Afghanistan News November 20, 2006

November 20, 2006

Blair vows commitment to Afghanistan
By DAVID STRINGER, Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan - British Prime Minister Tony Blair pledged his nation's commitment in Afghanistan "for as long as it takes," telling British soldiers fighting the resurgent Taliban that success would help establish global security.

Blair told a joint news conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the presidential palace in Kabul that British and NATO forces would likely remain in Afghanistan for years to come to prevent the Taliban's return to power.

"We came to Afghanistan because the sickness and the evil that was here came to us," Blair said, referring to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. "I don't believe there is an alternative but to fight this and to fight it for as long as it takes."

On his first trip to Afghanistan since 2002, Blair met with Karzai after visiting hundreds of troops at Britain's main southern base, Camp Bastion, in the restive southern Helmand province — a former Taliban stronghold and hub of the country's heroin trade.

"Here in this extraordinary desert is where the future of world security in the early 21st century is going to be played out," Blair said.

Britain has around 6,000 soldiers deployed in the country.

Blair's arrival followed a two-day visit to Pakistan, where he and Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf agreed to a package of joint ventures to tackle extremism and to aid war-ravaged Afghanistan.

Musharraf said neighboring Afghanistan needed a huge influx of reconstruction aid, similar to the U.S. Marshall Plan that helped rebuild Europe after World War II.

A total of 41 British soldiers have died in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 — including 36 deaths since Britain's deployment to Helmand province in July as part of the NATO mission to subdue insurgents and allow the expansion of reconstruction.

"This is a fight of a different kind from anything we have faced as a country, certainly in the postwar years," Blair said in Helmand. "It is not the same as two major powers fighting each other. It's not like World War I or World War II."

After talking with Blair, Maj. Andy Plewes said his company of commandos — newly arrived on a six-month tour — were eager to begin ousting insurgents and building relations with local community leaders.

"They've trained back in Britain for it and are ready to get out into the villages, sit down for talks with tribal leaders and drink endless cups of green tea," Plewes said.

British Defense Secretary Des Browne said last month that operations in Afghanistan had cost Britain $1.6 billion since 2001.

Aid for the region has included a program of offering loans worth around $190 apiece to farmers and rural workers, aimed at encouraging them to establish new businesses.

However, hopes of denting Afghanistan's narcotics trade were undermined by a bumper opium harvest this past season — enough to make 610 tons of heroin, more than the world's addicts consume in a year.

Officials have said next year's crop — which is already planted across swaths of southern Afghanistan — is likely to be about the same size.

Afghan desert key to world security, says Blair
By Sophie Walker
CAMP BASTION, Afghanistan (Reuters) - The security of the world will be decided on the desert battlefields of        Afghanistan, British Prime Minister        Tony Blair told his troops on the frontline of an increasingly bloody war on Monday.

"Here, in this extraordinary desert, is where the future of world security in the early 21st century is going to be played out," Blair said in remarks barred from publication until he flew out of Camp Bastion in Helmand province.

Afghanistan's western allies say the Taliban is on the run, despite a resurgence, but Blair's long-planned visit has been kept in strict hour-by-hour secrecy due to security fears.

"You may not know this, but people back home are very proud of what you do, regardless what they think of political leaders," he told troops in the desert province that is a Taliban stronghold and the opium capital of the world's main producer.

Fighting in Afghanistan this year is the bloodiest since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban's hardline government exactly five years ago. The British troops in Helmand and other        NATO troops in the south have been at the forefront of the combat.

And with the rise in fighting and a redeployment to the Taliban's southern heartland, British casualty rates here are now higher than those in        Iraq, with 36 killed since June.

British military chiefs say their troops face the bloodiest fighting since the Korean War and are six times more likely to die in Afghanistan than in Iraq.

"We want to be here. We want to be doing our job," sergeant Chris Hunter, 31, from Swansea, told Blair at Camp Bastion in the chill morning air of an Afghan winter.

"It's a point that's lost back home."

KARZAI TALKS
Blair also signed a drone reconnaissance plane at the base.

"I hope it doesn't get shot down, sir," joked one soldier.

Blair met President Hamid Karzai in Kabul at the presidential palace before flying back to Pakistan, where he said Kabul's allies must stick by it for the long term.

"We've got the same alternatives we had five years ago," he told a joint news conference. "You either stick with it 'til the job is done or you don't and you leave it to another generation to sort out. And I'm not prepared to do that.

"But now is the right time to bring into sharp focus the need to stay with Afghanistan in its move towards progress and redevelopment, to relive the vision that brought us here and should keep us here 'til the job is done."

Blair flew in from Islamabad, where he had met President Pervez Musharraf to discuss how to beat the Taliban, pool intelligence and quell militancy in Pakistani religious schools.

The Taliban's resurgence also comes amid mounting debate over Western policy in Iraq and NATO warnings that it cannot defeat the insurgents on the battlefield.

On Friday, Blair agreed with an Al Jazeera television interviewer's contention that the Western intervention in Iraq had been a disaster -- although he went on to point the finger at outside forces fomenting sectarian violence, and his office later said he had not meant to endorse the questioner's view.

Senior Afghan officials also privately criticize Britain, the United States and other allies for not putting more pressure on Pakistan to stop the Taliban and other militants sheltering and training in its lawless borderlands.

Pakistan says it is doing everything it can to stop the militants, as it does in the face of similar Indian criticism over Kashmiri separatists operating from Pakistani territory.

But senior Afghan intelligence officials say they have given Washington and London clear evidence of continued Pakistani government support of the Taliban, but have been ignored.

Afghan army to strike Taliban in winter
By JIM KRANE, Associated Press Writer Sun Nov 19, 1:57 PM ET
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - The U.S.-backed Afghan army will step up counter-Taliban offensives this winter, which could see heavy fighting during a period traditionally used by Afghan fighters for rest and resupply, a U.S. general said here Sunday.

U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Douglas Pritt, who oversees the U.S.-led effort to train the Afghan military, said Afghan forces have tripled the number of forward bases to more than 60 and plan to spend the winter harassing Taliban and gathering intelligence from combat outposts deep inside rebel strongholds.

"They're much better equipped for winter operations than the Taliban. I'm hoping for a lot of snow this winter," Pritt said during a visit to The Associated Press bureau in Dubai.

Pritt said most Afghan troops that have emerged from training still cannot operate independently, but he noted that five battalions of Afghan National Army troops, numbering 300 to 600 soldiers each, were nearly ready to mount offensives on their own.

But even those top battalions will continue to operate in tandem with U.S. and NATO troops, he said.

Afghanistan's winters normally bring months of rain and snow, turning dusty roads into impassable muck and rendering most warfare impossible. The country has traditionally seen winter breaks in its decades of conflict, where fighters return home to families or hunker down on bases until fighting resumes in spring.

Snowfall is already hampering Taliban supply lines, making it tougher for the rebels to resupply, Pritt said. The Afghan National Army, backed by U.S. and NATO airlifts, are less restricted by cold and mud.

Afghan troops are being readied for "extended patrols" in the combat zones of the east and south that border Pakistan.

"We want to be in the right places," he said. "If the Taliban is trying to rearm, refit and wait out the winter, then we'll know they're there."

The Afghan National Army remains hamstrung by desertion rates of around 15 percent, Pritt said, little different from its rate in May. The previous year, the desertion rate peaked above 25 percent, according to U.S. military figures.

Afghan soldiers recently received a raise for their tiny salaries, from $70 to $100 a month, Pritt said, a decision that followed the revelation that AWOL soldiers could earn $70 a month as day laborers without facing combat.

The general said his goal was to bring the desertion rate below 10 percent, a figure that has already been reached in one Afghan corps.

U.S. and Afghan officials have said soldiers abscond for several reasons, including a reluctance to fight alongside foreigners against countrymen and a need to bring money to families in remote villages or help at harvest time.

The Afghan army's screening process has blocked the type of insurgent infiltrators that have hampered the Iraqi military. Pritt said only three Taliban have thus far been found in the ranks.

"They were trying to get information that was inappropriate for their job descriptions," he said.

The American force training Afghan troops — chiefly made up of U.S. Army National Guardsmen — is expected to rise from 2,900 now to around 3,600 by April, to comply with an Afghan government directive to increase recruiting to 2,000 Afghan soldiers per month, Pritt said.

Overall, he said 5,200 foreign trainers would be working with the Afghan army, which the government wants to increase from its current 35,000 troops to 50,000 or perhaps 70,000.

"We believe this is the main effort in Afghanistan," Pritt said.

‘Recent US political changes won’t affect Afghan army plans’
By Afkar Abdullah 20 November 2006 Khaleej Times Online
DUBAI — The recent political developments in the US with Democrats capturing the Congress and promising to make changes in the American foreign policy would not affect the plans of the US coalition in Afghanistan as its main focus is on building the Afghan National Army (ANA), said Brigadier General Douglas A Pritt, Task Force Commander of the Combined Joint Task Force Phoenix in Afghanistan.

Brigadier Pritt told Khaleej Times that there is no deadline for ending coalition operations in Afghanistan.

The coalition and the Afghan government are trying to create a national army with representations from all the ethnic groups, he said. “Currently, the security situation in Afghanistan is improving as the coalition is working closely with Afghan nationals to maintain safety.”

“Our goal is to make the ANA a professional army capable of providing a safe and secure environment and defeat terrorism within the borders of Afghanistan. That mission has recently been expanded to include training and supporting selected elements of the Afghan Police organisations in certain areas of the country. Our mission includes everything, from supervising the training of new soldiers to coordinating the operations of the newly established Afghan National War College,” he said.

Replying to a question about the ANA, the police force and the government ‘s capabilities to run the country without the support of the US coalition, Brig Pritt said the ANA will definitely be able to provide professional security services and ensure a safe environment in the country.

Regarding the coalition’s achievements in Afghanistan, he said the alliance has been successful in such areas as ensuring security in various parts of the country by working closely with the ANA and the police forces.

“The ANA is now involved in the rebuilding process and supporting humanitarian services and sharing professional partnership with the US coalition forces in order to improve the quality of life for citizens.”

Mounting violence hampers Afghan rebuilding: finance minister
Mon Nov 20, 1:47 AM ET
NEW DELHI (AFP) - Mounting violence has made rebuilding in insurgency-hit Afghanistan costly and delayed many projects, an Afghan minister said in an appeal for help to quell the menace.

"The resurgence of violence in Afghanistan certainly has a negative impact on development in Afghanistan," the country's finance minister, Anwarul Haq Ahadi, told reporters in New Delhi on Sunday at a regional conference on rebuilding the troubled nation.

"We would rather have development in an environment free of violence ... that will make development less costly for us," Ahadi said at the end of the second Regional Economic Cooperation Conference on Afghanistan.

The comments come amidst tension between Afghanistan and Pakistan over a resurgence of attacks by Taliban insurgents, who were ousted from power by a US-led invasion in 2001 for sheltering Al-Qaeda leaders responsible for the September 11 attacks on the US that year.

Kabul has accused Islamabad of not doing enough to stop Taliban fighters using neighbouring Pakistan as a sanctuary.

Violence in Afghanistan linked to a Taliban-led insurgency that has killed 3,700 people this year, four times more than in 2005, had diverted resources from reconstruction and development, a monitoring board of the regional cooperation group said.

The group noted that "peace and economic stability in the region is dependent in large measure on the progress in stabilising the security situation in southern Afghanistan."

Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee told reporters that the New Delhi conference was aimed at making "countries in the neighbourhood of Afghanistan ... aware of the stake they have in its prosperity and to provide them the opportunity."

Afghanistan and India have tried to expand trade links following the overthrow of the Taliban, but have been stymied because Pakistan has not granted New Delhi transit rights.

The Delhi conference was attended by representatives of Afghanistan's neighbours, including India and Pakistan. Representatives from Britain, Canada, Russia, the United States, the United Nations and the World Bank, among others, also attended.

Won't bow to Taliban, will continue work in Afghanistan: India
New Delhi, Nov. 19 (PTI): Contending that the Taliban wanted it to withdraw from developmental works in Afghanistan, India today said it would "not succumb to pressures" of such groups and appropriate steps had been taken to ensure security of Indians engaged in reconstruction work there.

Afghan government also said proper security had been arranged for Indians and all other aid workers in the face of designs of terrorists to attack them to prevent development.

"The objective of these people (Taliban) is to see that India withdraws from developmental activities in Afghanistan. (But) we refuse to succumb to these pressures from Taliban," External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said at a joint press conference with Afghan Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta here.

He was asked about threats faced by Indians engaged in reconstruction work in Afghanistan. Two Indians -- an engineer working on a telecom project and a BRO driver working on a road project -- have already been killed after their abduction suspectedly by the Taliban.

"Our commitment to development of Afghanistan is firm," Mukherjee said, adding paramilitary forces had been provided to Indians engaged in developmental works in that country and security was being provided to them in cooperation with Afghan authorities.

Asked whether India would send its army for peace-keeping in Afghanistan, Mukherjee said no such request had been received and it was neither feasible in the near future.

Wounded Taliban treated in Pakistan
Sunday Times Tim Albone, Quetta
PAKISTAN is allowing Taliban fighters wounded in battles with British and other Nato forces in Afghanistan to be treated at safe houses.

The Sunday Times found Taliban commanders and their fighters recuperating in the city of Quetta last week and moving freely around parts of the city. In a white-walled compound in the northern suburb of Pashtunabad, more than 30 Taliban were recovering from the bloodiest fighting in Afghanistan since their regime was ousted five years ago.

Dressed in neatly pressed robes with the black turbans and kohl-rimmed eyes typical of the Taliban, they lounged on cushions, sipping green tea and sucking at boiled sweets while laughing at Nato reports that they have sustained heavy casualties.

Among the most defiant was a young commander who had been shot in the calf last month while fighting British troops in Gereshk, a town in the Afghan province of Helmand, and who had returned to Quetta to be treated. “Fighting the British is as easy as eating a loaf of bread from my hand,” he said in a soft voice. “Fighting the British is much easier than the Americans. They have no faith.”

The proof that Taliban are using Quetta for rest and recuperation — if not also for training as widely suspected — is embarrassing for President Pervez Musharraf, who is due to receive Tony Blair, the prime minister, today. Musharraf has long denied claims from the Afghan government that his military intelligence is providing support and safe havens for the Taliban.

He was outraged when Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, went to Islamabad, the Pakistan capital, last February and presented him with a list of names, addresses and telephone numbers in Quetta of Taliban leaders, including Mullah Omar, the head of the movement. Dismissing this as “nonsense”, Musharraf accused Karzai of being “totally oblivious of what is happening in his own country”.

In New York in September he told the Council on Foreign Relations that Omar had not been in Pakistan since 1995 and was holed up in the Afghan city of Kandahar. “They (the Afghans) have taken a very, very easy course: the scapegoating of Pakistan,” he again insisted in a television interview last week.

Drawn by the British, the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan is more than 1,400 miles of largely mountainous terrain that is hard to monitor, largely lying in lawless tribal areas. These border areas were used as bases by the mujaheddin in their fight against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, and many of the camps and ammunition stores remain.

But there is growing unease in both Washington and Whitehall about how much of the problem is logistical and whose side Pakistan is on. Not a single known Taliban has been arrested in Pakistan apart from a spokesman, Latifullah Hakimi. That came only after British intelligence intercepted his telephone call from Peshawar ordering the execution of a British engineer.

British and American military commanders in Afghanistan are fed up with their men being killed by fighters who slip back across the border where they cannot be followed. General David Richards, the British commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, flew to Islamabad last month to raise the issue with Musharraf, though he insisted his aim was “co-operation, not confrontation”.

The Foreign Office confirmed that concerns about Pakistan’s position were among the main reasons for Blair’s trip to Islamabad — his third since the September 11 attacks turned Musharraf from a pariah into a key ally.

“We fully understand the tightrope that General Musharraf is walking between extremists and helping the West,” a spokesman said. “We know he is fighting a number of insurgencies within his own borders. But he too has said he is concerned about growing Talibanisation in his own country and our message is we want to help.”

The official expressed frustration at the failure of the Afghan government to produce concrete evidence of Pakistan’s alleged training of the Taliban. “They constantly tell us of videos but we never actually get them.”

Musharraf’s insistence that his country is not a safe haven was undermined, however, by what The Sunday Times saw in an area to which journalists are often denied access.

In the safe house in Quetta, the Taliban fighters seemed relaxed, some reading the Koran, others laughing and discussing recent battles. Several regional commanders were present and confirmed they used Quetta to relax and study out of reach of Nato. Although the men said they were regularly “shaken down” by the police, a bribe of as little as £2 usually resolved the issue.

“We find the fighting fun,” said one, a 38-year-old man from Zabul who commands forces in southeastern Afghanistan. “Jihad against the infidels is more important than studying books. A weak man should fight for three months of the year and study the rest. A strong man should fight for six months.”

Another, who introduced himself by his nom de guerre Mullah Qahramaan (Pashto for hero), said: “When I hear the shout of Allahu Akbar (God is the greatest) at the start of battle, I can’t help myself — I just run towards the enemy.” He had just returned to Quetta, he said, after six months of fighting in Panjwayi where in September Nato launched its biggest offensive against the Taliban.

Nato claims as many as 1,500 Taliban fighters were killed but this has been disputed by the Taliban. On a visit to the battlefield during its final days, no mass graves or bodies were seen.

“If they (Nato) killed 500 Taliban, they should show a grave for only 50 Taliban and I will believe this figure,” said the commander. “But nobody has seen even one grave. We only lost 32 fighters, although they killed a lot of civilians.”

Many of the fighters were vitriolic about the British. “We would speak with the British over the radio,” said Mullah Samat, a young man with bloodshot eyes and a white turban who said he had been fighting in the town of Musa Qala in northern Helmand where British troops were pinned down in a platoon house. “We would say, ‘Death to the British, death to the infidels,’ and they would then say, ‘Death to the Taliban,’ back to us.”

He claimed he was from a group of 300 fighters and insisted that only 10% were hardcore Taliban, educated in madrasahs in Pakistan, while the rest were villagers disillusioned with the Karzai government.

He denied foreigners were involved and claimed an Afghan businessman supported them by setting up a hospital to treat the fighters. “We are not fighting for money, we are fighting for faith and the future of our country,” he said.

“When we saw the British fighting, it was a big shame. They were hiding behind walls.” But he added: “I do feel bad, though, that we are killing the British. They are human and I am especially sad for their families . . . they are dying for no reason, just to occupy a country.”

Water protest

Foreign troops in Afghanistan are spending £30m a year on bottled water while Afghans face starvation this winter because of drought, writes Christina Lamb.

The World Food Programme (WFP) received only a third of the donations it requested this year to feed more than 3m Afghans whose crops have failed. A further 100,000 have been displaced by the fighting.

The WFP is seeking £16m in winter food aid, yet the Afghan government says coalition forces spend almost twice this much a year on importing water, when £500,000 would fund a local bottling plant.

Five years after 'victory', violence and corruption dog Afghanistan
By Kim Sengupta in Kabul The Independent News (UK) 20 November 2006
The paraphernalia of death were laid out on the table - shrapnel, detonators, bombers' manual, false identification cards. "Enough for four, five suicide attacks" said General Ali Shah Paktiawal of the Afghan police.

"We are not allowed to blame Pakistan directly of course. But the men we caught were from Pakistan, these things were bought there. Look, they have even kept receipts."

This was Kabul yesterday, the capital of a country from which Tony Blair famously promised "this time we will not walk away", a land now torn by violence and wide-scale corruption, the heroin supplier to the world despite millions of dollars spent on eradication.

Five years after the American-led invasion, the infrastructure still lies shattered, with accusations of international aid being squandered. Meanwhile, the rights of half the population, women, are being steadily clawed back under the burqa.

Afghanistan is also where Western forces, in large numbers, are fighting a war which George Bush and Mr Blair had declared won with the fall of the Taliban regime as they moved the "war on terror" to Iraq.

The Taliban are back with a vengeance now and there is little talk of victory. Nato troops have inflicted heavy casualties on the insurgents, but military commanders talk of reinforcements coming from across the Pakistani border.

The Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, has accused Pakistan of sheltering the bombers and its intelligence service, the ISI, of arming and training them. Mr Bush and Mr Blair have raised the claims with Pakistan's leader, General Pervez Musharraf, who vehemently denies them.

General Paktiawal was poisoned while in a government ministry four months ago, an example of the long reach of a ruthless enemy. He received emergency treatment abroad and is still on medication. He said: "Who did it, the Taliban, al-Qa'ida, the ISI, working together? I do not want to say. What I do know is that I will be surprised if they do not try to kill me again.

"You cannot end terrorism quickly, especially when there are outside forces involved," he added. "I accept we have big problems."

Syed Mahmood Gailani, a member of parliament from Ghazni, is grappling with some of these problems. He and fellow MPs have been asked to look into the construction of a failed dam and find out who was responsible.

Mr Gailani, 28, polled the third largest number of votes in the country as an independent candidate in the general election and is seen as one of Afghanistan's future leaders. "I am going to Ghazni City in an armed convoy because the road is so dangerous and this is meant to be one of the main roads in the country," he said. "I cannot go to any of the outlying areas. We also cannot go to the dam by road because of the Taliban. We need to fly there, and if a helicopter is not available the journey would be wasted.

"The government is warning many MPs in private not to go to their constituencies because they might get killed. So this is not exactly democracy working. Corruption is a huge problem and I am afraid people close to President Karzai are heavily involved. People are asking what has happened to the billions of dollars of aid money, given by the international community, which was supposed to have been spent in Afghanistan. There is no accountability.

"Take this dam for example, its cost is anything between $700,000 [£370,000] and $2m, there are no proper accounts. The NGO involved and the locals are blaming each other. The ones to suffer are the poor."

Hundreds of these poor queue outside one of the country's largest civilian hospitals, Sehateful, for treatment every day. India and Japan supply most of the medicine for a children's clinic and a group of volunteer Indian doctors is working there.

Amrullah, 29, a casual labourer, has brought his eight-year-old son, Khairulla, suffering from a heart condition, for treatment. "The doctors here are good people. But my son needs an operation and I don't think they can do that here.

"In other hospitals, they want bribes to give you treatment. I went to one where they could do the operation and they wanted $600. How will I get that kind of money? My son cannot go to school, he cannot walk, but there is nothing I can do. We had a lot of hope when the Taliban went but there is very little of that now."

Adult patients, turning up at a rate of a thousand a day, have to pay for treatment. Dr Nooral Haq Yousifzai, the acting director, said: "The government gives $1,500 for three months. That just lasts a few days. We look after the acute emergencies. For everyone else we give a shopping list and they have to buy the supplies from the bazaar if they want treatment.

"We also have a great shortage of nurses. We need 150 and there are 50 vacancies. That is because the NGOs are paying them salaries we cannot afford."

The paraphernalia of death were laid out on the table - shrapnel, detonators, bombers' manual, false identification cards. "Enough for four, five suicide attacks" said General Ali Shah Paktiawal of the Afghan police.

"We are not allowed to blame Pakistan directly of course. But the men we caught were from Pakistan, these things were bought there. Look, they have even kept receipts."

This was Kabul yesterday, the capital of a country from which Tony Blair famously promised "this time we will not walk away", a land now torn by violence and wide-scale corruption, the heroin supplier to the world despite millions of dollars spent on eradication.

Five years after the American-led invasion, the infrastructure still lies shattered, with accusations of international aid being squandered. Meanwhile, the rights of half the population, women, are being steadily clawed back under the burqa.

Afghanistan is also where Western forces, in large numbers, are fighting a war which George Bush and Mr Blair had declared won with the fall of the Taliban regime as they moved the "war on terror" to Iraq.

The Taliban are back with a vengeance now and there is little talk of victory. Nato troops have inflicted heavy casualties on the insurgents, but military commanders talk of reinforcements coming from across the Pakistani border.

The Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, has accused Pakistan of sheltering the bombers and its intelligence service, the ISI, of arming and training them. Mr Bush and Mr Blair have raised the claims with Pakistan's leader, General Pervez Musharraf, who vehemently denies them.

General Paktiawal was poisoned while in a government ministry four months ago, an example of the long reach of a ruthless enemy. He received emergency treatment abroad and is still on medication. He said: "Who did it, the Taliban, al-Qa'ida, the ISI, working together? I do not want to say. What I do know is that I will be surprised if they do not try to kill me again.

"You cannot end terrorism quickly, especially when there are outside forces involved," he added. "I accept we have big problems."

Syed Mahmood Gailani, a member of parliament from Ghazni, is grappling with some of these problems. He and fellow MPs have been asked to look into the construction of a failed dam and find out who was responsible.

Mr Gailani, 28, polled the third largest number of votes in the country as an independent candidate in the general election and is seen as one of Afghanistan's future leaders. "I am going to Ghazni City in an armed convoy because the road is so dangerous and this is meant to be one of the main roads in the country," he said. "I cannot go to any of the outlying areas. We also cannot go to the dam by road because of the Taliban. We need to fly there, and if a helicopter is not available the journey would be wasted.
"The government is warning many MPs in private not to go to their constituencies because they might get killed. So this is not exactly democracy working. Corruption is a huge problem and I am afraid people close to President Karzai are heavily involved. People are asking what has happened to the billions of dollars of aid money, given by the international community, which was supposed to have been spent in Afghanistan. There is no accountability.

"Take this dam for example, its cost is anything between $700,000 [£370,000] and $2m, there are no proper accounts. The NGO involved and the locals are blaming each other. The ones to suffer are the poor."

Hundreds of these poor queue outside one of the country's largest civilian hospitals, Sehateful, for treatment every day. India and Japan supply most of the medicine for a children's clinic and a group of volunteer Indian doctors is working there.

Amrullah, 29, a casual labourer, has brought his eight-year-old son, Khairulla, suffering from a heart condition, for treatment. "The doctors here are good people. But my son needs an operation and I don't think they can do that here.

"In other hospitals, they want bribes to give you treatment. I went to one where they could do the operation and they wanted $600. How will I get that kind of money? My son cannot go to school, he cannot walk, but there is nothing I can do. We had a lot of hope when the Taliban went but there is very little of that now."

Adult patients, turning up at a rate of a thousand a day, have to pay for treatment. Dr Nooral Haq Yousifzai, the acting director, said: "The government gives $1,500 for three months. That just lasts a few days. We look after the acute emergencies. For everyone else we give a shopping list and they have to buy the supplies from the bazaar if they want treatment.

"We also have a great shortage of nurses. We need 150 and there are 50 vacancies. That is because the NGOs are paying them salaries we cannot afford."

Explosives, documents found in Kabul
KABUL, Nov 18 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Police say they have recovered explosives and some documents from an old graveyard in the Qala-i-Zaman Khan locality of the central capital.

The explosives and papers were placed in a sack hidden in the cemetery, said crime branch chief of the Kabul police headquarters Alishah Paktiawal. The documents were containing instructions on bomb-making.

Paktiawal said there were some passports and a machine, used in filling explosives in suicide belts and waist coats. He said the bombs and other items were provided to terrorists by intelligence agencies of a foreign country.

Paktiawal said the passports bearing different names and were of different countries. However, this scribe discovered that most of the passports were of Pakistani citizens.
Makia Monir

Ready for talks sans clemency for Omar: Karzai
NEW DELHI, Nov 18 (Pajhwok Afghan News): President Hamid Karzai has said that genuine Afghan Taliban are welcome to their country but the people will not accept non-Afghan (Taliban).

Addressing a free discourse organised by leading Indian newspaper Hindustan Times, Karzai said they were ready for peace talks with all. More than 1,000 Indian journalists, writers and analysts attended the discourse on Afghanistan.

Asked whether he would invite Taliban self-styled Amir-ul-Momineen Mulla Omar to talks, Karzai said they were ready to hold peace talks with all. At the same time, he said clemency for Omar was not possible.

"For the sake of peace, we are willing to do anything," said the Afghan leader, but added that those who had committed crimes against the Afghan people in the past and were continuing to do so would have to face the courts.

President Karzai, who is presently in India to attend the regional economic cooperation conference on Afghanistan, said 'elements beyond the border' were responsible for violence and torching of schools in his country. He said one of the problems hindering Afghanistan's development was extremism.

Karzai also asked for bilateral cooperation between Afghanistan and India in culture and media sectors. He said mass media had made great progress in his country in the previous few years.

In this connection, he referred to the more than 300 daily newspapers, weeklies, fortnightly, monthly and quarterly magazines and mushrooming of private radio and TV channels in the country. Afghanistan could even vie with India in number of media outlets now, contended the president.
Ahmad Naim Qadiri

Jewellers, shopkeepers stage protest demo
GHAZNI CITY, Nov 18 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Scores of jewellers and shopkeepers on Saturday staged a demonstration in the southern Ghazni province to register their protest against the daylight robbery in the city.

The protestors demanded of the government to arrest the robbers, who also injured a jeweller on resistance.

Unidentified gunmen stopped jeweller Mohammad Azim in centre of Ghazni City on Thursday and robbed him of seven kilograms of gold after firing four shots, that left him injured.

In addition to owners of the 20 jewellery shops, retailers and kiosk owners also joined the protest demonstration and pressed the government for immediate arrest of the culprits.

Abdul Rahim, one of the protestors, told Pajhwok Afghan News they were suspicious about involvement of security agencies in the robbery since it took place close to a security post.

Head of the jewellers' union in the province Malim Abdul Razzaq said the government had failed to ensure security and provide justice to the people.

Ghulam Nabi, a shopkeeper and one of the protestors, said incidents of robberies, killings and burglaries were on the rise in the provincial capital and the people were feeling themselves and their properties unsafe.

Provincial security chief Wakil Kamyab rejected involvement of law-enforcement officials in the robbery and said they were investigating the incidents to arrest the culprits.
Sher Ahmad Haidar

Clinton speaks on Afghanistan, and Canada listens
NORMAN SPECTOR Globe and Mail, Canada
VICTORIA -- For an ex-president of the United States, Bill Clinton seems to be popping up an awful lot in our country these days, including here in British Columbia. Nor is he sparing smaller centres, such as Kelowna. While it's easy to be cynical toward the aging-rock-star whiff about his tour -- which, at $150,000 (U.S.) a speech, reportedly yields a not-too-shabby annual income of $7.5-million -- there's always value in hearing the wisdom and experience of a man twice democratically elected to the most powerful office in the world.

So popular is Mr. Clinton today that it's easy to forget he will go down in history as only the second U.S. president to have been impeached. Aside from the fact that he was not in the end convicted and removed from office, what's helped people forget the dismal end of his presidency is the deep unpopularity of his Republican successor.

It's Prime Minister Stephen Harper's misfortune that George W. Bush's unpopularity -- call it toxicity, if you will -- colours Canadians' perception of issues such as the softwood lumber agreement, not to speak of our mission in Afghanistan. You would have thought, therefore, that Mr. Harper -- frequently portrayed as a poodle of the U.S. President -- would have made more of Mr. Clinton's plea that Canada not leave Afghanistan before the job is done.

Mr. Clinton is a member of the Democratic Party, and his views may have come as a surprise to Canadians who conflate that war with the disastrous situation in Iraq, despite the fact that we are operating in Afghanistan under a United Nations mandate and as part of a NATO coalition. Nor, in contrast to the polemic over the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, has there been any serious dispute that Osama bin Laden was given safe harbour in Afghanistan by the Taliban, where he planned the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.

Mr. Clinton's position on Canadian involvement in Afghanistan stands in stark contrast to that of Jack Layton's New Democratic Party, which voted at its last convention to withdraw Canadian troops immediately. As the former U.S. president explained to his Canadian audiences, this would have the effect of returning the country to Taliban rule, not an appealing prospect for anyone interested in human rights. It's hard to imagine any successful politician in the U.S. taking Mr. Layton's position; notably, even left-wing Democrats, including the new Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, have argued for greater U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. Indeed, even on Iraq, the Democratic Party is not pressing for immediate withdrawal.

In part, the difference between Canadian New Democrats and U.S. Democrats is attributable to the responsibilities that come with being a superpower and having strategic interests in every region of the world. The other part, of course, is that the Democratic Party hopes to win the 2008 presidential election. Mr. Layton's NDP, on the other hand, has never been in office in Canada and there is no sign on the horizon that it ever will be. So he's free to take pretty much any position that pops into his mind without undergoing serious media scrutiny, including a position on Afghanistan that encourages Taliban attacks on our soldiers as the surest way to turn public opinion in Canada against the mission and precipitate a quick pullout.

At the provincial level, of course, the NDP is a vastly different party, especially in British Columbia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan where it regularly forms government, as was the case once in Ontario, to the great surprise of the man who became premier, Bob Rae. These days, Mr. Rae is running for the federal Liberal leadership, and to listen to him explain why he left the NDP is as good a summary as you'll find of the differences between Canada's New Democrats and U.S. Democrats.

Interestingly, Mr. Rae has the potential to reshuffle the deck of Canadian politics should he win the Liberal leadership. According to a Decima poll released on the weekend, fully two of every five respondents who voted NDP in the last election say they would consider voting Liberal with him as leader. If that scenario were to eventuate, Canada would be within shooting distance of restoring a two-party system outside Quebec, which is the way the parliamentary system of government was designed to work, and the way it works here in British Columbia.

Literary work of Durani, Shpon praised
JALALABAD, Nov 18 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Two-day seminar on life and literary work of the two renowned Pashto poets was started on Saturday in Jalalabad, capital of the eastern Nangarhar province.

The seminar was organised by a Writers and Journalists Union of Eastern Zone in a hall of the Tribal Affairs Department. First day of the seminar threw light on life and literary work of a well-known poet Sadudin Shpoon and tomorrow life and efforts of Darwish Durani would be highlighted.

Writers delivered their speeches regarding poetry and prose of Shpon. Governor of Kabul Haji Din Mohammad, Governor of Nangarhar Gul Agha Sherzai, members of the provincial council, senators, and some well-reputed writers from Peshawar also attended the seminar.

After playing national anthem, advisor to the Ministry of Culture and Youth Najibullah read out message of President Hamid Karzai. The message reads as: "In our culture such seminars and functions are valuable, but praising work of the living writers has no long history in this culture."

Karzai hailed this initiative of the Nangarhar writers and journalists that has organised seminar on work of living writers. Karzai in his message has also appreciated work of Sadudin Shpoon and Dawish Durani and has prayed more success for them.

Head of the Writers and Journalists Union of Eastern Zone Lal Badshah Azmon told Pajhwok Afghan News first the function was arranged to praise renowned poet late Abdul Shakoor Rishad at his life, and this was second programme that was organised regarding Shpoon and Durani.

Sadudin thanked the union for arranging such function about him. Shpoon said: "This is great pride for me that my own people praise my poetry at my home Nangarhar."

Shpon is a resident of Khogiani district of the eastern Nangarhar province and was currently abiding in Kunduz province.

He has written dozens of prose and poetry books the most famous of which are ShinTaghy, Gatialy and the Da Samsi Yaran. Darwish Durani is a resident of Quetta, capital of the Pakistan Balochistan province. He has got his masters degree in English literature and has done poetry in Pashto. His famous books are Stori Pa Laman Ki, Kano Ki Hindara, and Hawa and Saraghona.
Abdul Mueed Hashmi

Elders support AG's anti-corruption measures
GARDEZ, Nov 18 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Tribal elders in the southeastern Paktia province has welcomed the anti-corruption efforts by the Attorney General and asked the central government to send a commission to probe cases of administrative corruption in the province.

Like Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif, the central government should also send a delegation to Paktia, demanded participants of a meeting attended by elders and representatives from 14 tribes.

The Jirga assured of their full support to Attorney General Abdul Jabar Sabit in his fight against administrative corruption.

Speaking on the occasion, an elder Ahmad Shah Paktiawal said corruption was rampant in almost all departments, especially the local courts, offices of the Attorney General, police and municipality.

Mohammad Rasul, another elder, said: "We support the AG in his jihad against administrative corruption and pray from Almighty Allah for his success."

The elders issued a joint declaration at the conclusion of the meeting in which they reiterated their support for the anti-corruption measures of the government and the AG.

The AG, during his recent visit to Herat and Mazar, issued dismissal orders of several officials for their alleged involvement in corruption, misuse of authority and malpractices. Some of the orders are still pending for implementation.

Spokesman for the culture and youth affairs department Din Mohammad Darwesh told Pajhwok Afghan News the joint declaration was signed by 110 of the 140 tribal elders.
Abdul Majid Arif

Munition caches recovered in Khost
KHOST CITY, Nov 18 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Officials Saturday claimed recovering two caches of the ammunition, including, special waist-coats used in suicide bombing in the southeastern Khost province.

Intelligence chief in Khost Sanam Gul told Pajhwok Afghan News the depots of munitions were recovered in Nadar Shah Kot in Zanikhel area near mountains.

He said two waist-coats, one of them packed with explosives was also found. He said new machines of remote-controlled bombs, Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG) and different types of other ammunition were also recovered and confiscated.

Gul said he they had destroyed the second depot, as the ammunition were so closely attached that they could not be shifted. He said enemies of the country, a euphemism used for Taliban, wanted to use the munition against government.

Gul said investigation was continued, but none had been arrested in this regard.

Mohammad Rauf, a local resident, told this news agency he saw a patrol moving towards hills and soon he heard a bang that indicated destroying an ammunition depot.

The seizing of munitions caches came at times when 11 suicide blasts have claimed dozens lives in the last one and a half month in the province.
Abdul Majid Arif