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April 9, 2007 


Afghan paper urges execution of Taliban prisoners
By Sayed Salahuddin
Mon Apr 9, 3:56 AM ET
KABUL (Reuters) - The Afghan government should execute Taliban prisoners, an Afghan daily said on Monday, the day after the rebels killed the translator of an Italian journalist.

A spokesman for the Taliban commander holding translator Ajmal Naqshbandi said he was beheaded on Sunday after the government refused to free several insurgent prisoners. Government officials later confirmed the man was killed.

"Martyring Ajmal Naqshbandi and their other crimes happen as the government shows extreme leniency towards the Taliban prisoners," Arman-e-Millie daily said in an editorial.

"There has been no implementation of punishment for any criminal and killer Taliban who has been sentenced to heavy punishment by the judicial authorities," it said. "From now on, criminal Taliban should be executed."

Newly Married Naqshbandi, along with La Repubblica reporter Daniele Mastrogiacomo and his local driver, were kidnapped early last month.

The Taliban freed the Italian after about two weeks when Kabul released five of its senior members.

The swap happened after the group beheaded Mastrogiacomo's driver, but the rebels had held on to his translator in a bid to secure the release of more of their men.

Another daily, Cheragh, criticized the government for failing to free Naqshbandi but going ahead with a deal to secure Mastrogiacomo's freedom and save Italy's fragile government from embarrassment.

"Mr. Karzai, no doubt, you managed to save the Italian government from falling. But with regret, you could not save the life of an Afghan and someone who had voted for you," it said.

A group representing Afghan journalists said the execution has sparked fear among local reporters of covering areas where the Taliban are active.

Some Afghan journalists vowed to leave out Taliban comments or statements from publications.

The Mastrogiacomo deal was widely criticized in Italy and  Afghanistan. Security experts warned it would trigger more abductions of foreigners.

Last week, two French aid workers -- a man and a woman -- were kidnapped along with three Afghan colleagues in the rugged, lawless Nimroz province between  Iran and Afghanistan's opium heartland of Helmand province.

On Friday, Karzai said he had come under pressure from Rome to approve a deal to win the journalist's release but ruled out any more prisoner swaps with the Taliban.

The Taliban are also holding five Afghan health officials and have demanded the release of more rebels.

The insurgents have not yet issued a ransom demand in return for freeing the French pair.
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Interpreter's execution 'barbaric, unjust': La Repubblica chief
ROME (AFP) - The editor in chief of Italian daily La Repubblica on Monday said the murder of the interpreter for an Italian journalist, who had himself been kidnapped in  Afghanistan, was "barbaric".

Ajmal Naqshbandi worked for La Repubblica journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo, before both were captured on March 4.

Ezio Mauro, the editor in chief of the newspaper that employs Mastrogiacomo, said that the young Afghan interpreter, whose execution was announced on Sunday, also worked as a journalist.

"We had hoped until the final moment that the news was not true. This was a barbaric, unjust killing, even in a time of war," he wrote.

"We at La Repubblica are mourning the death of a work colleague, but at the same time denounce the difficulty for journalists to carry out their work in the areas controlled by the Taliban who despise not only the freedom of expression and the rights of prisoners but also human life," concluded Mauro.

Mastrogiacomo was freed two weeks after their abduction in a controversial exchange for five Taliban prisoners. Their Afghan driver was beheaded before Mastrogiacomo's release.

As Italian newspapers are not published on Easter Monday, La Repubblica's editorial was published on its website.
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US denounces 'barbaric' Afghan hostage killing
Sun Apr 8, 1:17 PM ET
CRAWFORD, United States (AFP) - The White House on Sunday denounced the "barbaric" beheading of an Afghan reporter whom the Taliban kidnapped last month along with an Italian journalist.

"This barbaric killing reminds us of why the United States and  NATO are in  Afghanistan in the first place: To help the good people of that country defeat the Taliban extremists and their al-Qaeda allies," said national security spokesman Gordon Johndroe.

Taliban militants said Sunday that they beheaded Ajmal Naqshbandi -- whom they captured in southern Helmand province on March 5 with Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo -- after the Afghan government refused to negotiate his release.

Taliban claims could not be verified independently but a western diplomat citing local security sources said under the condition of anonymity that Naqshbandi was killed.

Mastrogiacomo was freed after some two weeks under an exchange deal which saw five Taliban prisoners freed from Afghan jails. The insurgents had demanded the release of some of their jailed colleagues in order to save Naqshbandi.
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Italy's Prodi again under fire as Afghan interpreter reported killed
Mon Apr 9, 2:30 AM ET
ROME (AFP) - Prime Minister Romano Prodi faced new criticism of his foreign policy after the reported killing of an interpreter who worked for a since-freed Italian hostage in the war-torn  Afghanistan.

"The execution of (La Repubblica correspondent Daniele) Mastrogiacomo's interpreter is a terrible responsibility for the Prodi government," said lawmaker Isabella Berolini of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party.

"It casts light on the cynicism of Prodi, of (Foreign Minister Massimo) D'Alema and company," she said on Sunday.

Earlier, Prodi said he "learned with anguish the news of the murder of the interpreter that followed that of the (correspondent's) driver."

Speaking to ANSA, he added: "We strongly condemn this absurd crime."

The Taliban claimed Sunday that the freelance reporter, Ajmal Naqshbandi, was beheaded because the Afghan authorities refused to negotiate over their demands for the release of two Taliban militants.

Prodi's fragile centre-left coalition survived a key test on March 27 over the highly sensitive issue of funding for Italy's 2,000-strong contingent in the  NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

Only a month earlier, a similar vote sparked a major political crisis in which Prodi resigned before being reinstated and surviving confidence votes in both houses of parliament.

The centre-left has only a two-vote advantage in the 315-seat Senate, and the far left flank of the coalition opposes Italy's foreign military operations, particularly in Afghanistan.

When the lower house of parliament, the chamber of deputies, voted on the funding on March 8 -- as the hostage crisis in Afghanistan was just beginning to unfold -- the measure passed overwhelmingly, with 524 in favour, three opposed and 19 abstentions.

Naqshbandi was kidnapped along with Mastrogiacomo on March 4 in southern Afghanistan.

Mastrogiacomo was released in a swap of five Taliban prisoners that angered many Afghans and prompted the United States and other countries to condemn negotiations with "terrorists".
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Taliban Threaten To Execute More Afghan Prisoners
April 9, 2007 --(RFE/RL) A purported spokesman for the Taliban in Afghanistan says its fighters will kill four captured Afghan medical personnel and their driver unless the government releases two Taliban commanders.

The spokesman, Shahabuddin Attal, who claims to speak for senior Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah, says the five prisoners were kidnapped in Kandahar Province in late March.

The threat comes one day after the Taliban announced that they had beheaded Ajmal Naqshbandi, an Afghan translator seized along with an Italian reporter and his driver in early March. The driver was reportedly beheaded by the captors.

The Afghan central government's decision to swap several Taliban prisoners in exchange for the freedom of the Italian journalist, Daniele Mastrogiacomo, prompted surprise among some governments currently involved in NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission.

Also on April 8, six Canadian soldiers serving with the NATO-led force in southern Afghanistan were killed by a bomb, while a seventh NATO soldier has died in a separate incident in Afghanistan.
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Fears for French hostages after Taliban beheading
Mon Apr 9, 4:08 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - Fears mounted Monday for the safety of two French aid workers kidnapped by the Taliban militia in southern  Afghanistan after the insurgents beheaded an abducted Afghan journalist.

The Taliban said it executed Afghan reporter Ajmal Naqshbandi, who was kidnapped last month with Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo, because the government failed to meet their demand to free rebel prisoners.

La Repubblica correspondent Mastrogiacomo was freed after two weeks in captivity in a controversial exchange for five Taliban prisoners which was widely condemned. His Afghan driver was beheaded before his release.

A senior government official speaking on condition of anonymity said he believed the Taliban killed Naqshbandi to pressure President Hamid Karzai into making another similar deal to free the French nationals.

"If you remember when the Taliban killed Mastrogiacomo's driver the government freed Taliban prisoners to save the Italian. I believe they killed Naqshbandi to scare us into accepting their demands again," he told AFP.

"But I don't think the government is in a position to comply with more such demands. It just can't do it," he said.

The Taliban say they have been holding a French man and woman along with three Afghans since abducting them in the southwestern province of Nimroz last Tuesday. The guerrillas have not yet made any demand for their release.

But a Taliban spokesman said Sunday that the Taliban leaders will decide the fate of the French aid workers from Terre d'Enfance (A World for Our Children) in "coming days" as they are now done with Naqshbandi.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai had described the prisoner exchange to free Mastrogiacomo as an "extraordinary" situation and said he would not release any more Taliban prisoners to save the Italian's Afghan colleague.

Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman Sultan Ahmad Baheen told AFP the government will not make further deals with the Taliban, although it was "worried for the French nationals".

"The government is determined to not make any further deals with the terrorists. No more deals, with no one, for no one," Baheen said.

Another Afghan official said the government was in a tight corner over the French hostages, following widespread domestic criticism of its failure to save a fellow Afghan while helping free the Italian journalist.

"The government is obviously in a very difficult position -- if the French ask for the same thing the Italians did, what would the government say?" the official said, again asking not to be named.

The execution of the Afghan journalist capped a bloody weekend in Afghanistan in which seven  NATO troops were killed in roadside bomb blasts, including six Canadian troops who died in a single explosion on Sunday.

The militant Islamic Taliban movement were ousted by US-led forces in late 2001 after failing to hand over Al-Qaeda chief  Osama bin Laden in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the  Pentagon.

They have since led a insurgency targeting the Afghan government, international troops and aid workers, which was at its bloodiest last year. This year more than 900 people have died in Taliban-related violence.
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7 NATO soldiers killed in Afghan blasts
By RAHIM FAIEZ, Associated Press Writer Mon Apr 9, 2:05 AM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - Roadside bombs in southern  Afghanistan on Sunday left seven  NATO soldiers dead, the alliance said, as its forces continued an anti-Taliban offensive in the world's most fertile opium-producing region.

Separately, a purported spokesman for the Taliban said the kidnapped translator for an Italian journalist was beheaded Sunday. The Afghan government confirmed the death.

Six troops died and one was injured when one of the roadside bombs struck their vehicle, the alliance said in a statement. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper confirmed they were Canadian troops, Canadian Press reported.

A separate roadside bomb Sunday killed one NATO soldier and wounded two, NATO said.

Officials did not release the nationality of those soldiers and did not give details or say where exactly in the south the attacks took place.

The Canadians' deaths appeared to be the biggest single combat loss for foreign troops in Afghanistan since June 2005, when a U.S. helicopter crashed. Sixteen American troops died after the aircraft was apparently hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

The fatalities underline how virulent Afghanistan's Taliban-led resistance remains, more than five years after a U.S.-led invasion drove the hardline militia from power for harboring al-Qaida.

Also Sunday in the south, U.S.-led coalition aircraft tracked a car of Taliban militants after it had fired a rocket-propelled grenade into an Afghan army vehicle in the Sangin district of Helmand province, a coalition statement said Monday.

When the Taliban vehicle had moved away from the populated Sangin area, the coalition destroyed it, killing six Taliban inside, the statement said, adding that Afghan and coalition troops suffered no casualties in the incident.

Elsewhere in southern Afghanistan, freelance journalist and translator Ajmal Naqshbandi was beheaded after more than a month in captivity. He had been kidnapped along with Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo and a driver, who had been beheaded earlier.

Mastrogiacomo, who worked for the daily La Repubblica, was released March 19 in a much criticized swap for five Taliban militants.

The Taliban made a similar demand in return for Naqshbandi's release.

"We asked for two Taliban commanders to be released in exchange for Ajmal Naqshbandi, but the government did not care for our demands, and today, at 3:05 p.m., we beheaded Ajmal in Garmsir district of Helmand province," said Shahabuddin Atal, who claimed to be a spokesman for regional Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah.

"When we demanded the exchange for the Italian journalist, the government released the prisoners, but for the Afghan journalist, the government did not care," Atal said.

Sayed Ansari, a spokesman for Afghanistan's intelligence service, said the Taliban executed Naqshbandi on behalf of al-Qaida.

"Once again, the Taliban showed that they are following the steps of terrorist networks," he said.

U.S. officials also condemned the translator's execution.

"This barbaric killing reminds us of why the United States and NATO are in Afghanistan in the first place: to help the good people of that country defeat the Taliban extremists and their al-Qaida allies," said Gordon Johndroe,  President Bush's national security spokesman.

In the eastern Paktika province on Sunday, two Afghan guards were killed and five wounded during a four-hour firefight with Taliban militants near the border with Pakistan, according to the U.S.-led coalition, which is operating separately from the NATO-led force.

Militants fired mortars and a rocket on a coalition checkpoint in the village of Kakakhel. Troops returned fire and called in an airstrike, leaving two militants dead and three others wounded, the statement said.

Also Sunday, in the eastern Khost province, a gunman riding on the back of a motorcycle opened fire on Afghans working for NATO's International Security Assistance Force, killing two of the men and wounding another, the force said in a statement.

And in the eastern Nangarhar province, a suicide car bomber blew himself up next to a U.S.-led coalition convoy, said Ghafor Khan, spokesman for the provincial police chief. One soldier was lightly injured, a coalition statement said.

The latest violence came days after more than 1,000 NATO and Afghan troops retook Sangin district in the opium-producing Helmand province.

The next step will be for NATO to hand over control of the area to Afghan security forces, said Lt. Col. Maria Carl, a spokeswoman for ISAF. She added that NATO already has transported about 500 Afghan forces to the south.

The operation to retake the town from militants started late Wednesday and is part of NATO's largest ever offensive in Afghanistan, Operation Achilles, launched last month to flush out Taliban militants from the northern tip of Helmand province.

About 4,500 NATO and 1,000 Afghan forces are in and around Helmand province as part of Operation Achilles. In the last several months, Taliban militants and foreign fighters have streamed into the province, according to U.S. and NATO officials.
___
Associated Press writer Noor Khan contributed to this report from Kandahar.
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Execution, bombings highlight Taliban insurgency
Mon Apr 9, 1:48 AM ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) - An Afghan journalist was beheaded and seven  NATO troops were killed by roadside bombs at the weekend as Afghanistan's Taliban militia pushed on with their brutal insurgency.

A Taliban spokesman said Sunday that Ajmal Naqshbandi, who was kidnapped last month along with Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo, was executed because the government failed to meet their demand to free Taliban prisoners.

The killing was later confirmed by an Afghan intelligence official and condemned by Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi as "an absurd crime". The United States described the beheading as "barbaric".

La Repubblica correspondent Mastrogiacomo was freed after two weeks in captivity in a controversial exchange for five Taliban prisoners which was widely condemned. His Afghan driver was beheaded before his release.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai had described the prisoner exchange to free Mastrogiacomo as an "extraordinary" situation and said he would not release any more Taliban prisoners to save the Italian's Afghan colleague.

The killing of Naqshbandi has raised new fears about the fate of two French nationals and three Afghan colleagues who were abducted by Taliban militants last week in the southwestern province of Nimroz.

News of the execution came as six Canadian soldiers were killed on Sunday when a suspected Taliban roadside bomb detonated in the southern province of Helmand, where NATO troops are fighting the Islamic militia.

The bombing was the deadliest single attack on NATO forces in the country this year.

The alliance said another NATO soldier was killed in a separate bombing, without giving further details.

The latest casualties brought to 34 the number of foreign troops who have died in  Afghanistan since January.

The Taliban militia launched their insurgency months after being ousted from power in Kabul by a US-led coalition in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

The insurgency intensified last year with Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants using roadside and suicide bombings, tactics copied from insurgents fighting US forces in  Iraq.

In another tactic made popular in Iraq, the Taliban have targetted aid workers as well as foreign and local journalists for kidnapping.

The reported execution of Naqshbandi was met with dismay in Afghanistan and in Italy, where his colleague Mastrogiacomo was grief-stricken.

"I am distraught, destroyed. It's a horrible, gratuitous, cowardly homicide," he told the Italian news agency ANSA.

La Repubblica editor Ezio Mauro said in a statement: "We are in a time of anguish -- all of La Repubblica, together with Daniele Mastrogiacomo."

Following the reported killing, opposition politicians in Italy blamed the Italian government for abandoning the Afghan.

"The execution of Mastrogiacomo's interpreter is a terrible responsibility for the Prodi government. It casts light on the cynicism of Prodi, of (Foreign Minister Massimo) D'Alema and company," said parliamentarian Isabelle Berolini of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia.
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Exclusive: Afghanistan's Karzai Says Taliban, Al Qaeda Have Been 'Defeated'
ABC News Internet Ventures
Afghanistan's President Tells ABC News' Diane Sawyer That While His Country Needs More Help, 'The Taliban Is Not Coming Back'
April 9, 2007 — - Amid reports that thousands of suicide bombers and insurgents were getting ready to strike in Afghanistan, ABC's Diane Sawyer traveled to the country to talk to its first elected president, Hamid Karzai.

The Taliban and al Qaeda have warned of a spring offensive to be carried out by 6,000 insurgents and 1,000 suicide bombers, saying they will turn Afghanistan into a graveyard.

Karzai, however, said though his country needed more help, the United States had not failed Afghanistan and the Taliban and al Qaeda had been beaten.

"Neither has the U.S. failed, nor the Taliban coming back," he said. "Al Qaeda is defeated."

Karzai called the reports of thousands of suicide bombers a "sign of desperation."

"You kill yourself if you're very disappointed. You have no hope of life," he said. "It's a disgrace. … The majority of them are drug addicts, desperately ill people and those who have no hope of life. Their families are paid some money and said this man is going to die anyway."

Afghanistan has endured more than three decades of conflict, from the Soviets in the 1980s, to the Taliban in the '90s, to the Americans that ran them out in 2002. Karzai said that while suicide bombers and insurgents had hurt Afghanistan, they would not hinder its progress.

"It hurts us. It kills our people. It hurts our children, but it does not stop the progress we are making as a nation," he said.

More Troops Needed

Military experts say that 30,000 American troops are not enough to ensure peace in Afghanistan and that the country needs about 80,000 more American and NATO soldiers. Karzai agreed that Afghanistan could benefit from more force.

"We don't have enough manpower or enough equipment, or air power to respond to certain situations, and I believe we should add that power to the fight in Afghanistan," he said. "That's a military matter that the Ministry of Defense, and somebody should say, 'What else do you need?' But the overall picture I can tell you is that we need more forces and more ability to project force."

As Afghanistan's first elected official, Karzai was built up to be his country's George Washington. Now, some are calling him an ineffective conciliator lacking in muscle.

"Muscle is a different issue. Muscle has to be developed. Muscles we don't have," Karzai said in response. "If you're talking of muscle as the ability to deliver service as you do in America or as you do in Germany, or even as you do in Pakistan. … That we don't have. Yes, we are better than we were four years ago, much, much better."

Karzai admitted that he couldn't keep terrorists and insurgents from striking. He advocated that the coalition investigate the source of terrorism to eradicate it altogether.

"They should go to the source of it. They should not look for the effects of it, for the results of it in the Afghan villages, and in the process, get Afghan women and children hurt," he said. "I'm hurt by that and I don't like it."
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Taliban talks open rift in Kabul leadership
By Philip Smucker THE WASHINGTON TIMES April 9, 2007
KABUL, Afghanistan -- President Hamid Karzai's announcement that he has held talks with the Taliban has opened a rift between his Pashtun backers and mainly Tajik northerners, who have coalesced in a new opposition party led by parliament speaker Younus Qanooni.

"For us, his admission last week that he has been talking to the Taliban comes as a complete surprise," Mr. Qanooni said yesterday as he reclined in the well-appointed salon of his home and fingered a set of red prayer beads. "We were not informed about these closed-curtain talks, which can never come to any good."

The president's supporters said the unexpected announcement last week of negotiations with the Taliban leadership was long overdue, and hinted that Mr. Karzai had acted with the approval of Washington and its NATO allies.

"If serious peace talks had been carried out earlier, this country would be in a much stronger position today," said an Afghan-American member of parliament, Daoud Sultanzoy, who has many Taliban-leaning Pashtun constituents in his district of Ghazni province.

"The northern thugs who oppose this, including Mr. Qanooni, prefer that the Pashtuns keep fighting in the south so they can enrich themselves."

Mr. Qanooni is a leading player in a new opposition alliance dominated by the same northern-based ethnic groups that helped U.S. forces overthrow the Taliban in 2001. The United National Front's members include former Defense Minister Mohammad Fahim, former President Burhanuddin Rabbani and Prince Mustafa Zahir, the grandson of the deposed and ailing King Mohammad Zahir Shah.

The parliament speaker is criticizing Mr. Karzai, who retains strong U.S. backing, as leaders of a resurgent Taliban foster closer ties with the al Qaeda terrorist network, now based in sanctuaries inside neighboring Pakistan.

Western diplomats say they are increasingly concerned about the "Talibanization" of both Pakistan and Afghanistan, which they think is being directed and assisted by senior al Qaeda operatives based in Pakistan as well as rogue elements within Pakistan's intelligence services.

Afghan officials close to Mr. Karzai say concerns about the talks with the Taliban are grossly overblown. For several years, Mr. Karzai, who is from the heavily Pashtun south of the country, has engaged in a delicate effort to lure midlevel and senior Taliban members away from their leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, and bring them back into the political fold.

Afghan intelligence officials have offered to drop or reduce charges against captured Taliban operatives in exchange for information. Senior Taliban warlords have broken ranks with their hard-core movement to work with Mr. Karzai's government in a reconciliation process monitored by American diplomats.

The growing dispute about how to deal with the Taliban -- whether to kill and capture them or negotiate for peace -- highlights the nation's traditional fears of foreign influence, particularly meddling from neighboring Pakistan.

Analysts said Mr. Karzai's opponents, many affiliated with the new Tajik-dominated northern block, fear that the Taliban, as it grows stronger in the hinterlands, will exert increasing influence in larger towns and cities as well as within political circles in Kabul.

The Taliban has promised a major spring offensive targeting U.S. bases in the east and British and Canadian bases in the south. If the insurgents manage through threats and intimidation to assert more power in the remote regions of Afghanistan, it is feared that the movement will gain a stronger foothold in towns and cities.

Though the NATO-led peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan has vowed to "capture or kill" what officials call "Tier 1 Taliban" fighters, that view of the struggle also is evolving.

A senior European official said: "The problem is that every time you kill one of them, you get 10 family members rising up to put a contract out on foreign forces. It is a little like the Sicilian or Corsican Mafia here, in that revenge is a kind of social contract that is considered a necessary response to any death."

Efforts to win the "hearts and minds" of young Taliban fighters through humanitarian projects and offers of gainful employment have an increasing priority over direct military engagement, he added.
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Pak-Afghanistan discussion postponed
Monday April 09, 2007 (0930 PST) PakTribune.com, Pakistan
QUETTA: The discussion between Pakistan and Afghanistan on Loya Jirga and others matters schedule to be held today (Monday) in Kabul has been postponed.
It is expected that the next round of discussion would be held next month, sources told Online on Sunday.

It is merit mentioning here that the first round of Pakistan-Afghanistan discussion was held in Federal Capital last month. The talks have been postponed due to unavoidable reason.

Federal Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao accompany with Governor Balochistan Awais Ahmed Ghani and Governor NWFP, Federal Minister for States and Frontier Regions Sardar Yar Muhammad Rind and others members is representing the Pakistan in the discussion.
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U.S. troops patrol gray Afghan world, watched by Taliban
By Denis D. Gray, Associated Press via USA Today
BAYLOUGH BOWL, Afghanistan — Rarely do the insurgents take on American troops — few but formidable — in the Baylough Bowl. But in a gray world where allegiances are fluid and identities are closely guarded, the Taliban are always watching and waiting.

No sooner does a patrol leave its primitive mud fort on foot or wheels than the chatter on Taliban frequencies begins: "The Americans have just left. They're coming this way. We will need more reinforcements if they approach any closer ..."

"They're probably looking at us right now from one of those peaks," says Abdul Farid, an Afghan interpreter and radio monitor as he leaves Forward Operating Base Baylough (rhymes with buy low) in the southeastern province of Zabul.

These almost daily patrols are the staple of U.S. and NATO operations in Afghanistan, coping with a rekindled Islamic insurgency more than five years after the Taliban regime fell to American and Afghan forces.

What all this expenditure of sweat, and sometimes blood, will do to win the war is difficult to gauge.

FIND MORE STORIES IN: Afghanistan | Taliban | Afghan | NATO | Infantry | Regiment | Company | Zabul | Gray
1st Lt. Jason Cunningham, who has logged more than 180 miles on foot over the past three months, explains the purpose of being on the ground, face-to-face with villagers: to keep the Taliban at bay, establish authority, and enable troops to take the local pulse and dispense aid to gain converts where loyalties are questionable and violence sometimes erupts.

"It's very possible that I've had tea with the Taliban," says Cunningham, who commands 50 U.S. Army soldiers.

At one stop, the soldiers and a party of Afghan police inspect a roadside bomb, a mortar round attached to a trip wire. It's hidden among rocks at the base of a pole flying the Afghan national flag.

It's the fifth such device planted in the immediate area of the Daychopan district seat; the last killed a passing girl and a dozen sheep, says the police commander, Bashir Ahmad Frozan.

The next day the 14-man unit — a platoon of B Company, 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment — launches a 9-mile patrol which eight hours later leaves the legs of even the superbly fit soldiers weak and rubbery.

The troops push through the basin, which measures some 6 by 8 miles — part moonscape of soaring rock piles, part idyll of blossoming almond orchards and grazing lambs, all girded by mountains capped with the remnants of winter's snows.

The patrol stops villagers as they head to fields or the bazaar on donkeys or old motorcycles. The Afghans seem bored by the routine searches, raising their hands high with little prompting. Some checks turn farcical.

"Ask the guy why he's jumping around," a suspicious soldier tells the interpreter as he slides his hands up and down a farmer's pants. "He thinks you are gay," the smiling interpreter responds.

The turnaround point is Sinan, a hamlet of low-walled compounds, each looking like a little medieval fortress of mud that seems as one with the dun earth. Children and veiled women peer from behind heavy, timbered doors.

"It's sort of a gray village. They're friendly to us when we are here and when we leave the Taliban moves in," says Staff Sgt. Lukas Hearn, resting against a compound wall in the heart of the settlement. "Because the Taliban have the guns and knives," Cunningham interjects.

Cunningham, from San Francisco, has delved into this world of fluid allegiances.

During visits to two powerful local figures, who like others in Afghanistan make their accommodations with all sides, Cunningham is almost certain he mixed with Taliban fighters, but never felt threatened.

The two elders had guaranteed his safety, so any harm done to him would violate Pashtunwali, the traditional code of the dominant Pashtun tribe in Zabul and the Taliban heartland of southern Afghanistan.

On the patrol's return leg, six soldiers are ordered to set up an observation post. It's a heart-pounding clamber up a boulder-strewn cliff at 9,000 feet altitude, with each man carrying as much as 100 pounds of gear.

"Everybody in the bowl knows we're up here," says Hearn, of Moore, Okla., moments after his team begins to scan a vast, 180-degree panorama through sniper rifle scopes and binoculars.

Sometimes the Taliban — "dudes dressed in black carrying AK-47s" — can be spotted from such heights, the soldiers say. But it's not easy to pinpoint them among the sea of rocks or mingling with the villagers in the fields and hamlets far below.

Most of the Taliban and foreign infiltrators, coming from Pakistan which borders Zabul, trek along distant ridges, skirting the bowl to reach their stronghold outside it, Hearn says. Even if they're seen, "they all can run faster than we can," he says.

Spc. Torrey Gray is called down from the hilltop. A woman nearby has given birth and is hemorrhaging, suffering severe pain and low blood pressure. Her family wants American help.

The medic, from Bangor, Maine, administers an intravenous injection, antibiotics and painkillers and receives thanks.

"It shows that we have genuine concern for the people in this area, that we're not just here to deter the Taliban, that we're not just putting up a facade," Gray says.

But an hour earlier, the patrol had searched the same family compound where the woman gave birth. They had found a spent shotgun shell just outside. It was an unwelcome intrusion into the inner sanctum of the conservative Muslims.

Perhaps the patrol had scored a draw in the seesaw battle for loyalties in the Baylough Bowl.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Afghans pin hopes on a new economy
Monday April 09, 2007 (1119 PST) PakTribune.com, Pakistan
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 cell phones 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 US-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 US 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 US-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 Mohammad Nadir, who sells home made 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 University of Kabul clamor for jobs in the civil service, civil servants seek higher-paying work with the foreign non governmental 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 says, 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 US contractors who provide technical assistance to Afghanistan's government and army, and who build roads, schools, and other infrastructure. State Department officials say the US 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 watch dog group, 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 Kabul's Shar-e-Naw neighborhood. 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 US 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 "US 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 for men 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 Services, where only 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 US military vehicle accident, forcing many aid organizations to draw up emergency evacuation plans for the first time.

Now the mansions where the 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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We want the Taliban back, say ordinary Afghans
At least we felt safe under the extremists, say Kandahar residents too afraid to go out after dark
By Chris Sands in Kandahar The Independent (UK)  08 April 2007
Faiz Mohammed Karigar, a father of two, fled Kandahar when the Taliban held power in Afghanistan because he was against their restrictions on education. Now he wants the fundamentalists back.

"When the Taliban were here, I escaped to the border with Iran, but I was never worried about my family," he said. "Every single minute of the last three years I have been very worried. Maybe tonight the Americans will come to my house, molest my wife and children and arrest me."

Last week, President Hamid Karzai acknowledged for the first time that he had held talks with the Taliban in an attempt to reach a peace deal and avert a bloody struggle for control in the south and east of the country, where the movement has enjoyed a resurgence in the past year.

The failure of Nato forces to deliver security and development and rising civilian casualties inflicted by Western forces in clashes with the Taliban have led to a loss of support in Kandahar. "How can we forgive the Americans?" asked Mr Karigar, who like most people here does not distinguish among the different elements in Nato. "I will fight them any way I can."

The majority of forces in Kandahar province are Canadian, with a British commander, Major-General "Jacko" Page, about to assume responsibility for the whole of southern Afghanistan at a time when a renewed Taliban offensive is thought to be imminent. British troops have been based mainly in neighbouring Helmand province so far, but the fresh forces now arriving will operate across the region.

The Taliban failed last year to carry out its threat to seize back Kandahar, its former stronghold, and Nato insists the movement can never win a military victory against it, even if many Afghans believe it possible. But the occupiers have lost crucial support in the city, which has become one of the most dangerous places in Afghanistan.

Political and criminal violence has spread fear among the population, and most try to avoid going out after dark, when the only sounds are the helicopters flying overhead and the odd burst of gunfire in the streets. Suicide attacks are common, and on several occasions in recent months nervous Nato troops have shot civilians they mistakenly believed were about to blow themselves up.

Whatever the cause of the bloodshed, the local population almost always blames the foreign soldiers in their midst. Even moderate Afghans are openly declaring they will join the insurgency.

The British Government calls the Taliban "terrorists" and "extremists", but people in Kandahar associate it with security. Before the 2001 invasion, they say, they could walk the streets safely as long as they complied with the movement's strict interpretation of Islamic law. Now even a simple outing to the local market is seen as a risk, and the Taliban, established as a response to lawlessness in the 1990s, is gaining fresh strength.

"I think life under the Taliban was very good," said Maria Farah, a mother of five. "If we did not have a full stomach, we could at least get some food and go to sleep, and if we went out somewhere there were no problems. How about now? If we go out, we don't know if we will arrive home or not. If there is an explosion and the Americans are passing, they will just open fire on everyone. The security problems are too much here."

Foreign attempts at development were waved aside by Haji Abdul Rahman, a tribal elder, who demanded: "If a road has been built and you are killed, what good is it? Everyone is a robber. I guarantee if you sit in my car and we go for a drive, no Taliban will take you away. But I cannot guarantee that about the police. If they stop you they will steal your money and your camera."

The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force denies the insurgency is gaining strength. "Most polling data shows only about 5 per cent of the people actually support the Taliban extremists," said a spokesman, who insisted that fighting in Kandahar province was a result of foreign and local troops "extending the reach of the legitimate government" into militant strongholds.

But a recent poll of several thousand men in Kandahar and Helmand by the Senlis Council, a Brussels-based thinktank, found that Taliban support among civilians had jumped to nearly 27 per cent. Only 19 per cent in the two provinces felt that international troops were helping them personally.

In southern Afghanistan, said the report, people "are increasingly prepared to admit their support for the Taliban, and the belief that the government and the international community will not be able to defeat the Taliban is widespread".

In the Panjwayi district west of Kandahar city, which saw heavy fighting last year, Mawlawi Abdul Hadid said 18 members of his family died in an air strike last May against suspected insurgents. "In the beginning you had only one enemy. Then you made two, then three, and now I also stand against you," he declared.
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Pakistan suggests new peace approach in Afghanistan
Monday, 9 April, 2007, 09:20 AM Doha Time
WASHINGTON: Peace in Afghanistan can only be built through a “bottom-up approach”, village by village, district by district with both incentives and disincentives on offer, proposes Pakistan Ambassador to UN Munir Akram in an op-ed article in the New York Times.

This is among the rare occasions that a Pakistani official has been given space in a leading American paper to argue his government’s position.

Akram lists the various challenges Afghanistan faces and suggests that this is a good time to make an “objective assessment” of the Afghan and regional environment and to put together a strategy to overcome them.
This strategy should combine military containment with political reconciliation, administrative control and rapid socio-economic development.

“Winning the hearts and minds of the people is even more important than killing or capturing insurgents,” he says.  Military tactics, he says, that cause collateral civilian casualties and damage property create 10 times more enemies than they kill. There should be economic development and people should be offered hope for peace and better lives for themselves and their children.

Akram admits that Pakistan’s frontier regions have seen tremendous support for extremism during the three decades of conflict in Afghanistan.

After the Taliban’s ouster, thousands of Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters crossed into Pakistan, but Pakistan is committed to eliminating their influence because it is essential for its goals of rapid modernisation and increased trade and energy links with Central Asia.

Thus any strategy for stabilisation in Afghanistan’s south and southeast must go hand-in-hand with efforts in Pakistan’s frontier region.

“Contrary to criticisms from some in Kabul and Washington, Pakistan has made significant contributions to such stabilisation,” he asserts.

After listing what Pakistan has done, Akram declares that Al Qaeda is on the run and it will certainly not be allowed to regroup on Pakistani soil.

While Pakistan has captured and handed over 1,500 Taliban militants, he adds, “We can do only so much considering that the Taliban’s centres for recruitment, financing and command are in Afghanistan, as the UN secretary general’s reports have attested.”

Pakistan, he says, is making new efforts to control its difficult 1,500-mile border with Afghanistan through the deployment of 80,000 Pakistani troops and the establishment of 1,000 border posts.

Some of the clandestine crossing points will soon be fenced. Biometric cards for those crossing the border have been introduced but it does not help when border guards on the Afghan side cut them up and throw them away.

Control of the border, he stresses, is a joint responsibility of Pakistan, Afghanistan and the international coalition forces. The onus cannot be placed on Pakistan alone.

Akram promises that Pakistan will act shortly to remove any last basis for allegations about so-called “sanctuaries” and “safe havens” for the Taliban in Pakistan.

He points out that after crossing into Pakistan Taliban elements often merge into the large population at camps for Afghan refugees. It is difficult to distinguish Taliban militants from the rest of the thousands of Afghans.

It is mostly in these camps that the Taliban finds recruits.

To resolve this problem, Pakistan has reached an agreement with the Afghan government to move four large camps in the NWFP to Afghanistan. Also to be repatriated are the last of the 3mn Afghan refugees within the next three years.

Pakistan’s objective, Akram adds, is to win over the local population and isolate the militants.

The agreement that the government reached with tribal elders in North Waziristan last September was essentially an exchange of peace for economic development. He asserts that there is no link between that deal and the rise of violent incidents in Afghanistan last year.

Rather, the military strikes in recent weeks by tribal forces against Uzbeks and other foreign militants in South Waziristan should confirm the effectiveness of Pakistan’s approach, he argues.

Akram writes that Pakistan has advocated a similar approach to Kabul aimed at working with tribal leaders on the Afghanistan side through local jirgas (tribal councils).

“This idea was the essence of the three-party meeting of Pakistan, Afghanistan and the coalition forces organised by President Bush in September,” he adds.

At the first meeting of the Pakistan and Afghanistan jirga commissions in January in Islamabad, the two sides agreed to stop the “blame game” and increase cooperation to address common problems of border control and refugee repatriation.

Each country desperately needs rapid reconstruction and development on its side of the border.

Pakistan, Akram writes, is grateful for the US commitment of $750mn over the next five years for its tribal areas. A key part of Pakistan’s effort, he notes, is to create “reconstruction opportunity zones” in the tribal areas.

Pakistan’s private sector will invest in industry and manufacturing, while Washington has promised special tariff- and duty-free access in the US market for products from these areas.

“Creating a peaceful, stable and prosperous Afghanistan is as much in the interest of Pakistan as of the US and the Afghans themselves.

“The co-operative framework that has been established by Afghanistan, Pakistan, the US, Nato and the international community will be vital for success. But we must ensure that bond is not eroded by mutual recrimination or frustration with occasional setbacks,” Akram concludes. - Internews 
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Afghans pin hopes on a new economy
Money at center of post-Taliban world
By Farah Stockman Boston Globe / April 8, 2007
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Listen long enough on the streets of this dusty, bustling city and the whir of generators, the cry of hawkers, and the jingle of cell phones 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 US-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 US 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 US-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 Mohammad Nadir, who sells home made 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 University of Kabul clamor for jobs in the civil service, civil servants seek higher-paying work with the foreign non governmental 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 says, 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 US contractors who provide technical assistance to Afghanistan's government and army, and who build roads, schools, and other infrastructure. State Department officials say the US 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 watch dog group, 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 Kabul's Shar-e-Naw neighborhood. 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 US 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 "US 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 for men 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 Services, where only 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 US military vehicle accident, forcing many aid organizations to draw up emergency evacuation plans for the first time.

Now the mansions where the 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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Afghan Ministry of Information and Culture bans the transmissions of Al Jazeera English on Lemar TV
Press Release Lemar TV
Following instructions from the Ministry of Information and Culture, the Afghan Attorney General’s Office today instructed Lemar TV to cease transmissions of its Al Jazeera English programming.

The Ministry of Information and Culture failed to provide reasons (legal and otherwise) for this decision. Article 4 (sub article 2) of the Afghan Media Laws says that the government can in no way interfere, ban, censor other than in accordance with these laws. Meanwhile Article 33 states that the programming deemed as un-Islamic, defamatory, provocative and contrary to our constitution are banned. The Ministry failed to show that any of Al Jazeera’s programming are contrary to Article 33 of the Media Laws.

The Ministry of Information and Culture’s first complaint to the Attorney General’s Office, following investigations, was rejected on the basis that the broadcast of Al Jazeera English was not a criminal matter and that the matter could not be pursued by the Attorney General’s Office. However in a subsequent letter to the Attorney General’s Office, the Ministry of Information and Culture stated that the broadcasting of Al Jazeera English is “inflicting a killer blow to the cultural order and the legal authority of the Government”.

This action follows on the heal of a number of acts on the part of the Ministry of Information and Culture which have been criticized by the media and organizations protecting media and journalists as restricting freedom of media and expression:

- The Ministry of Information and Culture has attempted to limit footage of women on television.

- The Ministry of Information and Culture has been waging a campaign to take direct control of the broadcaster which resulted in armed agents entered RTA's offices to forcibly remove key staffers who had run afoul of the ministry. The move prompted the resignation of RTA's director, Najib Roshan.

- Draconian media laws proposed by the Ministry of Information and Culture which will limit the media's ability to inform and entertain. The laws are currently before Afghanistan’s lower house awaiting approval.

These trends are attracting the concerned attention of a growing number of international organizations. Freedom House's annual rating of press freedom in 2006 showed a reduction in media freedom in Afghanistan for the first time since the ousting of the Taliban. Reporters Without Borders' 2007 Annual Report on Press Freedom notes that media freedom remains "fragile."

In the meantime, it is not clear if the Government of Afghanistan, which has been internationally championing its free media, has formally banned an international news channel, and if so, whether others news organisations like BBC, CNN, Deutsche Welle, Voice of Amercia, Radio Free Europe, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP and others will also be banned. It is important to note that cable operators are free to broadcast Al Jazeera as at the time of this Press Release.

Lemar TV Director Massoud Qiam labelled the banning of Al Jazeera as illegal and called on the Afghan government to quickly reverse its decision.

Lemar TV has for now suspended transmissions of Al Jazeera, notwithstanding that we do not believe there is any legal basis for the demands of the Ministry of Information and Culture.

For further information please contact:
zaid.mohseni@lemar.tv
saad.mohseni@lemar.tv 
+93 799 44 55 55
+93 799 44 55 66
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Afghanistan’s mentally ill chained up for cure
The Sunday Times (UK) / April 8, 2007 Tim Albone, Samar Kehl, Afghanistan
HIS leg shackled and padlocked to a tree, Mohammad Tahir rocks relentlessly back and forth. He has been like this, day and night, lying in the open with nothing but a blanket for cover for 21 days.

Each day he is fed only a scrap of bread, a raw chilli and two glasses of water, a verse from the Koran placed in each one. He still has 19 days to go before the padlock is released and he is free.

Despite appearances Tahir, 35, is not a prisoner but a mental patient and relatives have placed him in the grounds of the Sayed Mohammad Ali Shah shrine in eastern Afghanistan in the hope of curing his illness.

“I have been sick for four or five years. I have been sick for a very long time,” Tahir said, his voice painfully high and his face twisted into a grimace.

Tahir is one of five patients with mental problems who are in the grounds of the shrine. During the peak summer season, when the weather is warmer, up to 50 people come searching for a cure and are chained up in the grounds.

“For people with mental problems we give 40 days’ treatment,” explained Mir Subadar, 48, who looks after the shrine and the patients.

“They have to have chilli, bread and water. If they follow this diet, it cures them. I’ve been here since childhood and I swear that if they do what I say they will be cured,” he said.

Many of Subadar’s patients show signs of shell shock, hardly surprising after 30 years of war. Others are drug addicts undergoing cold turkey. Others appear to have serious learning difficulties.

What is surprising is that, despite the harsh conditions and the absence of any trained medical practitioners, 40 days at the shrine appears to be their best available hope of treatment and there is huge demand for places.

Five years after the Taliban was removed from power, Afghanistan’s infrastructure is still in ruins. The country has few centres for treating the mentally ill so families bring their sick here from across the country. Not even the medieval conditions shake people’s belief in the shrine’s curative powers.

“First they come and we speak to them and then we tie them to a tree. We provide all the food and charge £20,” said Subadar. Although £20 may not sound a lot, it is equivalent to a month’s salary for a doctor or a policeman in Afghanistan.

Many believe it is money well spent. “If anyone has any doubts they should come and look at our shrine and see people being cured,” said Mamtaz, 26, a devotee.
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Youths attend mini-marathon race in S. Afghanistan
People's Daily Online, China
Some 500 youths from different parts of Kandahar joined a mini-marathon in Kandahar province of south Afghanistan on Sunday, local newspaper Daily Outlook reported Monday.

Rahmatullah, 18, secured the first position of the 10-km race.

It is the first such race in the Taliban's former stronghold Kandahar and adjoining areas where Taliban militants banned most sport games during its six-year reign which collapsed in late 2001.

Since the collapse of the Taliban regime, like other institutions, sports is also being recovered and Afghan athletes have earned medals and good names for their country in several competitions held outside this country.
Source: Xinhua
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MPs form fourth parliamentary group
KABUL, Apr 7 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Parliamentarians on Saturday announced the formation of a fourth parliamentary group, named, Afghanistan Parliamentarian Group (APG).

Mirwais Yasini, member of parliament from the eastern Nangarhar province, is chief of the newly formed group. Other office-bearers of the 41-member group included Muhammad Hussain Fahimi, deputy chief, and Humaira Akakhel, secretary.

Mirwais Yasini said the new group would support all the positive steps of the government and the parliament.

He said main objectives behind the formation of the group were to remove difference in the society and bring harmony and promote national unity.

The other three groups already existed in the parliament are the Group-i-Khat-i-Soyem (Third Line Group), Islah Talaban (Reforms Seekers) and Istiqlal-i-Milli (National Independence).
Makia Monir
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ANDS set to achieve objectives
KABUL, Apr 7 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The Afghanistan National Development Strategy (ANDS) will achieve its goals despite some hassles faced by the government in implementation of the strategy.

Speaking at a news conference here on Saturday, an ANDS official Abid Farhadi said provision of power supply, road construction, capacity building, improvement in agriculture and introduction of administrative reforms were the main objectives of the Afghanistan Compact.

The Compact was signed between Afghanistan and donors in January - February 2006. The job given to ANDS for the next five years included security, good governance and progress in social sector.

Farhadi said the survey they had launched revealed that implementation of the strategy was well on the track. He said they needed a lot work to achieve the targets.

He said deficiency of capacity among government staff and lack of cooperation by some donors were the main impediments in implementation of the strategy. 

He said in the initial stage of the reconstruction process, donors were spending funds without any coordination with the Afghan government. However, some of such problems had been solved with the efforts of ANDS.

According Finance Ministry, the government could spend 25 per cent of the total grant before the London Conference; however, it was allowed to use 50 per cent during the conference.
Zainab Mohammadi
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Photo exhibition by Afghan students
CHAGHCHARAN, Apr 7 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The first-ever photo exhibition by 30 students from the central Ghor province will open in Lithuania soon.

The exhibition is being organised with the cooperation of the Lithuania-led provincial reconstruction team (PRT) in Ghor and the Education Ministry of that country.

Director of the education department in Ghor Eid Gul Azim told Pajhwok some 30 students from three high schools, including two girls' schools, would take part in the exhibition.

Most of the pictures would highlight condition of schools in Afghanistan, social life, people and schoolchildren. 

Training, cameras and other supporting material to the students were provided by officials of the PRT, said the education department chief.
Ahmad Qureshi
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Night letters distributed in Logar
PUL-I-ALAM, Apr 7 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Unidentified miscreants, believed to be Taliban, have warned people against sending their daughters to schools, and asked the elders to announce jihad (holy war) against the government and foreign forces.

Residents say the people have been warned through night letters being distributed in some 18 villages of Pul-i-Alam, capital of Logar, for the previous three nights.

People have been asked not to allow their daughters to attend schools and their female family members to work in foreign NGOs.

Calling government officials and employees of NGOs as spies, the letters warned them to quit their jobs or face death.

Elders have been asked to prepare youth for jihad against the 'infidels' instead of sending them to join the Afghan National Army (ANA). People have also been asked to stay away from NATO forces.  

Some pictures are also visible in the letters which say those were the NATO soldiers killed in attacks.

Although it was not mentioned as which group was responsible for distributing the letters, the words 'Islamic emirates of Afghanistan', used by Taliban for the country, has been written at the end of the writings.

An official of the education department, who asked not to be named, said a number of girl students in Purk village had stopped attending the school after distribution of the night letters.

The pamphlets are being distributed since the previous three nights. All the girl students would cease attending the school if the situation persisted, the official feared.

However, Logar police chief Qudratullah Arabzai said the 'enemies' could not harass people by using such tactics.

Around 800 pamphlets had been collected from 18 villages and they were trying to arrest the miscreants who were trying to spread fear among the people, said the police chief.
Shahpur Arab
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