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April 11, 2007 

Taliban Release Body of Journalist Seized in Afghanistan Last Month
By TAIMOOR SHAH April 11, 2007 The New York Times
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, April 10 — The body of an Afghan journalist abducted and slain by Taliban insurgents after they freed his Italian colleague in a prisoner trade was delivered Tuesday to Kandahar’s hospital. The physician on duty confirmed the identification and said the cause of death was a slit throat.

The physician, who identified himself only as Dr. Zafar, said the body of the slain journalist, Ajmal Naqshbandi, would probably be flown on Wednesday to his hometown, Kabul, on Afghanistan’s commercial airline, Ariana, or a helicopter provided by NATO forces.

Dr. Zafar did not explain how he had confirmed Mr. Naqshbandi’s identity or provide details on who had taken his body to the hospital.

Mr. Naqshbandi was working as an interpreter for the Italian journalist, Daniele Mastrogiacomo of La Repubblica, when they and their driver were seized on March 4 in Helmand Province, a Taliban stronghold.

The kidnappers beheaded the driver and threatened the two others with death, but they released Mr. Mastrogiacomo on March 15 in exchange for five Taliban prisoners held by the Afghan government.

That exchange, which the Italian government helped to negotiate, was the first in which prisoners had been openly traded for a hostage in either of the wars that the United States and its allies are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. The exchange was criticized by the United States and other nations, which said it would encourage further abductions and make victims more vulnerable to ransom demands.

On Sunday, the Taliban announced that it had killed Mr. Naqshbandi after efforts to arrange a second prisoner trade had failed.

News of the killing was greeted with fresh anger, particularly in Italy, where Prime Minister Romano Prodi was accused by political opponents of a double standard by making a deal for Mr. Mastrogiacomo but not Mr. Naqshbandi.
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AFGHANISTAN: ITALIAN CHARITY'S PERSONNEL LEAVE COUNTRY
Rome, 11 April (AKI) - The Italian and foreign workers of Italian charity Emergency left Afghanistan Wednesday to protest against the detention by Afghan authorities on terror charges of Rahmatullah Hanefi, an employee who mediated in the release of an Italian journalist kidnapped by the Taliban, Italy's state radio Giornale Radio Rai reports. The 30 Italians and eight foreigners working for Emergency's three hospitals in the country, including one in the volatile southern Helmand province, flew to Dubai Wednesday morning where they will meet with the management of Emergency to decide by Thursday whether to continue to operate in the country.

The three Emergency hospitals have not been closed yet and Afghan personnel are still working there.

The founder of the medical charity, surgeon Gino Strada, had recently told Italian and Afghan authorities the organization would pull out as it was in great difficulty since the arrest mid-March of Hanefi, who was in charge of the Emergency hospital in Lashkar Gah in restive southern Helmand province. Afghan authorities accuse him of links with the Taliban.

"We will remain in Afghanistan only if Rahmatullah will be freed and if we will be allowed to work in security," Strada said.

The Emergency employee was key in negotiations which led to the release on 19 March in southern Afghanistan of La Repubblica reporter Daniele Mastrogiacomo by his Taliban captors. Mastrogiacomo was held hostage for 15 days. He was freed in exchange for the release of Taliban commanders from Afghan jails - five according to Taliban sources. Mastrogiacomo's driver Sayed Agha and his translator, local reporter Adjmal Nashkbandi, were killed by the Taliban.

Before his decision to withdraw foreign personnel from Afghanistan, Strada had harshly criticized Italian authorities for failing to put pressure on Kabul for the release of Hanefi and the Afghan government for claiming he was linked to terrorists. He also accused Rome of paying 2 million dollars to obtain the release of Gabriele Torsello, a freelance photographer abducted by gunmen in the restive Helmand province in southern Afghanistan last October.
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Imprisoned terrorist hunter to be freed
By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer Tue Apr 10, 4:41 PM ET
WASHINGTON - A U.S. citizen is scheduled to be released from an Afghan prison as the State Department and  FBI faced a Tuesday deadline to answer allegations they ordered his torture and manipulated the Afghan judicial system.

Jack Idema is the last of three U.S. citizens imprisoned in  Afghanistan for running a private prison. Idema said they were hunting terrorists as part of a mission sanctioned by U.S. counterterrorism officials — a claim that U.S. officials have denied.

Attorneys for the three men filed a lawsuit in Washington in 2005 challenging their detention. In court documents, Idema accused the State Department and FBI of illegally keeping him imprisoned in a deplorable Afghan prison, directing his torture and destroying evidence. He said he has audio recordings and documents to back up his claims.

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said he was "deeply troubled" by the allegations and gave the U.S. government until Tuesday to respond.

"Petitioners allege that United States officials ordered their arrest, ordered their torture, stole exculpatory evidence during their trial and appeal, exerted undue influence over Afghan judges, and either directly or indirectly ordered judges who found petitioners innocent not to release petitioners from prison," Sullivan wrote.

The Justice Department, which represents the U.S. government in court, did not respond. Instead, government attorneys asked that the case be thrown out because they say the Afghan government granted Idema amnesty and commuted his sentence.

"As soon as the travel arrangements for Mr. Idema's departure from the country are made, his release and deportation should follow imminently," government attorneys wrote April 5. "Indeed, as of the time of this filing, it is our understanding that Mr. Idemas release is imminent."

Sullivan has not ruled on whether to dismiss the case. If he does not dismiss it, he said the government will have a month from the time of that decision to respond to Idema's accusations.

Idema's lawyer, John E. Tiffany, said the U.S. government coordinated Idema's amnesty to avoid having to respond to the allegations of torture and government misconduct.

"The Aghan government doesn't do anything unless the United States government tells them to do it," Tiffany said. "They got caught with their pants down. Finally, a federal judge with courage and intellect said, 'Hey, wait a minute. Let's look at this."

Tiffany compared the case to that of Jose Padilla, who was arrested in 2002 on suspicion of plotting to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb." Padilla was declared an enemy combatant and was held in a brig without criminal charges. Before the Supreme Court could decide whether that was legal, the government reversed course and charged him in civilian court on lesser charges.

"They would like nothing more than never having to respond," Tiffany said. "If they have to respond to a laundry list of areas that the judge very clearly laid out, you put yourself of great risk of taking positions that will be exposed as lies."

Government attorneys said that's not the case. The State Department learned that Idema's amnesty was final on March 15, nearly a week before Sullivan's order, according to court documents.

Idema was captured in 2004 along with fellow Americans Brent Bennett and Edward Caraballo. Idema and Bennett a former U.S. soldiers. Caraballo was an investigative journalist. Bennett and Caraballo have since been released.

Tiffany said Tuesday he did not know whether Idema has been freed. An Afghan official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the information, said Idema remains in Policharki, the main prison in Kabul.

The Justice Department said in court documents that Idema was holding up his own release by refusing to leave Afghanistan without Bennett's dog.

"Mr. Idema replied with words to the effect that he had made a promise to Mr. Bennett on his life that he would take the dog with him when he went, and that the only way he would leave Afghanistan without the dog was if they carried out his dead body," government attorneys wrote.

The U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan said it had no comment on Idema's case.
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Associated Press writer Amir Shah contributed to this report from Kabul, Afghanistan.
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Suicide bomber hits NATO troops in Afghan south
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A suicide car bomber attacked a convoy of  NATO troops in Afghanistan's southern province of Kandahar on Wednesday, wounding eight civilians but causing no military casualties, witnesses said.

The incident occurred as the convoy was passing through the western outskirts of Kandahar city, in the heartland of the resurgent Taliban.

Both NATO and the U.S.-led military force have troops there.

Canada provides the bulk of NATO troops in Kandahar. Six of its soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb there at the weekend, the deadliest attack on Western troops this year in  Afghanistan.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the latest blast, but Taliban guerrillas have unleashed a series of such attacks in several parts of Afghanistan this year as part of their war against the government and Western troops.

Last year was the bloodiest period in the country since the Taliban government was overthrown in late 2001, and 2007 is seen as a crunch time for all the parties to the conflict -- the Taliban, Western troops and the government they back.

The Taliban say they have deployed thousands of suicide bombers across major cities. Most of the victims of previous suicide raids have been civilians, and a NATO official said on Wednesday that more than 350 civilians had lost their lives so far this year, mostly in suicide attacks.
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Coalition, Afghan forces capture two militants
People's Daily - Apr 10 10:51 PM
The coalition and Afghan forces captured two militants early Wednesday morning in Paktika province of eastern Afghanistan, a coalition statement said.

The two militants were detained during an early morning raid in a compound in Gomal district, the statement said, adding that credible intelligence led the combined forces to the compound.

The target of the raid was a member of a known terrorist network, who was responsible for attacks against Afghan and coalition forces in the eastern Khost province and neighboring provinces, it said.

The statement did not say whether the targeted terrorist was captured or not, but said no shots were fired and no one was injured.

Eastern Afghanistan has been a hotbed of terrorists, where Afghan and coalition troops have carried out operations to capture terrorists frequently.
Source: Xinhua
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Attack kills 4 Taliban in Afghanistan
By RAHIM FAIEZ, Associated Press Writer Tue Apr 10, 10:28 PM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - U.S.-led coalition and Afghan troops clashed with suspected Taliban militants in the volatile south and called in an airstrike that left four militants dead, the coalition said Tuesday.

"As Taliban fighters began to flee, coalition aircraft engaged and killed four Taliban fighters who were attempting to escape," the coalition said about the airstrike Monday on a compound used by militants in the Sangin district of Helmand province.

In neighboring Kandahar on Tuesday, Taliban militants clashed with border police, leaving two militants dead and one officer wounded, said border police Gen. Abdul Raziq.

Suspected Taliban militants, meanwhile, ambushed an Afghan army convoy with rocket propelled grenades in southern Zabul province, killing two soldiers and wounding up to 14, officials said.

The troops were attacked Monday as they were traveling on the main Kabul-Kandahar highway, said Mohammad Omar, an official with the Afghan National Army.

Afghan army regional commander Gen. Rehmatullah Raufi said Tuesday that two soldiers were killed and four wounded in the attack. The officials' differing figures could not immediately be reconciled.

The latest violence came days after  NATO and Afghan troops retook Sangin district as part of NATO's largest-ever offensive in  Afghanistan, Operation Achilles, launched last month to flush out Taliban militants from the northern tip of opium-producing Helmand province.

Raufi said several clashes with the Taliban over the past two weeks in Sangin have left 20 Taliban dead, including a regional commander. That number did not include the four killed in Tuesday's airstrike. There have been no casualties in the Afghan army, he said.
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Associated Press writer Noor Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.
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Iran, Afghanistan sign border MoU
Tehran, April 11, IRNA
Iran and Afghanistan here Wednesday signed a memorandum of understanding on organizing and modernizing border demarcation and documentation.

The MoU was inked by Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and his Afghan counterpart Rangeen Dadfar Spanta.

The agreement was signed to promote friendly bilateral ties, as well as mutual respect for the two countries' sovereignty and good neighborliness.

It was also aimed at implementing Paragraph 4 of a good neighborliness declaration issued by Tehran and Kabul in 2005.

Based on the MoU, the sides pledged to revise all border demarcations and documentation and adopt necessary measures to reconstruct and modernize them within a period of two years.

A commission comprising representatives of the two countries will supervise over the executive operations to be conducted by technical and legal committees.
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Execution video raises concerns for Afghan hostages
EuroNews - Apr 10 10:54 PM
Italian television has broadcast harrowing images showing the decapitation of the Afghan driver of journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo. Blindfolded and kneeling in the dust with a gun pointed at his head, Mastrogiacomo is seen pleading for mercy with their Taliban captors. The three men clearly believe these are their last moments.

But only one was to die here: Sayed Agha, who is dragged to one side by a man wielding a knife. After witnessing the summary execution, the correspondent for La Repubblica pleads desperately to be rescued, saying he can no longer go on. Italian Premier Romano Prodi was hit by accusations of double standards and encouraging hostage-taking, after he pressured the government in Kabul to free five Taleban in return for the Italian captive.

The release also leaves Afghan President Hamid Karzai in a difficult position regarding the fate of two French hostages and their support team taken by the Taleban last week. Meanwhile, a ceremony has been held following news of the death of the second Afghan seen in the hostage footage. The Taleban announced on Sunday that they had killed translator Adjmal Naqshbandi, who remained as a bargaining chip after Mastrogiacomo was freed.
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White House seeks "czar" to oversee wars: report
Wed Apr 11, 2:00 AM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House wants to appoint a high-profile overseer to manage the wars in  Iraq and  Afghanistan but has had trouble finding someone to take the job, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

At least three retired four-star generals approached by the White House in recent weeks have turned down the position, the report said.

The war "czar" would report directly to  President George W. Bush and national security adviser  Stephen Hadley and would have authority to issue directions to the  Pentagon and the State Department, the newspaper said.

Retired Marine Gen. John "Jack" Sheehan, a former top  NATO commander, was among those who rejected the job, the newspaper reported.

"The very fundamental issue is, they don't know where the hell they're going," Sheehan told the Post.

Sheehan said he believes that Vice President  Dick Cheney and his hawkish allies remain more powerful within the administration than pragmatists looking for a way out of Iraq, the Post reported.

"So rather than go over there, develop an ulcer and eventually leave, I said, 'No, thanks,' " Sheehan told the paper.

Retired Army Gen. Jack Keane and retired Air Force Gen. Joseph Ralston were also approached and said they were not interested in the position, the newspaper said, citing sources.

Ralston declined to comment while Keane confirmed he turned down the job, the Post said.

The White House has not publicly disclosed its interest in creating the position, hoping to find someone to fill the post before the job is announced.

Officials said they were still considering options to reorganize the White House's management of the two wars, the Post said.
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New strategy in Taliban's offensive
Kidnappings are the Taliban's new weapon of choice in Afghanistan.
By David Montero | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor 11 Apr 2007
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Like any modern fighting force, the Taliban have learned the benefits of emotional warfare.

As the Taliban's spring offensive gets under way, kidnappings have become their new weapon of choice, targeting a growing chink in NATO's armor: Across Europe, the United States, and Canada, public opinion for the war in Afghanistan is sliding.

That disenchantment is proving as devastating as any bomb. Last month, after the Taliban kidnapped Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo, the Italian government nearly collapsed when opposition parties raised a storm of protest. Out of fear that Italy's parliament might decide to withdraw its 1,950 troops – what could have been a hefty blow to NATO's mission – President Hamid Karzai traded five Taliban prisoners for Mr. Mastrogiacomo's release, a stunning and highly criticized victory for the extremists.

And when Mr. Karzai refused to negotiate for Adjmal Naqshbandi, Mastrogiacomo's Afghan translator, the Taliban won again. Mr. Naqshbandi was beheaded on Sunday, prompting expressions of outrage and betrayal for the apparent double standard and further driving a wedge between Karzai and the Afghan public.

Now, buoyed by the "Italian deal," the Taliban say they have kidnapped a total of two French aid workers and 13 Afghans. The Taliban also threatened to kill four Afghan medical personnel this week if a similar deal is not struck for the release of more Taliban prisoners.

An end to catch and release

In the weeks to come, the Taliban's greatest weapon is likely to be its emotional assault on international will.

"I hope the international community, who has forces in Afghanistan and has supported us, knows our position, and they will not insist on dealing with the terrorists," says Sultan Ahmad Baheen, the spokesman for the Afghan foreign ministry, by telephone from Kabul.

To head off the Taliban's offensive, NATO and the International Security Assistance Force launched Operation Achilles in March, a maneuver that will eventually involve 4,500 NATO troops and 1,000 Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) in the country's volatile southern province of Helmand, a Taliban stronghold where Mastrogiacomo was kidnapped. It is the largest such combined operation to date, including firefights and air assaults, and resulted this month in NATO's retaking of the key town of Sangin in Helmand.

Kidnappings are nothing new to the war in Afghanistan. In the past, the Taliban showed a willingness to release captives, particularly foreigners, as long as they were proved not to be spies. But since 2005, Taliban militants have kidnapped and killed at least seven foreign hostages. Last month, they also killed Mastrogiacomo's driver, Saeed Nagha.

Just as they have gotten more brutal, so too have the Taliban become more clever: Mastrogiacomo's capture resulted, for the first time, in the public release of Taliban prisoners.

"There seems to be the assumption, which I would say is wrong, that [the Taliban] can speed up the collapse of NATO's resolve if they terrorize foreigners as much as possible," says noted Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid.

Polls show diminished support

It is a timely tactic, suggesting the Taliban's astute read of the political climates in NATO countries. Italy's response etched in the sharpest tones what a liability the war in Afghanistan has become for that government. It also ignited tensions within the NATO community, with the United States, Britain, and other allies condemning the deal as encouraging more kidnappings. Those critiques grew louder this week after Naqshbandi was murdered.

Not that cracks in resolve have actually appeared on the ground. Most NATO members have renewed their commitments to Afghanistan, and on Tuesday Australia announced it would double its troop size to 1,000. The US says it will send an extra 3,200 soldiers, and Britain another 1,400 soldiers.

But with more than 500 foreign troops dead and last year witnessing the highest death toll since the war began in 2001, the Taliban's new spate of kidnappings hopes to capitalize on public dismay throughout many of the states comprising the bulk of NATO's 36,000 troops.

- In Canada, which has 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, 46 percent of respondents agreed that their troops should be withdrawn before 2009, according to a February poll by Vancouver-based polling service Angus-Reid.

- In Germany, which has deployed 3,000 troops, 57 percent of respondents believe their troops should be withdrawn, according to a March poll released by Der Speigel magazine.

- In the Netherlands, which has 2,200 troops in Afghanistan, only 33 percent supported the recent deployment of additional troops, according to a January 2006 poll by market-research firm TNS NIPO.

- The public is also divided in the United States and Britain, the nations with the two largest troop deployments of 15,000 and 5,200 respectively. Fifty-three percent of British respondents to a September BBC poll oppose their government's military operation in Afghanistan. Fifty-two percent of US respondents also oppose it, up four points since September, according to a January poll released by CNN.

If Italy is any indication, the Taliban's lethal cocktail of roadside bombs and kidnappings could place increasing pressure on foreign governments to withdraw troops. But President Karzai's government has insisted that, despite the deal it brokered for Italian journalist Mastrogiacomo, there will be no more negotiations.

"The government of Afghanistan is determined not to deal with the Taliban terrorists," regardless of whatever pressure foreign governments may exert, says Mr. Baheen of the foreign ministry.

At home, the Taliban's kidnapping spree is exploiting divides between the Afghan people and President Karzai.

In a televised statement, Mullah Dadullah, a Taliban leader known for his cruelty, played up the idea of the Karzai government's double standards.

"If Karzai really is Afghanistan's president, he must negotiate [Naqshbandi's] release," said Dadullah. "Karzai has so far negotiated the release of foreigners but never the release of an Afghan citizen. If there is no negotiation, we will kill [Naqshbandi]."
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Afghan Women: Behind the Veil
ABC News
From 1996 to 2007, the Atmosphere Changes From Fear to Freedom and Back Again
April 10, 2007 — - In 1996, the Taliban had just taken over Afghanistan, erasing women from the schools, the workplace and the streets. At that time, "Good Morning America" anchor Diane Sawyer met with a brave group of Afghan women who could talk about their lives under the Taliban only from behind closed doors.

When Sawyer returned 11 years later, she went in search of these women to find out if lives had changed for the better.

In 1996, fear governed every woman's day in Afghanistan. Then, fingernails were ripped off just for wearing nail polish. Women were ordered to wear burqas, to stay away from schools and to cease reading books or risk death.

But 11 years ago, a brave group of women put their lives in danger when they removed their veils for ABC News' cameras and denounced the Taliban, begging the West to do something to save them.

The group included Mashid, an engineer; Massouda, a secretary for the United Nations in Kabul; Uslama, a receptionist; Malalay, a cleaning woman; and Dr. Fatima Sophie, a pediatrician forbidden by the Taliban to practice medicine.

Sophie took the risk of taking Sawyer to her home. She showed Sawyer the photos she'd hidden behind carpets, because the Taliban would otherwise burn them. The books she kept and her music also violated the law. She'd hidden her green wedding dress, in the hope that some day she might dance again.

When the 1996 interview ended, the women pulled down their veils. As they left, one made a final request: "Tell the world that our veils conceal our tears," she said.

A Return in 2002

In 2002, when the Taliban was finally run out of the country, ABC News returned and interviewed the women again.

The women said the Taliban had searched for them shortly after their 1996 interview with ABC.

"From that day after the interview, the Taliban were looking for me," Malalay said. "They came to the house to arrest me."

ABC News later learned that someone had secretly taped the 1996 interview.

The Taliban had asked Sudeen, the driver of the car that drove the women to the interview, to give up the women's names.


Sudeen, however, refused to give them up, he told Sawyer in 2002. The women called him their savior.

"I am thankful for this person who didn't say anything," Uslama said in that second interview.

After the 1996 interview and Sawyer's trip to her house, Sophie's neighbors started talking to the Taliban. Eventually, she fled the country.

Sophie now lives in Europe but said she still feared the Taliban. She did not want ABC News to reveal her exact location.

"It was really a fear that the Taliban would hear this … and it was a real danger for us if they had known," she said. "I can tell you it is the most difficult decision to leave your home, leave your friends, your family and everything that -- that you hope for."


In 2002, the women said they weren't sorry they'd done the 1996 interview.

"First time, you reach the voice of sorrow, the voice of suffering and voice of prisoners, but this time, fortunately, you're reaching the voice of happiness, voice of freedom," Massouda said.

Now, in 2007, five years after the Taliban fell, apprehension and fear has returned to Afghanistan.

The women asked that this time ABC News not put them on camera. Only one would see Sawyer alone, in private, behind closed doors.
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Afghan kite-maker cameos in Hollywood
12:53 a.m. EDT, April 11, 2007
KABUL, Afghanistan (Reuters) -- A man living in a graveyard in a rubbish-strewn, rundown Kabul district is the unlikely hero behind the scenes of one of Hollywood's most eagerly anticipated movies this year.

Noor Agha is widely acknowledged as the best kite-maker in Afghanistan, where flying and duelling with kites is the closest thing the war-torn country has to a national sport. He is also a champion kite-flyer.

"The Kite-Runner", based on the bestselling novel by an Afghan immigrant living in the United States, hits the screens in November, featuring hundreds of kites painstakingly made by Agha in his shack in a graveyard in Kabul's Ashiqan Arifan area.

He also spent weeks training the movie's teenage protagonists in kite flying and duelling, skills they used on camera when the movie was shot in China last year.

"I got $30 a day for 45 days, teaching them all I knew. Sometimes I had to smack them when they didn't do well," Agha says, smiling and revealing a missing upper tooth.

He says he hasn't seen any rushes of The Kite-Runner, a story of fatherhood, friendship and betrayal which starts in 1970s Kabul and moves to California's Bay Area and back to Afghanistan when it was ruled by the Taliban.

"I am waiting for it, it's my movie," he says, taking time off from kite making for a cigarette and a cup of unsweetened green tea.

Agha, a 51-year-old balding and bearded man, makes his kites on a wooden pallet on the floor of his carpet-lined living room. For the simple ones, it takes just under half an hour, starting with pasting two strips of bamboo on a three-square-foot piece of brightly colored tissue paper, one straight across the diagonal and the other curved in an arc between the other two ends.

A string is then tied around the perimeter and pasted down. As a final flourish, each kite Agha makes carries a pasted paper cutout of a scorpion -- his trademark -- and his name in the Dari script, painstakingly snipped out of tissue paper and glued down.

The key to a good kite, Agha says, is in the glue he uses, a green paste which carries several secret ingredients besides paste and rice gruel. The quality of the glue allows him to make a kite with no wrinkles in the paper, keeping it entirely flat.

Gift of Allah
"It's a gift of Allah," says the kite-maker of his skills. These simple kites he sells to traders for $1 a piece, but he charges up to $200 for large kites with elaborate designs, including one with all the provinces of Afghanistan copied from an atlas onto tissue paper, cut out and pasted on the kite.

When the strictly Islamist Taliban ruled Afghanistan, they banned kite flying. Agha says he worked underground for some time and then fled to Pakistan.

When he returned, the only land he could find was in the graveyard of the district he was born in, where he now lives with two wives and 10 children. And he doesn't want to move, despite his relative affluence.

"Even if you give me the whole of Kabul as a gift, I won't live anywhere else," he says. "This is my homeland."

Down in the Shoar Bazaar, the premier kite market in Kabul, Agha's kites are much in demand. They sell with at least a 60 percent mark up, and many customers will buy no others.

"People ask for his kites," said Sayed Khalil, surrounded by rolls of glass-sharpened twine and hundreds of kites in a tiny shop. "And they will buy 10 or 20 at a time."

The Kite-Runner, written by Khaled Hosseini, tells the story of the lives of a rich Kabul businessman's son and his companion cum servant, who chases kites that are cut loose in duels by the glass-sharpened twine -- thus The Kite-Runner.

Written in 2003, it was received tepidly initially but became a runaway bestseller in 2005 and last year.

In the novel, Amir, the rich man's son, wins a Kabul kite-flying competition. Noor Agha has won it in reality several times, most recently this year.

Every Friday, he takes a break from kite-making to go to the Nadir Khan Hill in a Kabul suburb, where hundreds gather on the Muslim sabbath to fly kites, duel and chase those which are felled.

"This is my hobby," Agha says. "I am the champion, no one can cut my kite."
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Less coalition troops in Afghanistan led to rise in Taliban: Pakistan
By ANI Wednesday April 11, 02:08 PM
Washington, Apr 11 (ANI): Facing criticisms for not doing enough to curb the rise of Taliban, Pakistan has now blamed the less numerical strength of coalition forces in Afghanistan for the re-emergence of Taliban.

"Pakistan has deployed 80,000 troops in areas that are much smaller than Afghanistan. There are only about 40,000 coalition forces in all of Afghanistan and that numerical limitation provides enough space for the Taliban to carry out its activities inside Afghanistan with a degree of impunity," M. Akram Shaheedi, spokesperson of Pakistan Embassy in Washington said.

Stating that Pakistan was fully committed to curb terrorism and reiterating its claim of "doing more than any one" in this regard, Shaheedi said, "But military approach never brings durable peace," adding, "It only provides a breathing space to seek out the political solution to the problem. Peace agreements in tribal areas are part of the strategy to wean the local population from the terrorists."

Pakistan administration has been keeping quiet on the recent conflicts between tribals and foreign militants in its WANA region.

The recent skirmishes have seen tribals supported by Taliban killing close to 250 foreign militants, particularly Uzbeks who were welcomed by these same tribals after coalition forces invaded Afghanistan and drove Taliban and Al Qaeda away. (ANI)
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Pakistan army says tribal area cleared of militants
by Masroor Gilani
SHOLAM POST, Pakistan (AFP) - Pakistani tribesmen have cleared all foreign militants from an area on the Afghan border in an offensive that is a role model for the rest of the region, a general said.

But a key Uzbek Al-Qaeda-linked militant with a five-million-dollar US bounty on his head has not been caught, regional commander Major General Gul Muhammad told reporters on a rare trip to South Waziristan.

Muhammad also confirmed earlier reports that around 200 foreign militants and around 40 tribesmen had died in fierce fighting which broke out on March 19 after a mortar fired by the Uzbeks killed several schoolchildren.

"The Uzbeks have been kicked out lock, stock and barrel from the Wana Valley," Muhammad said at Sholam Post, a military checkpost overlooking Wana, the mountain-fringed capital of South Waziristan on Wednesday.

Reporters were flown to the remote region by helicopter and driven through the rugged valley for the first time since the fall of the Taliban in neighbouring  Afghanistan in 2001.

"Wana will be the role model for the whole of South Waziristan and North Waziristan," he said, referring to the neighbouring tribal region where the army fought bloody clashes with insurgents in 2006.

The government has previously said that the formerly Taliban-supporting tribesmen's efforts vindicate its policy of signing peace deals with the ethnic Pashtun clans of the region, despite criticism from Western allies.

The tribesmen sheltered hundreds of foreign militants, including Uzbeks who fled from Afghanistan after US-led forces toppled the Taliban regime following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

The army carried out major operations in South Waziristan in 2004 and 2005 but was unable to drive out militants because they had the support of local tribesmen at the time, Muhammad said.

But the Uzbeks fell out with the Pakistani tribesmen over the course of the past year after they killed several local people and "were involved in kidnapping and car snatching. The locals were sick of them," Muhammad said.

The Pakistani military secured part of South Waziristan on Friday after a tribal force of around 1,000 fighters expelled the militants, the first time the army has moved in the region since signing a peace deal there in 2005.

"We have total control of our area now. We have not got rid of the Uzbeks entirely but they have been kicked out of Wana Valley," Muhammad said. "With the help of the local population now we hope to get rid of the miscreants."

Muhammad said that Uzbek commander Tahir Yuldashev -- who led an Islamist group in his Central Asian former Soviet homeland and who officials say had ties to  Osama bin Laden -- remained at large.

"Yuldashev could not be cornered," Muhammad said, adding as a joke: "Who could be more interested than myself because he has a five million dollar bounty?"

Chief army spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad told reporters the tribal force, or lashkar, had now pushed on to Nandaran about five kilometres (three miles) away in pursuit of the fleeing militants.

"The military is not involved in this fight. The lashkar has asked the military for its support to secure the area while they go out for fighting and to provide medical aid for people," he said.

Arshad said that the cross-border movement of militants from the tribal areas into Afghanistan, which Pakistan has come under pressure from  NATO and Washington to stop, had dropped since 2006.
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Kazakhstan explores ways to spur Afghanistan's economic recovery
By ANI Wednesday April 11, 12:39 PM
Almaty, Apr.11 (ANI): An inter-agency delegation from Kazakhstan visited Afghanistan this week to explore ways to assist that country's economic rehabilitation.

Nurlan Yermekbayev, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs led the delegation which included representatives of the ministries of industry and trade, energy and mineral resources, Kazakhstan's institutions of development and private companies. Yermekbayev brought a letter from President Nursultan Nazarbayev to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the group met members of the Afghan Government.

Keenly aware of challenges to regional security emanating from the lack of stability in Afghanistan, Kazakhstan is interested in various projects and development of trade and economic cooperation with the Afghans.

For this purpose a joint intergovernmental commission was formed. Its first meeting is expected to take place this year.

In the past, Kazakhstan expressed interest in various sectors of the Afghan economy, including construction, agriculture and trade. In the early years after the operation to oust the Taliban was launched, Kazakhstan also sent grain as humanitarian assistance for the Afghan people and provided support for U.S. led military operations. (ANI)
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US thanks Aust for Afghanistan troops
Wednesday April 11, 05:22 PM ABC
The United States ambassador has paid tribute to Australia for increasing its troop commitment to Afghanistan.

Prime Minister John Howard has announced 300 members of a special operations task force will head to Afghanistan shortly, increasing Australia's commitment to about 1,000 troops by the middle of next year.

Today US ambassador Robert McCallum extended his thanks.

"We are most grateful to the people of the Commonwealth of Australia," he said.

Mr McCallum says the government of Afghanistan will also be heartened by the the extra commitment.

"An important announcement for the people of Afghanistan to recognise that a large number of nations are helping to support them," he said.

The deployment means Australia will have more soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan than in Iraq.
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Prodi attacked on Afghan 'deals'
by Christian Fraser -  BBC News, Rome, Tuesday, 10 April 2007
Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi has been criticised for the way his government has negotiated the release of Italians kidnapped in Afghanistan. Three weeks ago an Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo was freed in a prisoner swap with the Taleban.

Now it is alleged that last year the Italian government paid $2m to the group for the release of another Italian, a photographer. Romano Prodi has not denied the claims but rejected opposition criticism.
When Daniele Mastrogiacomo was released on 19 March, he returned to Italy to a hero's welcome. But at what price?

Many believe the deal in which five Taleban prisoners were released in exchange for the journalists freedom created a dangerous precedent, putting all international journalists and aid workers in Afghanistan at risk.

This weekend, the perils of negotiating with the Taleban became all too clear: first, the news that Daniele's Mastrogiacomo's translator, 23-year-old Afghan Ajmal Naqshbandi, had been beheaded.

He was supposed to have been released along with the journalist, but the Taleban held on to him to try and extract more: and maybe there is a very good reason why the group had grown so confident.

The charity who negotiated Daniele Mastrogiacomo's freedom, the aid group Emergency, has alleged that last year their negotiator was entrusted with $2m to take to the Taleban to bring back another Italian, the photographer Gabrielle Torsello.

Prime Minister Romano Prodi, who has tried to distance his government from the deal that was done, has not denied the claims.

He says all negotiations were carried out to ensure the safe return of Italians and according to procedures put in place by the previous centre-right government of Silvio Berlusconi.

Mr Prodi's centre-left coalition barely survived on 27 March a vote in the Senate on the funding of the Italian military contingent in Afghanistan.

Romano Prodi had already resigned in February over the Afghanistan issue, before being reinstated, following a confidence vote in both parliamentary chambers.
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On the streets of Kabul, a scramble for money
By Farah Stockman The Boston Globe Wednesday, April 11, 2007
KABUL: Listen long enough on the streets of this dusty, bustling city and the whir of generators, the cry of hawkers, and the jingle of cellphones blend together into one constant hum. It's the sound of Afghans trying to make money.

The swirl of activity starts before dawn and lasts until dusk, interrupted only by the blast from an occasional suicide bombing.

Five and a half years after the U.S.-led war toppled the Taliban government, and two years after historic parliamentary elections, the sense of euphoria here has worn off, replaced by the daily struggle to make ends meet and the search for the ever-elusive better life. As a competitive economy awakens in one of the world's poorest countries, the residents of Kabul are jockeying to get ahead in a city flush with cash from U.S. soldiers, foreign aid workers, new investors, parliamentarians and drug traffickers.

Some have already made fortunes catering to the emerging desires of this nation of 31 million people. Ehsanullah Bayat, a U.S.-trained Afghan engineer, is one of the nation's richest men after starting the first cellphone company here in 2001, and a radio and television station.

The inventors of Super Cola, a local soda, hold their own here against Coke.

But most Afghans are trying to climb a far more modest ladder of success.

"For those people who have a job, like a shop, or who have a small amount of capital, things are good and getting better," said Muhammad Nadir, who sells homemade yogurt and other groceries at a shop his father opened the day he was born, 26 years ago. "But the poor stay poor. The government is not able to help them."

Costs have skyrocketed, Nadir said. During the Taliban years, his family paid $5 in monthly rent for the shop. Now they pay $200. That leaves about $500 per month in profit.

"Good money," he said. But he'd like to make more.

Kabul is teeming with people who are desperately trying to earn more, no matter what their current salary is. The crowd of unemployed graduates from Kabul University clamor for jobs in the civil service, civil servants seek higher-paying work with the foreign nongovernmental organizations, while many employees at those organizations have their eyes on better-paid positions with the United Nations.

Ashraf Ghani, who was finance minister from 2002 to 2004, said the arrival of foreign aid organizations had spurred an unhealthy hunger for higher pay.

"People in the end of 2001 were willing to work for $50 per month and put in 16 hours a day because they believed in the country," Ghani said.

Now, he said, few qualified people are willing to work for what the government is offering.

Raising wages for government workers has become a favorite topic in Parliament, where members recently rejected President Hamid Karzai's proposed budget because members said not enough money was being spent on salaries in remote provinces. A commission has been formed that hopes to increase the pay of Afghanistan's 300,000 civil servants, about 80,000 of whom are low-level workers such as cooks and drivers who earn less than $30 per month.

The newly minted Afghan National Army has also sought to increase wages for new recruits from $70 to about $100 per month. Some analysts see the effort as an attempt to compete with the Taliban, which is believed to be offering twice as much to its recruits.

Even the Afghan government is jockeying for more direct international assistance from donors, who currently send the lion's share of foreign assistance through aid organizations, partly out of fear of high-level corruption.

Unlike Britain, which has begun to give most of its assistance directly to the Afghan government, the United States continues to spend its aid on hiring U.S. contractors who provide technical assistance to Afghanistan's government and army, and who build roads, schools, and other infrastructure. State Department officials say the U.S. government has spent more than $2.5 billion annually in aid to Afghanistan, making it the largest donor.

Everywhere in the capital, people talk of money. They routinely query one another about their salaries. The cost of land seems to be on the tip of every businessman's tongue.

Bank accounts have become fashionable. In the center of town, large crowds form outside Aziz Bank, where the walls are lined with the names of new customers who won a $100 lottery prize, a new concept in post-Taliban Afghanistan.

There is also talk about what money can buy nowadays: a driver's license without an examination; release from jail without a trial; flattering coverage on state-run television.

According to a study released last month by Integrity Watch Afghanistan, a government monitoring agency, most Afghans believe that government corruption is widespread. Half of the 1,250 Afghans who were polled reported paying a bribe last year, according to the study.

That is the system that Abdul Hamid, a 70-year-old former government worker, describes from his perch on the bench at his friend's shop in the Shar-e-Naw neighborhood of Kabul. If only he had $2,000 or $3,000, he declared, he would buy his wife a promotion at the Ministry of Information and Culture.

"She now works in the lowest rank, because we don't have any money for bribes and we don't know anyone at the top," he said.

No matter that $3,000 is far more than she could earn in a year at the new post, he said. But once she got the appointment she would recoup her investment by collecting bribes herself.

Even some U.S. soldiers appear to be participating in the illegal underground economy. Goods from Bagram Air Base easily find their way into the open market, although it's against military regulations.

Army-issued ready-made meals, stamped "U.S. government property - commercial resale is unlawful," can be bought for about 20 cents apiece in the "George Bush market" in Kabul. There, from a few dozen dusty stalls, military- issued grape jelly and powdered mashed potatoes along with huge boxes of Pop-Tarts, Uncle Ben's Rice, and Axe deodorant are sold.

"We buy it from the soldiers," explained a young shopkeeper who displayed a Yamaha keyboard and a row of flashlights.

A few shops away, bulk boxes of blue Gatorade are still marked with a sticker signifying that they were brought into the country, tax-free, by the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, where only members of the military and their families are allowed to shop.

But one thing that money can't buy these days in Afghanistan is security.

Although the United States has spent more than $3.3 billion on building a new Afghan army, which now has about 35,000 trained troops, members of the Taliban walk the streets openly in four provinces. Resurgent Taliban fighters recently executed a female prison warden and three men accused of being foreign spies.

Suicide bombings, virtually unknown here before 2003, have now become commonplace. About 130 such bombs exploded last year across the country, contributing to a growing worry that Afghanistan's economic prospects could wither away if instability spreads.

Last spring, hundreds of anti-American rioters poured into the streets of Kabul after a U.S. military vehicle accident, forcing many aid organizations to draw up emergency evacuation plans for the first time.

Now the mansions where the aid groups are housed sit quietly behind glittering razor wire, with sandbags around the windows and men in camouflage pacing with AK-47s. The tight security is a reminder of the tinderbox of resentment that lies just below the surface of Afghans' daily hunt for better jobs, more business, and greater financial success.

That hunt came to a stunned halt three times in the past two weeks, when suicide bombers struck on streets crowded with shops that sell everything from bread to bicycle tires. After a police commander was targeted in one bombing last week, police officers forced the row of shops across the street to shut down.

But one 19-year-old Afghan was back in business within two hours selling cookies, cigarettes, vegetable oil, and other items.

"It's the only way for me to make a living," he said.
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Is Canada's burden in Afghanistan too heavy?
Apr 10, 2007 04:30 AM Toronto Star, Canada Olivia Ward Foreign Affairs Writer
Six more Canadian soldiers died in Afghanistan Sunday, not in the front line of battle, but in an armoured vehicle heading for Helmand province, where they were blown up by a roadside bomb while accompanying coalition convoys.

And as the latest grievous news came home to Canadians, questions were once again raised about the number of casualties our troops are taking, and whether the Taliban are using newer and deadlier tactics in their effort to claw back power in the strife-torn country.

With 51 soldiers and one diplomat dead, and 2,545 troops currently deployed in Afghanistan, Canada's loss rate is 2 per cent. The United States, which has suffered 311 killed with 21,000 troops in the country, has a 1.5 per cent death rate. For Britain, with 52 dead and 5,600 troops, it is 0.9 per cent.

"There's no doubt that we're shouldering a disproportionate number of deaths," says Steven Staples, a defence analyst who co-authored Canada's Fallen, a report on Canadian casualties in Afghanistan written for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

And, he said, when the report was completed last fall, "we had lost as many soldiers in convoy situations as we had in combat."

Convoy attacks have hit Canadians especially hard, says Sunil Ram, a defence and security analyst, and a professor with American Military University in West Virginia.

"About one-third of American casualties in Afghanistan are from IEDs," he says. "But about 50 per cent of (Canadian) deaths were from IEDs."

While IEDs – improvised explosive devices – are sometimes classed only as roadside bombs, Ram says, they include "stationary bombs that are buried in the ground, vehicle-borne bombs and suicide bombs."

Sean Maloney, a history professor at Royal Military College of Canada, and author of two books on Afghanistan, dismisses the idea that Canada has suffered disproportionately, or that its presence in convoys is to blame.

"It's a non-argument," he says. "You have to look at the overall war on Al Qaeda worldwide, and you see that Canada hasn't had the biggest losses there."

To lower the casualty count in Afghanistan, Maloney says, "you have to eliminate IED cells through aggressive operations. You have to shut down the money that finances them from Saudi Arabia. You have to pay attention to terrorist funding, and to Pakistan as a conduit for terrorism. It is not our negligence that is causing deaths."

The military has made strenuous efforts to upgrade its protection for troops on the ground, says Staples, director of the Rideau Institute on International Affairs.

"They've moved all the way up from jeeps to Leopard tanks. But by the time you've armoured up, the insurgents have become more sophisticated, too. Even our LAV-III vehicles are vulnerable now, and there's really nowhere else to go. Whatever we come up with, the insurgents will be keeping up with us."

Attacking armoured vehicles is not a new tactic for the Taliban, experts say, and the bombs they use are not state-of-the-art. But they know their attacks are costly for better-equipped NATO enemies, and they're quick to get around new defences by moving from manual bomb detonations to remote controls, to laser-triggered blasts.

"They only have to be successful one time out of 100," Ram says. "It costs a couple of hundred dollars for a bomb, but they can knock out a $3 million to $4 million vehicle, kill troops who have cost millions of dollars to train – apart from the loss of life – and cause severe trauma to military personnel who are close to the explosion."

The shock waves from powerful bombs, like the one on Sunday, are hugely destructive, causing brain damage and other long-term injuries, Ram adds. They also take a huge toll on families of the dead and survivors.

Retired general Lewis MacKenzie says the inside of some armoured vehicles is deadly when shock waves from a high-velocity explosion hit and "the metal flies off inside and kills people."

But although the LAV-III "was designed by soldiers" for maximum survivability, he says, when an ignition device goes off directly under the vehicle, as appeared to have happened Sunday, "you can never get to the point where you're fully protected."

The bomb that was used, Ram says, likely had a "shaped charge" that sends off a plasma plume that "cut like a blowtorch" through the vehicle's metal. "Super-heated gas pours into the fighting compartment and super-heats the fuel, which explodes."

Similar devices date back to World War II, he says. "It's not a big technology advance, but it's just beginning to appear in the insurgency world. What we see in Afghanistan today is a continuation of technology that has been used in Iraq."
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Enough US soldiers in Afghanistan: US commander
Daily Times, Pakistan
LAHORE: Major General David Rodriguez, commander of US forces in Afghanistan, believes there are enough American soldiers in the war-torn country.

“I believe we have sufficient troops to do what we need to do,” Gen Rodriguez said in an interview to Diane Sawyer of ABC’s ‘Good Morning America’ programme on Tuesday. “We’ve asked for some trainers for the police and everything, and they’re taking a look at when and how they can get them here to support that. But overall, yes, we have enough US troops for what we need to do,” he said.

Gen Rodriguez disagreed with estimates that the Taliban had 6,000 troops and 1,000 suicide bombers ready to attack US and allied forces in Afghanistan, saying there were “maybe about half that number”. He estimated that US troops would need to stay in Afghanistan for at least a couple more years. “That’s still a lot of suicide bombers, relative to what we think we’re going to see. But, it’ll be an increase over last year,” he added. The US commander said it was important symbolically to capture Osama Bin Laden, but added that it was more important to “defeat his intentions, his network, and his capability to inflict harm outside of a very, you know, limited area”.

He conceded that Al Qaeda had improved its capabilities recently, “But still, that’s not all that they need to be able to do what they want to do.” He said there was “a long way to go until the scourge of terrorism is finished”. Gen Rodriguez disagreed with comments made by two US senators that America was on the verge of losing in Afghanistan. “I do not think so, no,” he said. daily times monito
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Hardline Taliban netting millions from poppy trade it once banned in Afghanistan
By: JASON STRAZIUSO - Associated Press via North County Times, CA
CHINAR, Afghanistan -- When the Taliban ordered Afghanistan's fields cleared of opium poppies seven years ago because of Islam's ban on drugs, fearful farmers complied en masse.

Today, officials say the militia nets tens of millions by forcing farmers to plant poppies and taxing the harvest, driving the country's skyrocketing opium production to fund the fight against what they consider an even greater evil -- U.S. and NATO troops.

"Drugs are bad. The Quran is very clear about it," said Gafus Scheltem, NATO's political adviser in southern Afghanistan. But to fight the enemy, he said, "all things are allowed. They need money and the only way they can get money is from Arabs that support them in the (Persian) Gulf, or poppies."

 
Corrupt government officials, both low-level police and high-level leaders, also protect the drug trade in exchange for bribes, a recent U.N. report found. Warlords and major landowners welcome the instability the Taliban brings to the country's southern regions, causing poppy eradication efforts to fail.

The Taliban denies it supports poppies. Mullah Abdul Qassim, a top commander in Helmand province, told The Associated Press last month that the militia's goal is to defeat foreign troops and it doesn't have time to regulate poppies. He noted that the militia virtually eliminated poppies after leader Mullah Omar banned them in July 2000.

Diplomats at the time believed the Taliban, pariahs because of their violations of human rights standards, was seeking international respectability and financial aid. Washington sent $43 million in emergency funds to Afghanistan after poppy growing was banned.

But Western officials say it appears the ban was meant at least in part to increase the price of opium stockpiles.

"Originally they said 'It's bad for you, it's against Islam,' but when they realized how much money they could make off of it they said it was OK to grow but not consume it. That's the hypocrisy of it," said Spc. Zach Khan, a cultural adviser in the U.S. Army who was born in Pakistan and lives in Nashville, Tenn.

The Taliban is also telling farmers in the south they must grow poppies but if the militia returns to power, the plants will once again be outlawed, said a Western official familiar with Afghanistan's drug trade who asked not to be identified because of the nature of his job.

Afghanistan's opium crop grew 59 percent in 2006 to 407,000 acres, yielding a record crop of 6,100 tons, enough to make 610 tons of heroin -- 90 percent of the world's supply, according to the U.N. Western and Afghan officials say they expect a similar crop this year.

The street value of the heroin was estimated at $3.5 billion, said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. Of that, Afghan farmers earned an estimated $700 million last year, while the bulk of the rest went to traffickers who smuggled the drugs to the Middle East and Europe.

No one knows the Taliban's exact take from poppy cultivation, and guesses range from the low tens of millions of dollars to an estimate of $140 million by Gen. Khodaidad, Afghanistan's deputy minister for counter-narcotics. His figure was based on various Taliban taxes that could add up to 20 percent of the farmers' $700 million.

The Taliban uses the money to buy weapons and pay soldiers, and as one Western official put it: "You can buy quite a bit of insurgency for $10 million."

In Helmand province -- the Taliban's main stronghold -- poppy farmer Karimullah Khan said the traditional religious tax, called an oshar, used to be paid to religious leaders. Now, he said, "If the government is weak in some districts, and the Taliban is stronger, we give the oshar to the Taliban."

For farmers, poppies pay up to 10 times as much as wheat. Militants protect the poppy fields, and corrupt government officials are paid to turn a blind eye.

"The Taliban need the money and the narco-traffickers need the instability. In chaos, there's profit," U.S. Army Lt. Col. Brian Mennes said during a recent mission in southern Afghanistan.

The Taliban takes a cut all along the way -- a percentage at harvest, at heroin labs, and to ensure the crop's passage through dangerous lands, said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.

"Now if you put all these percentages together, out of an opium economy of about $3.5 billion, you get a significant amount of money which could be potentially seen as the funding of terrorism," Costa said last month.

Of five poppy farmers in southern Afghanistan that spoke to The Associated Press, three paid bribes to the Taliban and to local police, who work for the Afghan Interior Ministry, which a U.N. report said has many officials involved in the drug trade.

Some farmers paid in opium, others in cash. Two farmers who live in more secure areas paid local clerics a 10 percent religious tax.

The mountain town of Chinar straddles the Kandahar-Helmand border and is anchored by a large, mud-brick compound housing district police headquarters. Twenty yards away sits a large field of flourishing poppies, with other fields all around. Khan said most farmers are forced to grow the crop by the Taliban -- but the police are also implicated.

Capt. Said Farad, an Afghan army commander based just outside the town on a recent NATO operation, said the district chief in the region has to cooperate with the Taliban or face death. The last three chiefs sent here by the governor were killed, he said.

"The police definitely have a hand in the poppies. Those two police vehicles near the compound help with the drug smuggling and run supplies for the Taliban," Farad said. "Nobody will kill the current chief because he has a deal with the Taliban."

At a recent council of elders put together by U.S. forces operating around Chinar, a man with a black turban and gray beard defended the residents.

"The only problem with these people is poverty. Whatever they're doing they're doing out of poverty," he said.

Farid Jan, a poppy farmer in the Panjwayi district of Kandahar, said he pays 10 percent of his crop to the Taliban and negotiates a separate percentage for police.

Last year, a pound of opium fetched up to $100 in the province, though less in other areas, the U.N. said. This year, Jan expects to earn $130,000 -- before "taxes" -- on his land, 10 times what he would make from wheat.

"Now you tell me what's the best crop for us?" he said.

-- Associated Press reporter Noor Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.
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Tajik border guards detain drug mules from Afghanistan
11.04.2007, 11.38
DUSHANBE, April 11 (Itar-Tass) - Tajik border guards detained a group of armed drug mules from Afghanistan in the early hours of Wednesday, the press service of the Tajik Defence Ministry’s border guard department told Itar-Tass.

The incident took place in the mountainous Shuroabad district on the Tajik-Afghan border.

Nine drug mules were detained, while opened fire on border guards on the Tajik bank of the Piandzh River. Sacks with marijuana and opium totalling 70 kilograms were seized.

Tajik border guards have seized 300 kilograms of different drugs and 1,500 arms units since January 1.
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Afghan, Nigerian held with heroin worth Rs.20 mn
India eNews.com, India From correspondents in Delhi, India, 04:04 PM IST
Two foreign nationals - one from Afghanistan and the other from Nigeria - have been arrested here with two kg of high grade heroin valued at Rs.20 million, police said Wednesday.

Sleuths of Delhi Police's Special Cell apprehended Salae Mohammed and Augustian Okoye Tuesday afternoon from Dwarka in southwest Delhi. Around two kg of pure heroin was recovered from them.

While Mohammed is from Kabul, Okoye hails from Nigeria. Acting on a tip off, the police had laid a trap to nab the duo.

'During interrogation, Mohammed revealed that he had smuggled the contraband from Afghanistan for delivering it to Okoye here,' Deputy Commissioner of Police Alok Kumar said.

'A Kabul-based drug trafficker, Farid Pathan, introduced Mohammed to Okoye over phone to deliver narcotics in India. Mohammed arrived in the city April 7,' Kumar added.

The narcotics substances that reach here generally come through the Afghanistan-Pakistan-Jammu-Punjab route.

'Their links and customers in the city are also under investigation,' Kumar said.

On March 15, Delhi Police seized 22 kg of high quality heroin worth Rs.220 million from three Amritsar-based drug traffickers in north Delhi.
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Musharraf urged to secure Afghan border
Daily Times, Pakistan
WASHINGTON: Rep Betty McCollum said that she and other US lawmakers told President Gen Pervez Musharraf that he needed to take a greater leadership role in securing the border between his country and Afghanistan.

McCollum, D-Minn, called the region “a very troubling part of the world” because of the resurgence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, six years after the United States drove the Taliban from power in Afghanistan.

She and six other lawmakers met with Musharraf during a trip to Pakistan last week, and told him he’s “not taking the leadership we’d like to see on it,” McCollum said in a telephone interview on Monday.

According to McCollum, Musharraf’s response was that it was Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s problem, that Karzai needed to get a better control of the border. “And my response, our delegation’s response, was this is a mutual problem,” McCollum said. “This is a problem that Pakistan has, and it’s a problem that Afghanistan has. The border needs to be secure. And that’s also a challenge for the international community.” The Pakistani embassy in Washington did not immediately return a telephone message on Monday.

McCollum was part of a four-member delegation to Afghanistan and Pakistan led by Rep John Tierney, D-Mass, who chairs a national security subcommittee; while in Pakistan, the group met up with three members of the House Intelligence Committee, including the chairman, Texas Democrat Silvestre Reyes. McCollum said she was struck by the increasing role that the Taliban was playing not only in Afghanistan, but in Pakistan as well – something that Pakistani women she spoke with found very troubling. “We can’t turn a blind eye to the human rights violations that are going on in Pakistan right now,” she said. “And we need to tell Musharraf the international community will stand with him to put it to an end.” McCollum said that the Taliban are walking the streets of Islamabad threatening video shop owners and barber shops. She said she learned of one woman who had acid thrown on her because she was dressed “too Western”. Last week, a firebrand cleric said he had formed an Islamic court to enforce a Taliban-style vice campaign in Islamabad, and threatened suicide attacks if authorities tried to stop him. ap
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Pakistan: UN refugee agency faces deficit in Afghan repatriation funds
ISLAMABAD, 10 April 2007 (IRIN) - After recently announcing that it was tripling its cash assistance for repatriating Afghans, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said it may need to raise funds to live up to its promise in the last five days of the offer.

"UNHCR will need to do fund raising if the figures [of repatriating Afghans] go beyond the 200,000 mark," Babar Baloch, a spokesman for UNHCR in Pakistan, told IRIN in the capital, Islamabad, on Tuesday.

More than 145,000 unregistered Afghans have already returned from Pakistan and benefited from UNHCR's incentive package since this year's voluntary repatriation drive began on 1 March. But since the refugee agency announced an increased cash grant, from US $30 to US $100, for each returnee, thousands have been queuing up outside designated repatriation centres to undergo a verification process to make them eligible for a repatriation package.

Those who fail to register with the Pakistani authorities before 15 April will not be entitled to the incentive package, which includes transportation assistance, and risk becoming illegal persons in Pakistan.

"There will be no extension [in amnesty period] and all unregistered Afghans staying beyond 15 April will be considered illegal immigrants and will have to face the law of the land," said Nayyar Agha, head of Pakistan's Commissionerate for Afghan Refugees (CAR) in Islamabad.

The number of Afghans who had not registered with the Pakistani authorities at the start of the voluntary repatriation drive more than a month ago was thought to be as high as 400,000, according to Afghan embassy officials in Islamabad.

Illegal status

There are fears that many unregistered Afghans will soon have illegal status in Pakistan because of a shortage of time and funds to process them all.

Millions of Afghan refugees have been living in Pakistan for more than a quarter of a century, uprooted by conflict in Afghanistan.

In an effort to ascertain the number and profile of these exiled Afghans, Pakistani authorities carried out a four-month countrywide survey from October 2006 to February 2007.

More than 2.1 million Afghans were registered during the campaign and were issued with 'proof of registration' cards validating their stay in Pakistan until December 2009.

But it has been a big challenge for authorities processing thousands of Afghans every day to separate genuine returnees from those just coming for the cash grant.

An estimated 2,000 Afghans are being turned away daily for not meeting the assistance eligibility criteria, according to UNHCR officials.

A number of verification procedures have been put in place to prevent fraudulent claims.

"Several steps are taken at the repatriation centres to prevent recycling, which include thorough interviews of returning Afghan families, fingerprint biometrics, iris verification and the use of election ink," said Killian Kleinschmidt, UNHCR's Assistant Representative in Islamabad.

But this procedure takes time and with the deadline drawing near, hundreds of Afghan refugees have been approaching the Afghan embassy in Islamabad to seek a way out of this situation.

"Just imagine how some 400,000 people could have been processed in just six weeks of amnesty period," said Dr Aluzai Ghazi, a representative of the Afghan Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation at the Afghan embassy in Islamabad.

"We have been told that thousands of potential returnees are gathered outside repatriation centres in Peshawar," Ghazi said, noting that the embassy was not in a position to assist those Afghans. "This is something to be decided by the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan."
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Political party office set on fire
Pajhwok 04/10/2007 By Habib Rahman Ibrahimi 
Unidentified miscreants set fire to office of a political part in this capital city on Monday.

Central office of the Afghanistan Liberal Party was set on fire as the office-bearers were out to attend a meeting, said chief of the party Ajmal Sohail.

Speaking to Pajhwok Afghan News, Sohail said the incident might be the result of some political differences.

Without naming any individual or group, he said his party's stand against warlords and the administrative corruption in governmental departments might have prompted some individuals to attack the office.
People living in the neighbourhood said they did not see any movement inside or nearby the office at the time of the arson attack. The party's office is located close to the UN guest house and the 10th police district.

In charge of the police station Mohammad Qasim Aminzoy said police had started investigations into the incident. Afghanistan's Liberal Party was established in 2004.
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Govt gets $3.7b of pledged amounts
KABUL, Apr 9 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Only $3.7 billion of the $30 billion assistance pledged by the international community has so far been handed over to the government, while around $13 billion of that amount has been spent by NGOs.

Dr Mustafa Mastor, head of the budgeting section of the Finance Ministry, told Pajhwok Afghan News $30 billion had been pledged by donors and aid-giving countries during conferences in Germany, Japan and London since 2001.

Contracts for only $19.5 billion of the pledged amount had been signed, while the rest of pledges have so far not been materialised. The amount is planned to be given to Afghanistan till 2011. 

Mastor said the government was spending the $3.7 billion assistance it had so far received on developmental schemes. He said of the $13 billion spent by the NGOs, documentary proofs of only eight billion US dollars were provided to the Ministry of Finance.

Five billion USD were spent during 2001 - 2002, and no documentation of that amount was provided to the government by the NGOs, he added.
Mustafa Basharat
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Journalists boycott Taliban's news coverage
KABUL, Apr 9 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The local and foreign media in Afghanistan announced a one-week boycott of news relating to Taliban to register their protest against the murder of their colleague by the militants.

Ajmal Naqshbandi, the kidnapped Afghan journalist, was killed by Taliban on Sunday after, what they described as, the government's failure to accept their (Taliban) demand for the release of more prisoners.

Decision regarding the boycott was taken during a meeting held in Kabul on Monday. The journalists, numbering around 200, later staged a peaceful demonstration in front of the Parliament House.

In a joint declaration, the journalists said they would not publish and broadcast reports about Taliban activities and would not quote their leaders or spokesmen for one week.

The journalists expressed condolence with family members of their slain colleague and offered Fateha (pray) for the solace of his soul.

The declaration asked management of the print media (daily newspapers) to issue a black front page in their Tuesday editions.

In the same token, all electronic media (radio and televisions) have been asked to suspend their transmissions for one minute at 3pm the same day.

The declaration also condemned the international community for its 'silence' over the kidnapping of the Afghan journalist.

It (the declaration) asked the relevant governmental organs to bring to the fore what they had done for the release of Ajmal Naqshbandi.

Representatives of the National Association of Afghan Journalists, Afghanistan Independent Journalists Association, Committee for Protection of Journalists, SAFMA-Afghanistan and a large number of journalists from print and electronic media participated in the peaceful protest demonstration.
Noman Dost
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Neumann's farewell meeting with US forces
KABUL, Apr 9 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The outgoing ambassador of the United States Ronald Neumann on Monday paid a farewell call on his country's troops in Kabul.

Addressing the US soldiers and officers at the Camp Eggers in Kabul, Neumann recalled some remarkable reconstruction projects launched with the financial assistance of the United States.

In this connection, he mentioned the construction of the Khost highway, Faizabad - Kisham road in Badakhshan and Kajaki dam in the southern Helmand province.

He assured his country's uninterrupted support and assistance for Afghanistan. He said the United States would help the government in bring judicial reforms.

He said attacks from Taliban in the southern provinces had registered an increase after handing over of command from the US forces to NATO/ISAF.

Neumann is the second US ambassador to Afghanistan since the overthrow of Taliban in late 2001. His successor, William Woot, is likely to arrive in Kabul soon.

Ahmad Khalid Moahid
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