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April 22, 2007 

Afghan blasts, ambush kill 21
by Emranullah Arif
KHOST, Afghanistan (AFP) - A double bombing struck Afghanistan's eastern city of Khost Sunday, killing 11 people, while two attacks left 10 more dead, including four members of the intelligence services.

The deadliest explosion was caused by a suicide bomber, wearing police uniform and riding a motorcycle, who detonated his explosives in a busy meat market in Khost, provincial deputy intelligence director Mira Jan told AFP.

Ten people were killed, all of them civilians, provincial public health director Gul Mohammad Mohammadi said.

Four died at the scene and six in hospital, he said adding that more than 40 were wounded, four critically. Police said however only five people were killed the blast.

At least three of the dead were shopkeepers, Jan said.

Hours earlier, a bomb rigged into a camera exploded in a shop in a central market in the city, killing one man and wounding seven, officials said.

Mohammadi, the Khost health director, said the wounded had said the blast was linked to a private argument, not the Taliban insurgency, and had followed a fight between two rival groups late Saturday.

Khost, near the border with Pakistan, has been hard-hit by violence linked to the insurgency as the Taliban have stepped up the use of        Iraq-style suicide bombings and ambushes in recent months.

The province is across from Pakistan's tribal North Waziristan region where a controversial deal last year saw government troops scale down their presence, which critics said allowed pro-Taliban militants to boost their activities in        Afghanistan.

In other violence Sunday, a remote-controlled bomb exploded underneath a vehicle of the Afghan intelligence services about 100 kilometres (60 miles) east of Kabul, killing two officers, a bodyguard and a driver, police said.

"This is the work of the enemies of Afghanistan," said the deputy police chief for Laghman province, Najeeb Hotack, using a term that refers to the Taliban.

And in the southeastern province of Paktia, Taliban fighters ambushed a police patrol before dawn, kicking off a deadly three-hour battle.

"Five enemies were killed and their bodies were left at the battlefield," provincial government spokesman Din Mohammad Darwaish said. "One policeman was also martyred and another was wounded."

Violence linked to the Taliban, driven from government in late 2001 by a US-led coalition, has steadily increased in the past years.

From just five suicide blasts in the country in 2005 there have been already more than 30 this year, killing more than 60 people.

There were three times more suicide attacks in January this year (12) than the same month in 2006, according to a UN report released in March.

The growing Afghan army said however Sunday it was in a better position to confront the violence than last year, which was the deadliest in the insurgency with more than 4,000 people killed, most of them militants.

"Now we have 46,200 soldiers and the number will increase to 64,000 by the end of the year," defence ministry spokesman Mohammad Zahir Azimi told reporters.

The government had more than five billion dollars for its development, much of which would be spent on equipping the ground and air forces, he said.

"On the contrary, the enemy is in a much worse position. They have lost their hide-outs, last year's operations has also weakened the enemy.

"The enemy does not have the capacity to fight us, that is why they resort to roadside bombings or suicide attacks."
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Canadian commander says its uncertain Afghan military can go it alone by 2009
FORWARD OPERATING BASE SPERWAN GHAR, Afghanistan (CP) - The commander of Canadian forces in Afghanistan says it is uncertain if the Afghan military will be able to go it alone by 2009.

But Brig.-Gen. Tim Grant says Canadian efforts have already paid plenty of dividends to the people of Afghanistan.

Grant, back in the battlefield after several weeks of leave, paid a visit today to the Canadian troops at forward operating base Sperwan Ghar, 30 kilometres west of Kandahar city.

He says there's a plan and a schedule in place to ensure Afghan National Army troops are trained and up to speed before a possible Canadian pullout two years from now.

But he says the jury is still out on whether the shattered country will be ready to go it alone if international assistance forces leave in 2009.

In Ottawa, the opposition Liberals have tabled a motion to compel the federal Conservative government to tell NATO that Canadian troops will be pulled out of Afghanistan in two years.
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Pakistan, Afghan leaders to meet in Turkey in row over cross-border movement of militants
By Sadaqat Jan
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - The leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan will meet in Turkey next week to discuss a row over rival claims that militants frequently cross their common border, Pakistan's president said Sunday.

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said the meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai will be held in Turkey and that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will also attend the talks.

Afghanistan and Pakista n are close U.S. anti-terrorism allies but both have accused each other of failing to effectively counter Taliban militia battling a U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan.

Afghan government and Western military officials have repeatedly said that Taliban fighters are hiding in Pakistan and stage attacks against Karzai's U.S.-backed government from there. Pakistan denies the charge.

Musharraf said that the upcoming meeting with Karzai has been brokered by Erdogan, who is "trying to mediate" between Pakistan and Afghanistan in the row over cross-border militant movements.

"The effort will be that the talks are held in a good atmosphere and ground realities should be understood," Musharraf told reporters before leaving on a four-nation European tour that will take him to Poland, Spain, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Turkey.

"The accusations that have been coming on us from there (Afghanistan), that have been coming from President Karzai, they should be stopped," Musharraf said.

"I have said many times that there is no reality in what they say. We will talk about this," Musharraf said adding, "I hope there will be some improvement."

Musharraf did not specify the date of his meeting with Karzai, but Pakistani and Afghan officials have said that the two leaders are expected to meet at the end of April.

The Musharraf-Karzai meeting is expected to be held in the Turkish city of Ankara. Turkey has close ties with both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Afghanistan and Pakistan share a long porous border which is not clearly demarcated in places.

Pakistan says it has deployed about 80,000 troops along its border with Afghanistan to track down militants since becoming a U.S. ally after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in America.

A U.S. military campaign ousted the Taliban from power in late 2001 for harbouring al-Qaida.
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Pak-Afghan border fencing at all costs: Kasuri
From our ANI Correspondent DailyIndia.com, FL
Islamabad, Apr 22: Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri has said that the decision to fence the porous Pakistan-Afghanistan border would be implemented at all costs. 

He said the decision was taken to curb the cross border movement of terrorists into and from Afghanistan.

Pakistan desired friendly ties with Afghanistan, but relations could only be improved through mutual understanding rather than through media exposure, the Daily Times quoted him as saying, adding that President Gen Pervez Musharraf and Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai would soon hold a meeting to discuss the fencing issue and other pressing concerns.

Pakistan had in December 2006 announced its plan to fence and mine parts of its border with Afghanistan to prevent cross border movement of terrorists.

The announcement came in for flak from Afghanistan, the UN and the six party Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) religious alliance.

While Kabul and the MMA said the move would, besides endangering lives, divide the ethnic Pashtoon community, the UN said the move had the possibility of causing 'more casualties in a region already littered with ordnance'.

Afghanistan has repeatedly accused Pakistan of not doing enough to control al Qaeda and Taliban elements from carrying out insurgent raids into southern and south-eastern Afghanistan.

Afghanistan also doesn't recognise the 1491-mile long Durand line as the international border demarcating the ethnic Pashtoon dominated areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In a hard-hitting statement, Kabul earlier said the move would fail to 'confront terrorists in a real manner', adding that Islamabad should rather concentrate on containing militant elements from sneaking into Afghanistan to carry out attacks on Afghan and NATO forces.

Interestingly, tribesmen from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) have announced support for the federal government's decision to fence the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

In a grand jirga at Wana, capital of South Waziristan, some months back, tribesmen said the fencing would bring an end to the Afghan authorities' accusations of terrorist infiltration.

The jirga however, opposed the mining of the border, saying it would risk the lives of innocent people and wildlife.

Later Pakistan said it would not mine, but would certainly fence the border.

Kasuri further said tribes have forced militants to leave areas near the Pak-Afghan border so work can start for the economic development of these areas.
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Could Afghanistan be next Iraq?
Debra J. Saunders Sunday, April 22, 2007 San Francisco Chronicle
THE SIMPLE equation in politics today -- at least according to many Democrats -- is that the war in Iraq is a bad war and the war in Afghanistan is a good war. If a congressional timetable forces a pullout of U.S. troops from Iraq, however, will Afghanistan go the way of Iraq?

My fear has been that a pull out from Iraq will further imperil Afghanistan. Having succeeded, jihadists who have gone to Iraq to martyr themselves, instead would go to Afghanistan.

Also, if U.S. troops precipitously withdrew from Iraq, there would be a vacancy for the "bad war" slot; anti-war activists in North America and Europe would push for their countries to withdraw their troops from the NATO coalition in Afghanistan. In short order, they could succeed in undermining the effort.

Afghan Ambassador Said Tayeb Jawad has seen his country suffer from roadside bombs and suicide bombers, which he noted are a "foreign phenomenon in Afghan culture" inspired by terrorists in Iraq. The diplomat visited The Chronicle last week, which gave me the opportunity to ask him what he thought would happen if U.S. troops left Iraq as per the wishes of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Jawad had a rosy response. U.S. support for Afghanistan is strong and bipartisan, he answered. He does not think an withdrawal in Iraq would affect his country and that "support for Afghanistan will be stronger."

In a follow-up e-mail, Jawad explained that, "Terrorists are opportunistic and constantly trade one battleground for another, moving from Chechnya to Uzbekistan to Afghanistan to Pakistan to Iraq." If terrorists do "find their way to Afghanistan, with additional resources becoming available, better training and equipment and a robust and unified international front consisting of the United States and NATO, the Afghan government will be able to counter them."

Bob Ayers of Chatham House, a London-based foreign-affairs think tank, gave a different answer as to what is likely to happen in Afghanistan if U.S. troops pull out of Iraq a la Pelosi: "We will see an ever-increasing level of radicalization, coupled with a return to more localized government based on tribal loyalties with a commensurate decreasing hold on the country by the central government."

And: "There would likely be a period of violence directed against the central government, but given the relative weakness of the central government, it is doubtful that such attacks could be resisted and stable government maintained for a protracted period of time."

Sounds like Iraq to me.

As for my belief that anti-war factions would start chipping away at popular support for the war, Jawad answered, "The U.S. government and new Congress support is robust and bi-partisan and long term."

I hope, if Congress does set a hard timetable to withdraw from Iraq, that Jawad is right. Clearly, he wants what is best for his country.

As an American, however, I don't see how the same arguments for pulling troops out of Iraq won't apply to the 25,000 American troops in Afghanistan. Sure, Iraq war critics like to point out that the United States had a casus belli -- Osama bin Laden -- for entering Afghanistan. But we don't know that bin Laden is still in Afghanistan.

As the left likes to dwell on President Bush's failures, the failure to get bin Laden lends itself to defeatism.

Then there is the left's conceit that only liberals really care about the toll on U.S. troops. According to the Pentagon, as of April 14, the death toll of U.S. troops in Afghanistan was 315 since October 2001. If fighting should escalate, how long will it take before the media start reporting on benchmarks? As in: 500 dead, and what can we show for it?

Canada has sacrificed as well -- losing 54 troops in Afghanistan since 2002. On Thursday, Liberals in Canada's Parliament introduced a motion calling for Canadian troops to be out of the NATO military mission by February 2009. Italian discontent about troops in Afghanistan forced Prime Minister Romano Prodi to step down temporarily in February. Polls show Germans want to get out, too -- even though the German government has kept its NATO troops out of harm's way.

Look at the headlines from Afghanistan.

"Afghan civilian death toll up in 2006/More than 1,000 people were killed, rights group says." That's from January.

"Afghan town falls to Taliban after NATO troops leave." February.

"Marine unit ordered to leave Afghanistan / They're accused of killing civilians" -- that was in March.

And this month: "Iranian-made arms seized in Afghanistan."

While Pelosi has called Afghanistan "the real war on terror," the nation is mired in internal strife, beset by jihadists and its internal problems undermine attempts to create an infrastructure needed to make Afghans prosperous.

Jawad sees long-term international will. If he were President Bush, folks would call that a "rosy scenario."

E-mail: dsaunders@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page E - 5 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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Bush's phone call focused on Ankara meeting
WASHINGTON, Apr 20 (Pajhwok Afghan News): President Hamid Karzai and his US counterpart George W. Bush discussed among other things, the upcoming Pak-Afghan summit in Ankara on April 29, diplomatic sources told Pajhwok Afghan News.

The telephone call was made by President Bush on Thursday and the conversation between the two leaders lasted for about 20 to 25 minutes, said the sources.

During the course of their discussion on a host of issues, the two leaders mainly focused on Karzai's meeting with his Pakistani counterpart Pervez Musharraf.

The sources said the US authorities considered the Musharraf - Karzai meeting very crucial for regional peace and as a follow up to the White House meeting between the two leaders in September last.

"It (Ankara meet) was one of the important topics of discussion between the two leaders, when Bush telephoned Karzai," the diplomatic source, familiar with the conversation told Pajhwok Afghan News.

The Ankara meet is being held at the initiative of Turkey to patch up the differences between the two countries, which have mounted in recent times.

Meanwhile, at its daily press briefing, the White House spokeswoman said Bush during his phone call reaffirmed the joint partnership and strong relationship shared between the two countries. 

"They discussed ongoing security operations against extremist elements, as well as progress on implementation of the comprehensive approach, security, governance and economic development and reconstruction," the spokeswoman said.

"They also talked about ongoing counter-narcotics efforts," she said.
Lalit K. Jha
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