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April 1, 2007 


Suicide raid on Afghan army kills 4 children
KABUL (Reuters) - Four children were killed in a suicide bomb attack on an Afghan army convoy in the east of the country on Sunday, police said, while Taliban guerrillas hanged three men after accusing them of spying for British troops.

With the approach of spring, violence has surged in        Afghanistan in recent weeks, following the bloodiest period last year since the Taliban's ouster from power in 2001.

The suicide bomber rammed a car into an army convoy in Mehtarlam, the provincial capital of eastern Laghman province, and wounded four troops, police said. The children were in the vicinity of the attack.

"It was a suicide attack and several civilians were also wounded apart from four children who died," Yar Mohammad, a senior provincial police official, told Reuters.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but Taliban guerrillas have unleashed a series of suicide raids and other attacks against Western and Afghan troops in the past.

Earlier on Sunday, the Taliban hanged three men from trees in front of residents in the town of Musa Qala in southern Helmand province after accusing them of being spies for NATO's British troops.

Helmand is part of Taliban's stronghold and the main drug producing region of Afghanistan, the world's leading producer of heroin.

"They were spying for the British troops and had tipped them off about the location of one of our commanders who was killed by an air strike," Nizamuddin, a provincial Taliban commander, told Reuters by telephone from the district.

The Taliban have returned to dominance in Musa Qala and surrounding areas since the collapse of a truce brokered by tribal elders last year between militants and British troops.

The area has been the scene of a series of clashes between the Taliban and Western forces this year.

In neighboring Kandahar province, Taliban guerrillas killed seven policemen in an ambush on Saturday night, provincial police there said.

Violence is increasing ahead of an expected spring offensive by the Islamist militants. Nearly 4,000 people, about a quarter of them civilians, died last year in violence between Taliban and the Western troops.

About half the dead were Taliban guerrillas, Western and Afghan military commanders have said.

A blast in Kabul during the day sparked fear among residents, but officials said the army had blown up seized explosives and mines in a controlled explosion. Kabul has been hit by several bombs in recent months.

This year is seen as a crucial one for both the Taliban and the Western forces led by        NATO and the U.S. military.

The Taliban have declared a holy war against the Western troops and anyone backing them or the government of President Hamid Karzai.

The militants have executed several people after accusing them of either spying or working for Western forces.
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Taliban hang 3 alleged Afghan informers
By NOOR KHAN, Associated Press Writer
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - The Taliban on Sunday executed three men accused of spying for        NATO and government forces in southern        Afghanistan, a local militant commander and villager said.

Separately, a suicide car bomber blew himself up Sunday near an Afghan army convoy in eastern Laghman province, killing five civilians, police said.

The three men from the southern province of Helmand were arrested and allegedly "confessed to their crime" of being spies for NATO and the Afghan government, said Mullah Abdul Qasim, a Taliban commander in the north of Helmand. Qasim said information from the three men led to the deaths of two Taliban commanders.

A villager from Musa Qala, Namatullah Khan, said the lifeless body of one of the men hung from the town's main street for three hours before villagers took him down and buried the corpse.

"The Taliban told the other people of Musa Qala that whoever gives information to the government and our enemies will be punished in the same way as this informer," Khan said.

Another man was hanged from a tree near a bridge by the town of Gereshk, and the third was executed in between Gereshk and Musa Qala, said Naeem Shah, a resident of Gereshk, where the two bodies were later taken.

NATO last month launched its largest ever military operation to root out militants in the northern part of Helmand, the world's leading opium-producing region.

In eastern Afghanistan, a suicide car bomb targeted an Afghan army convoy near Laghman province's city of Mihtarlam, killing five civilians, including three children, said provincial police chief Abdul Karim. Another civilian and five soldiers were wounded, he said.

The soldiers were on their way back to base after helping flood victims in the area, said Defense Ministry spokesman Zahir Azimi.

Azimi gave a different casualty count, saying three civilians were killed, and five civilians and eight soldiers were wounded. The differing tolls could not immediately be reconciled.

In southern Kandahar province, suspected Taliban insurgents ambushed two convoys of Afghan police, killing seven policemen and wounding four, an official said Sunday.

Taliban ambushed one convoy patrolling Saturday night in the border area between Spin Boldak and Shorawak districts, said Kandahar provincial police chief Esmatullah Alizai. One policeman was injured in the ensuing clash, he said.

A second police convoy coming to help the first was also ambushed, and seven policemen were killed and three others wounded, Alizai said.
___

Associated Press writer Rahim Faiez contributed to this report from Kabul.
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Blast rocks Kabul, cause unknown: residents
Sun Apr 1, 3:40 AM ET
KABUL (Reuters) - An explosion shook the Afghan capital on Sunday, but it was not clear what caused it and if there were any casualties, residents said.

Kabul has been hit by several suicide attacks by a resurgent Taliban in recent months as part what is regarded as the start of the expected spring offensive by the militants.

Police said they were checking.

Foreign forces are bracing for a new offensive by the Taliban after 2006 saw the bloodiest fighting since the rebels were ousted from power in 2001.
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Seven police killed in Taliban ambush
Sun Apr 1, 3:11 AM ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) - Taliban fighters ambushed and killed seven policemen who were on their way to support another unit under siege in southern        Afghanistan, an official said Sunday.

The ambush took place on Saturday as the reinforcements headed to a post in Shorabak district in the southwestern corner of the country where one policeman had been hurt, Kandahar province police chief Asmatullah Alizay told AFP.

"Seven police were martyred and another three were wounded in the ambush," the police chief said.

Police returned fire and Alizay said the attackers had suffered casualties, but was unable to provide figures.

Kandahar, the birthplace in the 1990s of the Taliban, has borne the brunt of an insurgency launched by the fundamentalist movement after it was toppled from government in late 2001.

The militants have vowed to topple President Hamid Karzai's Western-backed government.

More than 130 members of the Afghan security forces have been killed in attacks this year.
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Deadly floods, avalanches hit Afghanistan, Pakistan
Sun Apr 1, 8:20 AM ET
KABUL (Reuters) - Floods and avalanches killed scores of people in        Afghanistan and Pakistan, officials said on Sunday, as heavy rains destroyed villages, flooded farmland and drove hundreds from their homes.

At least 30 people died in the central Afghan province of Daikundi and seven in Herat, in the west, on Saturday. Another 11 died elsewhere in the country, government officials said.

"Six hundred people urgently need to be evacuated by air and are exposed to danger from rising waters in Uruzgan province," an Interior Ministry official said, referring to a southern district.

In neighboring Pakistan, an avalanche killed at least 23 people on Saturday night and rescuers were struggling to find 15 more missing in a remote village of Turkoh in the Hindu Kush mountains of the Chitral region.

Hundreds of cattle also perished in the heaviest rains for years in drought-stricken Afghanistan. The floods inundated thousands of hectares of land and washed away or damaged key bridges around the country, including in the capital, Kabul.

The floods have also washed away part of a highway and a key bridge north of Kabul, cutting off links between the north and south of the country, residents said.

Rains also caused avalanches and landslides in northeast Afghanistan, where nearly 20 people died last week.

Across the border in Pakistan's Chitral region, senior police officer Ijaz Ahmed said some communities had been cut off for days due to landslides and bad weather.

"If it persists there could be food and medicine shortages in some remote areas," he told Reuters by telephone from Chitral, some 280 km (175 miles) north of Islamabad.

Flooding swept away at least 20 houses near Chitral city but no casualties were reported and the residents had been evacuated to safety, Ahmed said.
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Flash floods kill 16 people in eastern Afghanistan
Sun Apr 1, 7:51 AM ET
JALALABAD, Afghanistan (AFP) - Flash floods caused by torrential rains killed at least 16 people and destroyed dozens of houses near the Hindu Kush mountain range in eastern        Afghanistan, police said Sunday.

Floods hit three districts in the northeastern province of Nuristan overnight and on Sunday, swamping villages and washing away roads, provincial police chief General Aseel Totakhail told AFP.

"Sixteen people have died, seven others are wounded, dozens of houses have been destroyed. Villages have been cut off," he said.

Totakhail asked for urgent help from the government, the        United Nations and foreign forces to evacuate people from the flood-affected area.

"Many people need to be air-lifted. Hundreds of families left homeless are in need of immediate help," he said.

Floods also affected the nearby eastern provinces of Kunar, Laghman and Nangarhar, causing damage to houses and farms but no human casualties were reported.

Heavy rain has caused flooding across Afghanistan in the past weeks with avalanches also claiming several lives.

Dozens of mudbrick houses in the capital Kabul were in ruins Sunday after a downpour Saturday. The Kabul River that runs through the city, usually as a dirty stream, was overflowing its banks Sunday.
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Afghanistan will be SAARC's land bridge: Foreign minister
Sun, 01 Apr 2007 10:39:01 GMT  Indo Asian News Service via EARTHtimes.org
Kabul, April 1 Proud to be part of the South Asian community, Afghanistan has promised to be the 'land bridge' between the region, Central Asia and West Asia.

Afghanistan's entry into the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) has the potential to fundamentally change and reinvigorate regional economic linkages, Afghan Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta said in a statement ahead of the 14th SAARC Summit in New Delhi April 3-4.

Spanta said his country was keen on trans-border transport networks, energy corridors and free flow of people and ideas within the region.

'Our accession to SAARC will certainly open new opportunities for all,' the minister stressed.

However, he underlined the need for stability and security in South Asia to enable this to materialise.

'Terrorism, extremism and radicalism are currently the main elements of instability and insecurity in our region and around the world. It is important that we address the main causes of these factors collectively and work even harder to have a coordinated campaign against them,' Spanta said.

He added: 'Afghanistan, lying at the heart of the region, is proud to be your partner in this collective effort to achieve regional prosperity.'

Spanta noted that his country had abiding interest in all SAARC activities, including agriculture, health and education.

Afghanistan is joining as the eighth member of SAARC.
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Afghan Minister Says Clinics to Close If Locals Do Not Ensure Doctors' Safety
Text of report by Afghan state radio on 31 March
The minister of public health has warned that health centres will be closed down unless local tribal leaders and influential people guarantee the safety of doctors and health centres in southern provinces. Public Health Minister Dr Sayd Mohammad Amin Fatemi told a Bakhtar Information Agency correspondent that health workers were not political activists. They only save the lives of human beings and serve humanity regardless of any ethnic, racial and language prejudice.

Speaking on the abduction of Dr Musa, three nurses and their driver in Ziarey District of Kandahar Province, he said the abduction of health workers and their exchange with armed men could not be justified. They are only serving humanity and work in war- hit areas to implement health programmes. But they are kidnapped to obtain the release of armed men. He called on the kidnapers to immediately release these doctors unconditionally so health programmes and activities will not be hampered in southern and southwestern regions. The minister of public health complained about local tribal leaders and said that the abduction and killing of health workers, stealing of medical ambulances and deterioration of situation to hamper health activities will lead to the closure of health centres in these regions. He urged the tribal leaders to give a guarantee that health workers would no longer be kidnapped and their establishments and equipment would not be harmed. The minister of health said that 38 health workers, most of them doctors, were martyred under different names in southern and southwestern provinces over the past two and a half years.
Source: BBC Monitoring South Asia
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Chancellor, defence ministers on Afghanistan trip
Fri Mar 30, 3:37 AM ET
LONDON (AFP) - Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown and Defence Secretary Des Browne arrived in        Afghanistan on Friday on a surprise visit to British troops, the Ministry of Defence said.

Brown said: "One of the things I will be saying to the forces I meet is you become ever more aware of the risks and dangers they are having to undergo and the courage and the bravery of the troops themselves."

Speaking about the 15 British Royal Navy personnel being held in        Iran, he added: "Overnight, the        United Nations resolution is calling definitively for their release. That's the unanimous view of the international community."

Tehran released a second letter apparently written by the only woman among the group, 26-year-old Faye Turney, in which she suggested it was time for Britain to withdraw its troops from        Iraq.

"The treatment of Faye Turney is cruel, callous, inhuman and unacceptable," Brown said.
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Wartime friction grows between private and uniformed forces
By BILL SIZEMORE, The Virginian-Pilot  April 1, 2007
A pending Air Force court-martial offers an inside look at an increasingly common occurrence on the 21st-century battlefield: friction between uniformed American troops and the growing force of private military contractors deployed alongside them.

In a supercharged case of combat-zone road rage, two Air Force lieutenant colonels drew their weapons on a Blackwater USA contractor after their vehicles bumped each other on a busy road in Afghanistan in the fall.

As a result, military prosecutors brought potentially career-ending charges against the two officers.

Now, after investigating the case, an Air Force hearing officer has recommended that the charges be dropped, not only suggesting that the contractor might have been the aggressor but also citing the possibility of witness tampering, attempted bribery and falsified evidence.

There are conflicting reports as to whether the alleged improprieties were committed on behalf of the airmen or the Blackwater contractor.

The case illustrates a new reality of warfare that is still only dimly perceived beyond the front lines: There are both a public army and a private army out there, and sometimes they don't get along so well.

In Iraq, where there are now nearly as many civilian contractors on the ground as uniformed troops, a Government Accountability Office investigation found 20 incidents of "blue on white" violence - U.S. troops firing on contractors or vice versa - in one five-month period in 2005.

Will we ever know what really happened during the road rage incident between the Blackwater contractor and the Air Force officers?

The Afghanistan incident started innocuously enough. Lt. Col. Gary Brown and Lt. Col. Christopher Hall set out from the Kabul airport on Sept. 19 to deliver paperwork to Camp Eggers, a U.S. military base.

They steered their white Land Cruiser down a busy road under typically unruly Third World driving conditions - dodging bicycles, donkey carts, pedestrians, herds of animals and giant potholes.

According to the two men's testimony at a preliminary hearing in February, a fast-moving, dark sport utility vehicle with blacked-out windows tried to cut in front of them, clipping the Land Cruiser's right front end before falling back into its lane.

Moments later the dark SUV pulled alongside and bumped the Land Cruiser again, the two testified, causing them to fear for their lives.

Hall testified that he thought: "Oh, my God, I'm going to die. He is trying to kill us."

Still breathing heavily, the airmen pulled up to the gate at Camp Eggers. Brown looked in the rear view mirror. There was the dark SUV again.

The driver got out and approached the Land Cruiser. Brown and Hall described him as dark-skinned, with beard growth, wearing a vest with ammo magazines hanging from it.

Brown testified that he thought the man was a suicide bomber and that "I am not going to see my wife and babies again."

Hall described the man as furious, spitting, his veins bulging, yelling, "Who are you? Where do you work?" He and the two airmen got into an escalating shouting match, hurling expletives back and forth.

At one point, Hall testified, the man said something like, "I'm DEA and I'm really going to (expletive) you." Hall said he felt like a trapped animal.

The two airmen said they got out of their vehicle with their weapons drawn - Hall with a pistol and Brown with an M4 assault rifle - and ordered the man to the ground.

When he refused to comply, Brown testified, he tried to shove him down. It looked like a testosterone-fueled waltz: Brown stepping forward, the other man stepping back. Brown even tried tripping him up. Nothing worked.

Finally, Brown testified, he stepped back, raised his rifle and clicked off the safety. Brown said the man's eyes widened, he threw his hands in the air and said, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm an American, I'm sorry."

Brown said he still considered the man a threat and wanted to get to safety before the situation escalated again. He threw the man's car keys into some bushes, got back into the vehicle with Hall, and drove into Camp Eggers to report the incident.

While they were there, two men from the U.S. Embassy came in to make a report of their own.

The man in the SUV, it turned out, was Jimmy Bergeron, a contractor with Blackwater.

The private military company based in Moyock, N.C., has a contract with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to provide narcotics interdiction training in Afghanistan.

Brown and Hall stand accused of ramming Bergeron's vehicle, not the other way around, and of assaulting and threatening him.

Lt. Col. Leslea Pickle, who presided over the preliminary hearing - called an Article 32 hearing - concluded that there is no physical evidence to determine which vehicle rammed the other.

But in her report, issued last month, Pickle wrote that it was Bergeron who initiated the confrontation at the gate by approaching the Land Cruiser and that Brown and Hall followed the prescribed rules of engagement in the face of hostile behavior.

Those rules, she wrote, call for using the "four S's" in order: "shout, show, shove and shoot."

"In my opinion," she wrote, "Lt. Col. Brown demonstrated a calm, collected demeanor during the whole incident. Another person might have been 'trigger-happy' and shot Mr. Bergeron."

She added: "There is some evidence that there have been other instances of aggressive behavior by civilian contractor personnel and that Mr. Bergeron may have had prior 'issues' according to his peers at Blackwater."

Pickle recommended that all charges against the two airmen be dropped and that several alleged irregularities in the government's case be further investigated:

The commander of the Afghan guards at the gate reported an attempt to bribe the guards to testify falsely.

The defense attorneys alleged that a purported videotape of the incident at the gate was fabricated.

The charge sheets drawn up against Brown and Hall were improperly modified.

Pickle's findings are a welcome vindication, said Charles Gittins, Brown's civilian attorney.

"It's a sad state of affairs when the Air Force doesn't believe their own officers," he said, "two career officers who immediately reported what happened, and the Air Force goes after them."

Anne Tyrrell, a Blackwater spokeswoman, said the company is restricted from commenting on the case because of the pending litigation but added: "There are two sides of the story, and they are very, very different."

Bergeron's account of the incident is not part of the judicial record because prosecutors offered only to provide his testimony by telephone, not in person - an offer that was rejected by Pickle.

In a sworn statement given just after the incident, Bergeron said the Air Force officers' vehicle slammed into his.

At the gate, when Brown ordered him to the ground, Bergeron said, he displayed his U.S. Embassy badge and said, "I am a U.S. citizen. This is wrong!"

He said Brown, leveling his rifle inches from Bergeron's face, replied, "You're about to be a dead U.S. citizen!"

On his Web site, Bergeron identifies himself as a former Marine who has worked on teams protecting American diplomats in Afghanistan and training an Afghan counter-narcotics police force. According to a recorded greeting on his telephone, he is now deployed on a training mission in Africa.

Bergeron did not respond to an e-mailed interview request.

Pickle's report has gone to Lt. Gen. Gary North, commander of the 9th Air Force, who will decide whether the case will go to court-martial.

An Air Force spokeswoman was unable to say when the decision is expected.
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Refugees asked to close businesses and leave
Pajhwok Report
PESHWAR, Mar 30 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Afghan Refugees living in four camps in Pakistan's NWFP and Balochistan provinces have been asked to wind up their business before the expiry of the deadline for their repatriation to Afghanistan.

The terse message was issued by Pakistan's Federal Minister for Frontier Region Yar Mohammad Rind during a meeting with elders of Kacha Garhi and Jalozai refugee camps on Thursday.

The minister asked the refugees to cooperate with the Pakistan government in their repatriation to Afghanistan, and urged them to contribute to their homeland's reconstruction.

The minister informed the refugees elders that the tripartite commission had decided to close down four refugee camps in Pakistan and to repatriate the inmates to their homeland.

"The closure of Kacha Garhi, Jalozai, Pir Jangle and Alizai camps will begin from April 16 and will complete till September 30, 2007," he told reporters after his meeting with refugees' representatives in Peshawar.

The minister said the Afghan refugees holding Pakistani national identity cards and owning properties will be considered as illegal immigrants, as and when their real identity as refugees was established. He added that proper action would be taken against them under immigration law.

The minister told the elders that as a democratic set up was now in place in Afghanistan and elected institutions were functional, they must return to their country to participate in the reconstruction process there.

"In collaboration with the government of Afghanistan and the UNHCR, over three million refugees living in Pakistan will be repatriated under a three-year plan, he said.

The minister told the Afghan refugees that the repatriation package had been raised to $100 per family and that the refugees should avail it to ensure their orderly return.

Rind said Pakistan wanted development and prosperity of Afghanistan and was raising voice at each forum to this end.

About the reservations of refugee elders about the lack of civic amenities in Afghanistan, the minister said the Afghan government had agreed to set up 50 small towns for returning refugees and the number of towns would increase to 100 in due course.
PAN Monitor
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Pakistan gifts TV transmitter to Afghanistan
Pajhwok Report
ISLAMABAD, Mar 30 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Pakistan has gifted a Rs4.6 million TV transmitter with allied equipment to Afghanistan for installation in the southern province of Kandahar.

Addressing the handing over ceremony held at the headquarters of the Pakistan Television (PTV), Pakistan's Information Minister Mohammad Ali Durrani said his country would in rebuilding of Afghan media.

"Pakistan is facilitating Afghanistan in media field with training and technology to further augment fraternal ties with the brotherly nation," said the minister.

He said Afghan TV channels would be allowed to beam their transmission in Pakistan in compliance with Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority or PEMRA rules, while similar facility would be provided to PTV channels in Afghanistan.

Expressing gratitude on behalf of the government of Afghanistan, Afghan Charge d' Affaires Majnoon Gulab said both the countries shared common traditions and history which resulted in deep-rooted relationship.

He said the gift of transmitter would further broaden the spheres of cooperation in different fields and cement cordial relations between the two countries.

Managing director of PTV Ashraf Azeem told the function that the TV equipment had been handed over to the Afghan counsel general in Quetta.
PAN Monitor
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Training tribesmen to fight al-Qaeda being mulled
NEW YORK, Mar 29 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The United States has offered the necessary help and assistance to tribesmen in Afghanistan and Pakistan to weed out the Taliban and al-Qaeda from their regions, sources told Pajhwok Afghan News.

Such an offer is understood to have come in wake of some tribal communities on the border area, specially in Pakistan showing "encouraging signs" of fighting out foreign mercenaries.

Officials in US State Department said the offer to tribesmen in both Afghanistan and Pakistan was mainly focused towards "training and providing other necessary assistance" so that they could successfully fight out the terrorists in the region.

However, officials ruled out any direct supply of arms and ammunition to them. "This (supply of arms), if any, would have to be done by the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan," said the official.

It is understood that of late there has been efforts by the NATO and US forces to outreach the tribal communities so that they become a helping hand in the fight against terrorism.

Under this programme, officials said tribesmen could do their own policing within their jurisdiction and report to them about the movement of Taliban. In response, the US and NATO forces would not enter their areas.

Though unwilling to divulge details as to how and in what form the offer has been made, the source said initial reaction had not been "very positive". At the same time, they hoped that even if the process was slow, there would be takers for this offer.

"This is a difficult mission and we are working on it," the official said.
Lalit K. Jha
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Park being developed in Lashkargah
LASHKARGAH, Mar 28 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Work was launched to develop a modern park in this capital of the southern Helmand province.

Provincial Governor Asadullah Wafa inaugurated the construction work on Wednesday.

The park, the first of its type in the province, will be completed at the cost of 0.7 million US dollars. It would cover an area of 17.5 acres, said the governor during the inauguration ceremony.

He said it would have all the recreational facilites, like sports, greenery, fountains etc. He said amount for the construction of the park had been provided by the United Kingdom. The work would be completed in six months, he added.

Regarding the reconstruction process in the province, Wafa said despite dissatisfactory security situation, the rebuilding process was going well.

Hashmatullah, resident of Lashkargah, told Pajhwok Afghan News people were fed up with fighting and lawlessness. They wanted recreational activities and construction of the park was a positive step in this regard.
Samad Rohani
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