket-propelled grenades from the militants' possession.

The spokesman also avoided disclosing if there were any key Taliban figures among the suspects, and said the Taliban and al- Qaida are the enemies of Afghanistan.

"The coalition's commitment to Afghanistan and to defeating this enemy remains steadfast," Yonts noted.

Taliban-linked insurgency which left over 1,500 people dead in 2005 have claimed the lives of some 100 persons, among which nine coalition troops including seven Americans have been killed since the beginning of this year.
Source: Xinhua

Survey shows opium poppy cultivation on rise in Afghanistan
Monday March 6, 9:01 PM
(Kyodo) _ Afghanistan faces an increasing trend in opium poppy cultivation this year, according to a survey by the government and the United Nations which was released Monday.

The joint survey by the Afghan government and the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime showed an increasing trend in opium poppy cultivation in 13 of the country's 34 provinces.

The survey was conducted in December and January, the start of poppy cultivation season.

"The indication of an increase in cultivation is clearly there," U.N. spokesman Adrian Etwood said.

Etwood cited poverty alleviation and pressure from the people in the drug business as main reasons behind the increase.

Farmers in those provinces are aware of the government's ban on opium poppy cultivation and the planned eradication campaign, but do not believe that those measures will be enforced, the survey added.

The survey also showed a decreasing trend in three provinces and no change in 16 provinces as compared with the results of the previous survey of 2005.

Two provinces were not counted because they were newly established.

Among the 13 provinces showing an increase trend in opium cultivation, Helmand, Ghor, Urozgan, Zabul, Nengarhar, Laghman and Badakhshan showed a "strong increase," the survey said.

Violence-plagued southern Helmand Province, where about 3,000 British soldiers are being deployed to combat a rising Taliban-led insurgency and drug trade, has seen booming poppy cultivation this year, according to the survey.

Taliban and al-Qaida militants believed to be funded by narco-gangs have warned that they will attack government forces if they eradicate opium poppies.

The survey did not assess the implementation of the eradication campaign conducted by the Afghan special eradication force.

Despite large-scale financial support by donor countries such as the United States and Britain to destroy narcotics, Afghanistan still accounts for roughly 80 percent of the world's opium and heroin trade, over half of which goes through its neighbors to Central Asia and Europe, according to the 2005 survey.

Taliban are still calling the shots
Scotland On Sunday CARLOTTA GALL IN LOY KAREZ, AFGHANISTAN Sun 5 Mar 2006
WHEN Haji Lalai Mama, a 60-year-old tribal elder, gamely tried to organise a village defence force against the Taliban recently, he had to do it with a handful of men and just three rifles. "We were patrolling and ready," he recalled.

But they were not ready enough. The Taliban surprised them under cover of darkness by using a side road. One villager was killed, and 10 others were wounded by a grenade. Two Taliban fighters were captured in the clash. The rest disappeared into the night.

The men at Loy Karez were exceptional in making a stand at all. Few in southern Afghanistan are ready to stand up to the Taliban, at least not without greater support or benefits from the Afghan government.

In fact, four years after the Taliban were ousted from power by the American military, their presence is bigger and more menacing than ever, say police and government officials, village elders, farmers and aid workers across southern Afghanistan.

American and Afghan officials have said for months that the Taliban are no longer capable of fighting large battles, and in their weakness have changed tactics to roadside bombings or attacking soft targets - harassing villagers, killing teachers and burning schools.

Yet the American-led alliance has not been able to root out the insurgency. And the Taliban's tactics have succeeded in sowing fear.

The militants have closed down about 200 schools through threats and burnings across the south of Afghanistan, and killed dozens of government officials, tribal elders and civilians in the past year. Commerce has sharply declined in Kandahar, largely because of the rash of suicide bombings in the past few months.

In the villages, Afghans are asking foreigners and non-governmental organisations not to come around anymore, not because they do not need the aid, but for fear of reprisals from the Taliban.

The local border police commander, Col Abdul Razziq, 30, says the situation is reaching a crisis point.

"People are fed up now with the Taliban," he said. "They don't let organisations come and build roads, dig bore wells and build schools. I think now people have to fight them. How long can they tolerate this?"

The American military reacts quickly with overwhelming airpower when it encounters a Taliban group of any size, as it did recently in Helmand Province when local officials claimed 200 Taliban fighters were at large.

But until now the Taliban, criminals and drug smugglers, who often work together, have had an easy time in Helmand because there has been virtually no security presence in the province, neither from the Afghan Army nor an international force of any strength, said Col Henry Worsley, the commander of British troops.

The British are starting to arrive in Helmand as part of the new Nato force taking over command of southern Afghanistan this year.

"They are clearly a threat," Worsley said of the Taliban and their allies. "But they do have a fairly easy time of it now, and that's going to change."

British troops are planning extensive patrolling with Afghan forces, including patrols on foot and at night to improve security in the villages, he said.

American forces have not spent much time and effort on Helmand, the commander of the United States-led alliance, Lt Gen Karl Eikenberry, has conceded. Yet the alliance has spent a lot of time and investment on the neighbouring province of Kandahar, where the Taliban have also expanded their influence.

General Eikenberry does not accept the suggestion of failure. "The challenge is not that the enemy is strong, but after 25 years of warfare, that the institutions of the state are weak," he told a gathering of elders in Kandahar.

When greeted with speech after speech calling on America to use its influence on Pakistan to crack down on the Taliban operating across the border, he urged the Afghans to look in the mirror, telling them they have a role to play too.

"The best strategy when we have a problem is to hold a mirror to yourself," he said. "It means building a government, getting a clean government that is not corrupt, stopping poppy cultivation, building the Afghan National Army and national police. That is the first step."

President Hamid Karzai also appealed to tribal elders at a recent gathering to help, acknowledging that the government cannot achieve anything without the cooperation of the people.

But in southern Afghanistan, the people seem to be waiting for cooperation from the government.

A police commander in Kandahar, Mullah Gul, who has been fighting the Taliban for four years, described them as the black sheep of the family. "They are a problem," he said, "but it is not something that we cannot handle among ourselves."

While villagers may not support the government, most are sitting on the fence, and only a few are actively helping the Taliban, police officials say. Villagers claim they are caught in the middle and receive little government support.

"We take them very seriously," said Jamal Khan, 24, a farmer from Nawa district in Helmand Province said of the Taliban. "They come in the night to our village. We are not armed, and they ask for food and a place to stay. We cannot say anything. Then the government comes in the morning and says you gave a place to the Taliban. But what should we do?"

But there is evidence that at least some elders and others in the area, distrustful of a government that they say is corrupt and exploitative, are sympathetic to the Taliban. The elders from the Sangin district of Helmand, which American planes bombed recently, said they had joined the small number of Taliban fighters because the government officials preyed on them and robbed them.

"The Taliban are in the villages, among the people," said Ali Seraj, a descendent of Afghanistan's royal family and native of Kandahar, who contends that the government is losing the hearts and minds of the ordinary members of the public.

With its corrupt and often brutal local officials, the government has pushed Afghans into the arms of the Taliban, said Abdul Qadar Noorzai, head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission in Kandahar.

"These are uneducated people. They do not trust the government, they see no help coming to them, so the local people start doing things like the Taliban do," he said.

Truckloads of food burnt in Afghanistan
Dawn
KABUL, March 5: Attackers torched two trucks hired by the World Food Programme and destroyed 29 tons of food aid destined for 1,200 needy people in destitute Afghanistan, the UN body said on Sunday.

“Unidentified criminals” stopped the commercial trucks in insurgency-hit south-central Uruzgan province early Thursday and burned them, destroying wheat valued at 9,300 dollars, the programme said in a statement.

“The two drivers reported being threatened and beaten. The trucks were then burned and the food was destroyed,” it said.

The wheat was meant for about 1,200 “vulnerable people” working on a food-for-work project that involved the rehabilitation of a 40-kilometre stretch of road in the province.

“While the matter is still under investigation by government authorities, WFP regrets that valuable food could not reach hungry people in the region,” it said.

“The World Food Programme calls on all to allow humanitarian goods to reach the poorest people in Afghanistan.”

BOMB BLAST: A bomb planted on a motorcycle exploded as a provincial governor was passing in northern Afghanistan on Sunday and wounded three bystanders, the governor said, adding he may have been the target.

Provincial governor Munshi Abdul Majeed said the bomb exploded in Faizabad, the capital of northeastern Badaskhshan province, just a few metres from his convoy.

“We had just passed the area when the bomb went off,” he told AFP. “It seemed it was aimed at us.” He said three civilians were slightly injured and treated at the scene.

Majeed blamed “anti-government” elements for the attack, which was similar to others pinned on rebels loyal to the ousted Taliban government waging an insurgency focussed in the south and east of the war-torn country.—AFP

Where's Osama bin Laden?
By Peter Bergen The Washington Post Sunday, March 5, 2006
When I visited Osama bin Laden's former base in Tora Bora little more than a year ago, I climbed steep, scree-covered slopes to reach his Afghan house, perched high above the snow line and commanding views of verdant valleys several thousand feet below. The hamlet, known as Milawa, comprised several lookout posts strung out along ridgelines, a bakery, bin Laden's two-bedroom house and even a crude swimming pool, all of which had been destroyed by U.S. air strikes in December 2001. It is a place where bin Laden seems to have been very happy. He once told Abdel Bari Atwan, a Palestinian journalist, "I really enjoy my life when I'm here. I feel secure in this place."

It is also the place from which bin Laden staged one of history's great disappearing acts. His escape from those air strikes during the battle of Tora Bora has become part of al-Qaida's mythology: In an audiotape aired on Al-Jazeera in February 2003, bin Laden boasted: "We were only 300 fighters. We had already dug 100 trenches spread out in a space that didn't exceed one square mile ... American forces were bombing us by smart bombs that weigh thousands of pounds."

Shortly after the release of that tape, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was asked why the United States had not been able to find the terrorist leader. "It's very hard to find a single individual in the world. It's a big place," Rumsfeld explained, adding: "He's either alive — he's alive and injured badly — or he's dead. Who knows?"

Today, bin Laden remains stubbornly alive, as demonstrated by another audiotape released in recent weeks in which he offered a truce to the United States, should it withdraw its troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, and vowed never to be taken alive. Indeed, he has proved such a successful fugitive that it's worth asking some of the questions that underlie the continuing U.S. efforts to track down the al-Qaida leader: Does finding him really matter? What makes him so difficult to capture? And, if Osama bin Laden is finally located, would it be better to capture him or to kill him?

Why bother?

According to recent USA Today polls, seven out of eight Americans believe that it is important to capture or kill bin Laden, while 75 percent believe he is planning a significant attack on the United States. These numbers suggest that bringing bin Laden to justice would be a key psychological victory in the war on terrorism.

There is another reason that finding bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, is important. Bin Laden may no longer be calling people on a satellite phone to order attacks, but he remains in broad ideological and strategic control of al-Qaida around the world. An indicator of this is that two years ago, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the insurgent commander in Iraq, renamed his organization al-Qaida in the Land of the Two Rivers and publicly swore bayat, a religiously binding oath of allegiance, to bin Laden.

Moreover, the 35 video and audiotapes that bin Laden and al-Zawahri have released since 9/11 have reached tens of millions of people worldwide through television, newspapers and the Internet, making them among the most widely distributed political statements in history. Those tapes have not only had the effect of pumping up al-Qaida's base, but some have also carried specific instructions that jihadists have acted upon. In 2004, for example, bin Laden offered a truce to European countries willing to pull out of the coalition in Iraq. Almost exactly a year after his offer expired, explosions on London's public transportation system killed 56 people. On a subsequent videotape, al-Zawahri explained that the bombings came as a result of the British government ignoring bin Laden's offer.

Why is it so hard?

Rumsfeld has a point. It can be difficult to find any fugitive, even one who stands out as much as bin Laden (who is 6 foot 5). Think of Eric Rudolph, the object of one of the most intense manhunts in U.S. history, who remained on the run for five years after bombing Atlanta's Centennial Park during the 1996 Olympics. Or the alleged Bosnian-Serb war criminal Gen. Ratko Mladic, whose arrest was reported and then denied by Serbian authorities two weeks ago — more than a decade after he was indicted for genocide. Now imagine the challenge of capturing bin Laden, who is likely in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) on Afghanistan's border — an area of 30,000 dauntingly inhospitable square miles.

The United States has had some success locating terrorists in Pakistan. Mir Aimal Kansi, who killed two CIA employees in 1993 outside the agency's Langley headquarters, was tracked down four years later in the obscure town of Dera Ismail Khan. His capture was the result of a carefully cultivated network of informants and the payment of a substantial reward to the person who dropped a dime on Kansi.

But those in bin Laden's immediate circle do not seem to be tempted by the promise of rewards. There were no takers for the $5 million bounty the State Department put on his head following the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa. And there seem to be no takers now for the payout, which has risen to $27 million. (Throw in al-Zawahri, and the total reaches $52 million.)

What's more, bin Laden seems to have long been preparing for life on the run, adopting a lifestyle of monk-like detachment from material comforts. One Palestinian journalist who interviewed him in Afghanistan in 1996 recalls that dinner for bin Laden and some of his inner circle consisted of salty cheese, a potato, five or six fried eggs and bread caked with sand. Noman Benotman, a Libyan who once fought with al-Qaida, told me that bin Laden used to instruct his followers, "You should learn to sacrifice everything from modern life like electricity, air conditioning, refrigerators, gasoline. If you are living the luxury life, it's very hard to evacuate and go to the mountains to fight."

Where exactly is he?

There doesn't seem to be much intelligence about bin Laden's exact whereabouts. The conventional wisdom is that he is somewhere in the tribal belt along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, but it is clear from the most recent videotapes of bin Laden and al-Zawahri that they are not living in caves. Both men's clothes are clean and well-pressed, and the tapes that they have released are well-shot productions suggesting access either to electrical outlets or generators to run lights.

Their statements have also been notably well-informed about what is going on around the world. In his most recent videotape, bin Laden made a reference to the scene in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" where President Bush continued to read a story about a goat to a kindergarten class after he had been informed that passenger jets had crashed into the World Trade Center.

Comments like that suggest that if bin Laden and al-Zawahri are indeed in the tribal areas, they are in a compound either in, or near, one of the larger towns with access to modern amenities.

One U.S. military official familiar with the hunt told me he believes bin Laden "has been hunkered down in one place for a long time," making it harder to track him, whereas al-Zawahri is "more operational and is moving more." That may explain the January U.S. air strike aimed at killing Zawahiri in the village of Damadola, on Pakistan's Afghan border. It resulted in the death of five alleged terrorists, but about two weeks later al-Zawahri released a videotape thumbing his nose at President Bush.

How to go about it?

Probably not by signals intelligence generated from phone calls. Bin Laden had been careful not to use satellite or cellphones since long before the 9/11 attacks. According to his media adviser, Khalid al-Fawaz, whom I met in London in 1997, bin Laden had already learned to avoid electronic communications. Bin Laden has released only one tape in the past 14 months, possibly because al-Qaida leaders are aware that every time they do so, they open themselves to detection as the chain of custody of these tapes is the one sure way of finding them.

One possible vulnerability is bin Laden's immediate family, with whom he may remain in contact. Three of bin Laden's wives, along with a dozen or so children, chose to remain with him when he adopted the jihadist life. After the fall of the Taliban, they all disappeared. My hunch is that they are under the protection of Jalaluddin Haqqani, a formidable Taliban commander who has known bin Laden since the 1980s. Haqqani's forces are spread from Khost in eastern Afghanistan to Waziristan in western Pakistan, sites of some of the most intense recent fighting.

Are we getting the help we need?

Pakistanis certainly feel that they have done more than their share. Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's military dictator, has survived at least two assassination attempts engineered by al-Qaida and its affiliates in the past two years; hundreds of his security and army personnel have been killed, and Pakistani law enforcement has participated in the arrest of half a dozen key al-Qaida operatives. But the continuing presence of its leaders in Pakistan indicates that al-Qaida has found a congenial place to relocate itself, close to its former bases in Afghanistan.

Bin Laden has long enjoyed popularity among Pakistanis. In 2004 a Pew poll found al-Qaida's leader had a 65 percent favorability rating. However, in a poll released in mid-December by ACNeilsen Pakistan, the number of Pakistanis expressing a positive view of bin Laden had fallen to 33 percent. This comes at the same time that Pakistanis are expressing more favorable views of the United States — 46 percent — as a result of American relief efforts following October's devastating earthquake.

Perhaps these more-positive attitudes about the United States provide an opening that President Bush can exploit on his trip to Pakistan to advocate for some kind of role for U.S. forces on the ground in the tribal areas. Right now the key weakness in the U.S. hunt for bin Laden is that its soldiers are not allowed to operate openly on Pakistani territory. Granting such a request would entail political risks for Musharraf, who is widely seen as a stooge of the Bush administration (and often referred to as Busharraf).

Dead or alive?

Making bin Laden a martyr would not serve our interests. Instead, he should be subjected to the same treatment that Saddam Hussein suffered when he was captured — checked for head lice and publicly humiliated on camera. Bin Laden is now a mythic personality, and the best way to revert him to the status of an ordinary human being is to treat him like one. (One U.S. official told me, though, that if al-Qaida's leader were captured, it would likely produce a significant backlash — Americans being taken hostage with the aim of freeing him.)

It is, however, unlikely that he will be captured. Last year, his former bodyguard, Abu Jandal, told the al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, "Sheikh Osama gave me a pistol. The pistol had only two bullets, for me to kill Sheikh Osama with in case we were surrounded or he was about to fall into the enemy's hands so that he would not be caught alive."

Of course, bin Laden may make a mistake that reveals his location and makes him vulnerable to American Predator drones. If the United States felt it had intelligence about bin Laden's location, the pressure to launch a missile strike immediately would be intense, despite the risk of his ensuing martyrdom and a rash of anti-American attacks.

As bin Laden himself put it to Jandal, if he were killed, "his blood would become a beacon that arouses the zeal and determination of his followers." The man who once enjoyed a quiet rural life in the mountains of Tora Bora aims in death to ascend into the pantheon of Islamic heroes — a Saladin for the 21st century "martyred" by those he calls "the Crusaders."

UN worries over worsening Afghan security
KABUL, March 6, 2006 (AFP) - The UN mission in Afghanistan said Monday it was worried about deteriorating security in the country's insurgency-hit south, with increasing violence hampering sorely needed reconstruction.

"We are concerned," spokesman Adrian Edwards said when asked about a string of attacks over the winter, a season which in previous years has seen a decrease in violence linked to Taliban rebels, other militants and criminals.

"This does seem to be an increasing trend," Edwards said, citing 12 suicide attacks so far this year.

Such attacks were rare in conflict-plagued Afghanistan until late September, marking an apparent "Iraqification" of the insurgency launched by the Taliban after it was removed from government in a US-led invasion in late 2001.

"Overall there seems to be a different threat, more sophisticated with IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and suicide attacks. Some incidents are related to insurgency or terrorism, others to organised crime," Edwards said.

Destitute Afghanistan's efforts to rebuild after 25 years of war has been hobbled by the insurgency, which has included attacks on foreign and Afghan aid workers.

Last week attackers destroyed 29 tonnes of wheat from the World Food Programme in central Uruzgan province.

"Without doubt, the job of reconstruction and development is becoming more difficult in this environment," Edwards said.

Security was a key component of the Afghan Compact, a blueprint for Afghanistan's development adopted by the country's international partners in London last month, and "we need to work hand in hand to address the problem", he said.

Violence, much of it blamed on the insurgency, has claimed more and more lives in Afghanistan every year since the Taliban were toppled for refusing to hand over Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Last year about 1,600 people were killed, many of them militants, and around 150 people have already died this year.

Why Al Qaeda Is At Home In Pakistan
Terror Organization Believed to Be Drawing Less From Arabs, More From South Asia
ABC News -U.S.A Analysis by ALEXIS DEBAT
March 3, 2006 -- The Secret Service is not the only agency losing sleep over President Bush's trip to Pakistan. In many ways, the security challenges of the trip pale in comparison to the many riddles and incongruities that other parts of the foreign policy bureaucracy have been trying to overcome regarding this trip.

First and foremost among the administration's preoccupations is to fully understand the nature and structure of the terror threat in Pakistan. The bombing Thursday in Karachi illustrates a fundamental and irreversible mutation in the nature of al Qaeda. Although it is still too early to formally identify the perpetrators, and — as in the London bombings — we may never fully uncover the attack's trail back to Osama bin Laden or his lieutenants, it is safe to assume that the attack is the product of a phenomenon best described as the "Pakistanization" of al Qaeda.

While it was created in Pakistan in 1988, and with important input from several Pakistani clerics and veterans of the jihad against the Soviets, al Qaeda remained for many years essentially an Arab organization, drawing mostly on Ayman al Zawahri's Egyptian terrorist networks and bin Laden's Saudi and Yemeni recruits.

Shortly after the Taliban, with the help of around 6,000 Pakistani fighters, secured control over Afghanistan, bin Laden decided to move al Qaeda's headquarters back to Afghanistan and establish training camps for its volunteers recruited all around the world.

But under the precarious "deal" that kept the Saudi under the protection of the Pakistani-sponsored Taliban in Afghanistan, al Qaeda also had to provide military training and ideological indoctrination to Pakistani Sunni militants fighting — sometimes directly on behalf of their government — for a wide variety of nationalist and religious causes, including the independence of Kashmir and the establishment of a strictly Sunni theocracy in Pakistan.

The 'Rolodex of Jihad'

According to Pakistani intelligence sources, thousands of members of such violent militant groups as Lashkar e Taiba, Lashkar e Jhangvi, Jaish Muhammad, Harakat ul Mujahideen, and Hakarat ul Ansar (to name only a few) were sent to the 22 training camps set up by al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan in the late 1990s. Some were from mainstream political parties, such as Jamaat e Islami or Jamaat ul Ansar.

1998, most of these jihadi groups had relocated the bulk of their force in or around al Qaeda's training camps, where they soon became trainers. These volunteers would serve as the military backbone of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and would only venture out to Pakistan to conduct guerrilla operations in Kashmir or attacks on the Shiite community, which make up around 17 percent of the population of Pakistan.

These militants would also conduct "joint operations" with al Qaeda, such as the high-profile assassination attempt on Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in 1998.

The chief liaison between al Qaeda and this community of Pakistani militants, according to Pakistani military sources, was a 25-year-old Harakat ul Ansar militant named Amjad Farooqi, who, along with his young deputy Matiur Rehman, compiled a massive log listing the name, affiliation, skills set and contact information of every Pakistani militant trained with al Qaeda in Afghanistan. This "Rolodex of Jihad," as it is sometimes referred to in the Western intelligence community, was to serve as a database for recruiting volunteers for future terrorist operations in South Asia and the West.

After its uncomfortable retreat in Pakistan in late 2001, al Qaeda was forced to rely on this vast community of Pakistani militants for its survival and the continuity of its activities. With the help of millions of dollars of bin Laden's money, and in close cooperation with al Qaeda's operations chief — and 9/11 mastermind — Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (also a Pakistani), the two "archivists" of the al Qaeda-Pakistani nexus, Amjad Farooqi and Matiur Rehman, drew heavily on their "directory" to lay out an extensive and clandestine logistical infrastructure for al Qaeda's senior leadership on the run in Pakistan, as well as conduct several "joint operations" such as the assassination of American journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002.

With the help of these militants, whose organizations were officially "banned" (but never seriously dismantled) by the Pakistani government in 2001 and 2002, such high-profile targets of the American-Pakistani "war on terror" as Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi Binalshibh and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (all involved in the planning of 9/11) were able to navigate clandestinely throughout Pakistan's urban areas for several months before being arrested (always as the result of an American intelligence operation).

According to Pakistani military and civilian sources, Abu Zubaydah was picked up in March 2002 in Faisalabad in the villa of a local militant of the Pakistani militant group Laskhar e Taiba. Ramzi Binalshibh, who helped coordinate the 9/11 hijackings, was arrested in Karachi several months later, in September 2002, in the house of a Jaish Mohammed militant. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was arrested in March 2003 a few hundred yards from where Bush will land in Rawalpindi, in the house of a retired officer of Pakistan's intelligence service and local official of Jamaat e Islami, Pakistan's main Islamic party, which also had developed deep ties to al Qaeda in Afghanistan in the late 1990s.

Shortly before his arrest, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed laid out with Amjad Farooqi a broad and ambitious plan to "merge" al Qaeda with the Pakistani jihadi "grid," which had essentially broken into hundreds of small cells of no more than 20 operatives, making it extremely difficult for the Pakistani security services to identify its many connections. This fundamental overhaul was designed to provide al Qaeda both with new operational capabilities as well as with a broader, stealthier, and more secure logistical and financial base in Pakistan. After Mohammed's arrest in March 2003, this fundamental task of rebuilding al Qaeda into a largely Pakistani operation was left to his deputy, Abu Faraj al Libbi, in close coordination with Farooqi and Rehman.

The War on Terror Starts in Washington

This cooperation did not take long to bear fruit. In late 2003, Farooqi and Rehman provided the "muscle" for several l Qaeda operations, including the two consecutive assassination attempts on President Pervez Musharraf in December 2003 as well as the bombing of Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz's convoy in July 2004, all of which, according to Pakistani intelligence sources, were ordered by Ayman al Zawahri and planned by Abu Faraj al Libbi. This "nexus" between al Qaeda and the Pakistani militants community also emerged as a major focus of interest in the investigation conducted by the CIA and its British counterpart MI6 both into the international connections of al Qaeda's "computer expert" Mohammed Noor Khan (arrested in Lahore in July 2004), as well as the Pakistani connection to the July 7, 2005, London bombings, which has yet to reach definitive conclusions.

When Amjad Farooqi was gunned down in a shootout with the police in Karachi in September 2004, his deputy, Matiur Rehman, inherited his boss's "Rolodex of Jihad" as well as his ever closer links with al Qaeda. Now teamed up with Al Libbi's third in command Abu Suleiman, according to Pakistani military and civilian sources, Matiur Rehman is now Pakistan's "most wanted" with a price tag of 10 million Rupees ($166,000). As reported by ABC News' Brian Ross on March 1, he is believed to be shuttling between Karachi, where he draws most of his support, and the tribal areas, where al Qaeda's senior leadership is still suspected to be hiding.

While it is too early to conclude that he had anything to do with today's Karachi bombings, Pakistani intelligence sources indicate that Matiur Rehman is actively involved in the planning and execution of terrorist attacks against the United States.

The texture and extent of this threat present intricate challenges for Bush, who will have to pressure the Musharraf while giving him guarantees that the United States will remain engaged in Pakistan over the long term, regardless of both the future of democracy and the outcome of the war on terror there. There is no doubt that the Pakistani government is keeping the terrorist threat alive on its territory to secure from the United States government the guarantee of a long-term relationship not unlike the one that has been so easily offered to India. Bush will have little choice but to deal with that diplomatic blackmail. But giving Pakistan what it wants will involve some very tough decisions on the part of the president, his advisers and — most important — his few remaining supporters on Capitol Hill. As usual, the war on terror starts in Washington.

Five former commanders set to surrender arms
Pajhwok Report
KABUL, Mar 5 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Five former commanders are set to surrender their weapons to Disbandment of Illegal Armed Groups (DIAG) teams in Ghazni and Badakhshan provinces, the Disarmament and Reintegration Commission's Joint Secretariat announced here on Sunday

On Monday, four former jihadi commanders from Ghazni - Mir Ahmad, Mohammad Musa, Ramazan and Niamatullah - will hand over 600 light and heavy arms to the DIAG weapons collection team. A ceremony marking the weapons surrender will take place at 11am at the governors residence in Ghazni City.

A press statement issued here said the arms would be transferred to the Pul-i-Charkhi central weapons collection point, where they would be placed under the surveillance of the Afghan National Army (ANA). The arms will either be used by the Afghan security forces or destroyed, if found unserviceable.

By voluntarily surrendering their weapons, the commanders are not only complying with Afghanistan's Gun Law regulating the possession of weapons, but also actively supporting the DIAG programme - a process which is intended to consolidate peace, rule of law and prosperity.

On Tuesday, former commander of the 29th division of the Afghan Military Force in Badakhshan Sardar Mohammad will turn in hundreds of weapons to the DIAG team at a ceremony to be held at 10am at the Baharak district governors residence.

The DIAG process was launched on June 11, 2005 when officially announced by Vice President Khalili. So far, 17,900 weapons as well as 26,109 pieces of boxed and 80,400 pieces of unboxed ammunition have been handed over to the government.