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August 19, 2007 

German woman kidnapped in Kabul eatery
By RAHIM FAIEZ, Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan - Four armed assailants kidnapped a German aid worker dining with her husband at a restaurant in Kabul in a bold midday attack, as the Taliban said negotiations for the release of 19 remaining South Korean hostages have failed.

Meanwhile, a suicide car bomb attack killed 15 people and wounded 26, including several women and children, in Afghanistan's southern city of Kandahar.

The abduction of the 31-year-old German woman, who works for a small Christian aid organization along with her husband, prompted police in Kabul to shoot at the speeding getaway car, killing a nearby taxi driver.

The assailants had pulled up to the barbecue and fast food restaurant in a dark gray Toyota Corolla, and one of the men went inside and pretended to order a pizza, said intelligence officials investigating the abduction.

They said two other men waited outside, while another remained in the car.

The man in the restaurant pulled out a pistol, walked up to a table where the German couple was sitting, and took the woman outside, the officials said on condition of anonymity because of agency policy.

Ahmad Fahim, who works in a nearby bakery, said man called for help as his wife was taken away.

"The man was shouting 'Police! Police!'" and was frantically making calls on his mobile phone, Fahim said.

The woman works for the Ora International aid group, based in the central German town of Korbach, said Ulf Baumann, a spokesman for the organization.

Baumann did not further identify the woman, but said she spoke fluent Dari and had worked for the group in Kabul since September 2006, along with her husband, who is also German. Her husband was with her at the time and saw the kidnapping, Baumann said.

According to the organizations Web site, Ora International concentrates its efforts in Afghanistan on health issues and HIV/AIDS awareness.

U.N. staff in Kabul were told to restrict their movements Saturday as authorities investigated the abduction, a U.N. official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on security matters. Other foreigners were also placed under tight security.

Germany's Foreign Ministry confirmed the kidnapping and said they were working with Afghan officials toward a resolution.

The latest kidnapping comes amid heightened fears of abductions, after 23 South Koreans and two Germans were taken hostage in separate incidents last month in central Afghanistan.

One of the German men has been shot to death. The other remains in captivity.

Taliban militants killed two of the South Koreans and released two others after face-to-face talks with South Korean officials.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said the group's demands for the release of the remaining 19 South Koreans remains the same — a swap for Taliban prisoners, which the Afghan government has ruled out.

"We're still ready for more negotiations if the Korean side is willing to meet our demands ... the exchange of prisoners," he said.

The Afghan and Italian governments were heavily criticized after swapping five Taliban prisoners for the release of an Italian journalist in March. The Afghan government, worried that hostage-taking will become an industry, said the prisoner swap was a one-time deal.

Separately on Saturday, a suicide bomber detonated near a convoy of private security forces west of Kandahar, killing 15 people including three women and two children, police said.

Four security guards were among the dead, while the attack wounded six guards and 20 civilians who were riding in two minivans also hit by the blast, said Kandahar provincial police chief Syed Agha Saqib.

Saqib said the Afghan guards worked for a U.S. security firm called U.S. Protection and Investigations.

On Sunday, a NATO soldier was killed while escorting a convoy in southern Afghanistan, a statement from the alliance said. NATO did not disclose the soldier's nationality or the exact location of the incident.

Violence in Afghanistan has risen sharply during the last two months. This year more than 3,700 people — most of them militants — have died, according to an Associated Press tally of casualty figures provided by Western and Afghan officials.
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Associated Press Writers Noor Khan in Kandahar and Froben Homburger in Frankfurt, Germany, contributed to this report.
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German woman abducted in Kabul, talks for SKoreans over
by Waheedullah Massoud Saturday, August 18, 2007
KABUL (AFP) - Afghan authorities were grappling with a third hostage crisis involving foreigners Saturday after a German woman was abducted by armed men in the capital Kabul.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the woman's abduction, which one local police source said was the work of a criminal gang -- not the Taliban militants holding 19 South Korean aid workers and a German engineer elsewhere.

Members of the hardline militia have also kidnapped four Afghan engineers working on a bridge project in the south of the central Asian country.

In Kabul, Afghan officials confirmed the abduction of the German woman, but gave little details about the circumstances of the kidnapping.

"Today at 1:30 in the afternoon (0900 GMT), a German woman was abducted by unknown armed men in an alley," interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP.

Police had cordoned off the area and were searching for the gunmen and their captive, Bashary and police said.

A police official who asked not to be named said the woman was having lunch with a male companion at a pizza parlour on a quiet road in western Kabul when four men with pistols entered and forced her into their vehicle at gunpoint.

The German embassy in Kabul was unable to immediately confirm the incident and in Berlin, the German foreign ministry had no comment.

But a spokesman for a Christian aid organisation, Ora International, said the woman kidnapped had worked in its Kabul office for the past year.

Ulf Baumann, Ora's spokesman, said the 31-year-old woman, who he did not name, had been abducted while in a restaurant with her husband, who escaped.

Ora International, based at Aumuehle, near Hamburg, describes itself on its website as "a non-denominational Christian relief and development organisation that serves people in need around the world".

Earlier, a 12-year-old boy told AFP he had witnessed the abduction and that it had taken place as the couple crossed a road.

Another police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said police had pinpointed several areas where the kidnappers could be hiding.

"This is not the work of Taliban, this is a criminal case and abduction for ransom," he said. "We most probably will carry out a police raid of suspected compounds in a bid to release the hostage."

The official said a taxi driver caught in crossfire between a police officer and the kidnappers as they sped from the scene had been killed.

A taxi with a bullet hole in its rear window and blood stains on the driver's seat was parked in the area.

The Taliban usually claim immediate responsibility for abductions, but have so far made no comment on the German woman's disappearance.

The Taliban and their Al-Qaeda backers have said kidnapping foreigners is a new strategy in their aim of forcing the withdrawal of international troops from the country.

Earlier Saturday, a spokesman for the hardline militia said the Taliban were deciding the fate of the Koreans, abducted in volatile southern Ghazni province nearly a month ago, as negotiations aimed at securing their release had failed.

The Taliban spokesman, Yousuf Ahmadi, said further negotiations seemed unlikely.

The extremists are also holding a German man, Rudolph Blechschmidt, 62, who was kidnapped with a colleague on July 18 in Wardak province.

The other German man suffered circulatory failure a few days after his capture and was shot dead by his captors.

And Kandahar police chief Sayed Aqa Saqib said the four Afghan engineers were taken hostage on Friday when militants opened fire on a construction site in Shah Wali Kot district, killing one labourer in the process.

The Afghan government has said it will not bow to the Taliban demands as doing so would help create a kidnapping industry.

The US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai was heavily criticised, notably by Washington, after it freed five Taliban in March in exchange for an Italian journalist.
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Germany weighs bigger Afghan deployment but counts cost
by Jean-Louis de La Vaissiere
BERLIN (AFP) - The killing of three Germans this week and the kidnapping of another three German civilians have triggered an anguished debate on the dangers and aims of Berlin's deployment in Afghanistan.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's left-right government has said the setbacks have only strengthened its resolve and that it is even mulling sending more troops to the strife-ravaged country.

The stance is politically risky, however, with a strong majority of Germans -- 64 percent -- calling for withdrawal, 10 points more than two months ago, according to a poll by the independent research group Infratest in early August.

And with a vote on the mandate due in October in the Bundestag lower house of parliament, opposition parties have tried to capitalise on widespread battle fatigue over an open-ended mission.

Germany is involved in training Afghan security forces, has contributed some 3,000 troops to the NATO-led International Security and Assistance Force and has six Tornado reconnaissance planes helping to spot Taliban hideouts.

About 100 elite troops have a mandate to participate in the US-led anti-Taliban Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) but are not currently deployed against insurgents in the south.

Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung insists that the extension of all the missions is needed.

"We need three mandates in the future so that we can set up self-supporting security in Afghanistan," he told Friday's Bild newspaper.

"The terrorists must not be allowed to have any success with their perfidious attacks."

Deputy foreign minister Gernot Erler went further, saying there was a growing faction in parliament calling for a more robust German role in Afghanistan in the face of NATO demands for the country to take on responsibilities commensurate with its size.

"There is a broad consensus on the German political scene even after Wednesday's tragedy not to let such attacks throw us off track," he told Friday's Berliner Zeitung, referring to a bombing in Kabul that killed two German police officers and a foreign ministry employee.

Erler said this might include German soldiers training Afghan troops in the volatile south of the country, although he acknowledged that the German public was resistant to a stronger engagement.

"We must do more to make the direct connection between security in Germany and the success of the deployment in Afghanistan clear," he said.

In the five years since it deployed in Afghanistan after the ouster of the radical Taliban regime, Germany has lost 25 soldiers, three police officers and four civilians.

The past month has been particularly grim with the abduction of two German engineers by the Taliban, one of whom was shot to death. The other is reportedly ill and begging for his life.

And on Saturday, a German woman working for a Christian aid group was snatched by armed men in Kabul.

Each incident has proved traumatic for a country that has only in the last decade breached its postwar taboo against military deployments abroad.

Former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder offered "unlimited solidarity" to the United States after the suicide hijackings of September 11, 2001, staking his centre-left government on a commitment to helping stabilise Afghanistan.

But as the years have dragged on, more Germans have begun to ask why their soldiers are fighting and dying in central Asia.

The Left Party, an alliance of former communists and disaffected Social Democrats, has led calls for an immediate troop withdrawal, while the Greens and the pacifist wing of the Social Democrats, partners in governing coalition, have demanded the end of the OEF mission.

"The US intervention in the south has not created more security but reinforces hatred and violence due to the number of civilian victims," the co-leader of the Greens, Claudia Roth, said.

The left-leaning Sueddeutsche Zeitung said that while the mandates were likely to be extended, Berlin needed to begin an honest debate on an exit strategy and its political goals for Afghanistan.

"No one who wants to be taken seriously will demand that Germany immediately withdraw but things cannot go on the way they are either," it said in an editorial this week.

"Therefore all three mandates should be extended, but the time until next year should be used to develop a new concept with the allies that the Afghans will accept. And moderate forces currently supporting the Taliban must also be included in the peace process."
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Taliban show new media savvy in Afghanistan
by Bronwen Roberts
KABUL (AFP) - When two Taliban addressed journalists outside the venue of talks to free South Korean hostages last week, it was effectively the militia's first press conference in Afghanistan in five years.

The images shot around the world, showing members of an extremist group hunted by the US military standing on an Afghan street talking to journalists.

Officials in Ghazni were so angry they later banned photographers and reporters from leaving their hotels, threatening them with detention.

Even without this brazen display, the militia has been able to command headlines with a sophisticated media campaign that some suspect is crafted by Al-Qaeda media experts.

Recent hostage dramas have provided fertile ground for the Taliban to deploy their press campaign.

For instance, videos of miserable-looking South Korean hostages and a separate German captive were released to international television networks.

Then the Taliban organised interviews with one of the South Koreans and the German. Their pleas for help stirred public emotion and helped the Taliban pressure the governments of the two countries to act on their demands.

Regular calls to journalists from secret locations, text messages to claim attacks on international troops and DVDs showing acts of "jihad," or holy war, such as the murder of alleged spies, are now part of the Taliban's media arsenal.

Ironically, this new-found expertise comes from a movement that banned television, photographs, video and the Internet during its five years in government.

"The Taliban are now effectively plugged into media following the example of Al-Qaeda, which has been using the media as tools to publicise their actions," said Hameed Gul, ex-chief of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence that helped the Taliban to power.

They are "now reaching out to international TV channels and news agencies to debunk the US and its allies claiming defeat of the militia in Afghanistan," he told AFP.

And it is working, he said.

"It is because of the success of the Taliban's media policy that people feel that the US is loosing its war in Afghanistan," Gul said.

In getting out their message, the Taliban lead the government in accessibility and speed, from day-to-day terror strikes as well as other more complicated and political issues.

Ahead of last week's Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit, the Taliban sent journalists the message that "we are not terrorists" well before President Hamid Karzai's speech had hit inboxes saying they are.

"The Taliban are no longer the Taliban of five years ago," said Afghan journalist and parliamentarian Shukria Barakzai. "They have learned a lot."

The Afghan government's own weak media strategy was helping the Taliban, she said.

"It's very easy to access the Taliban, but when you try to contact a government spokesman, it's very hard to reach him. Either you find their phones off or they're not available," Barakzai said.

Kabul University political science professor Nasrullah Stanikzai believes the Taliban must have received help.

"This is the work of Al-Qaeda or it is possible that one of Afghanistan's neighbours are helping them," he said, referring to their speedy reactions and apparent ability to monitor events around the world, around the clock.

In a campaign seen to be more about winning "hearts and minds" than using military might to quell dissent, all the players in Afghanistan -- including the government and international military forces -- try to use the media to get out their message.

But in the case of the Taliban, "their 'entitlement' to media space is questioned by the fact that they are not a legitimate force," said journalist and media analyst Aunohita Mojumdar.

The government's annoyance at the Taliban's place in the media led to an attempt last year to issue "guidelines" to try to force Afghan media to stop reporting on the insurgents -- a move journalists ignored.

Facts "are at a premium in Afghanistan" with battle zones difficult to get to and the truth difficult to find.

So Taliban information, though fast to arrive, is often inaccurate, exaggerated or sometimes just plain false.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force acknowledges that it may lag behind the militants' in providing information about attacks and casualties.

But the force sometimes has to allow the Taliban to issue numbers and statistics "which are based in lies" while it tries to establish the facts, which can take time, spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Brenda Steele said.
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Omar urges Afghans to unite against Western troops
By Sayed Salahuddin Sat Aug 18, 7:56 AM ET
KABUL (Reuters) - The Taliban's reclusive leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, in a rare message on Saturday called on Afghans to shun their differences and join the militant Islamic movement's campaign to drive Western troops from Afghanistan.

Omar made the appeal in a message through a Taliban spokesmen, Qari Mohammad Yousuf, on the eve of the 88th anniversary of Afghanistan's independence from Britain.

He said Afghanistan was once again "occupied by colonialist forces," referring to the nearly 50,000 foreign troops led by NATO and the U.S. military in the country.

"The enemies of the religion of Islam and independence of the country have launched satanic propagandas under the slogans of democracy and freedom and are trying to disperse Afghans and exploit from it," said the message.

"We have to ... put aside all of our internal, regional and linguistic differences and get united against the enemy," said the message, which was read to Reuters over the telephone by Yousuf from an undisclosed location.

The one-eyed elusive Omar carries a bounty of $10 million from U.S. government for his head.

Omar's whereabouts have been a mystery since U.S.-led forces invaded Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban government in 2001 after he refused to hand over al Qaeda chief, Osama bin Laden, the architect of the September 11 attacks on the United States.

The Taliban have stepped up their guerrilla warfare in the past 19 months, the bloodiest period since the movement's removal from power, particularly in the south and east of the country close to the border with Pakistan.

Inspired by insurgents in Iraq, the Taliban largely rely on suicide raids and roadside bomb attacks as part of their campaign against the Afghan government and the foreign troops.

In the message, Omar also urged Taliban guerrillas to avoid civilian casualties while fighting the Afghan government and the Western troops.

He has called on Afghan military and civilian officials to join the Taliban ranks for "Afghanistan's freedom and also for their own safety so that the honor of freedom be gained unitedly."
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Talks to free SKorean hostages have failed: Taliban
Sat Aug 18, 6:45 AM ET
GHAZNI, Afghanistan (AFP) - Taliban militants on Saturday were deciding the fate of 19 South Korean hostages in Afghanistan after talks for their release failed, a spokesman for the militia told AFP.

"The negotiations have failed. The Taliban leading council is making its decision now on the fate of the hostages," said the spokesman, Yousuf Ahmadi.

Face-to-face talks between Taliban negotiators and a South Korean delegation in Ghazni, the capital of Ghazni province where the 23 Christian aid workers were abducted nearly a month ago, ended Thursday with no result, he said.

Ahmadi said more talks did not seem "probable" as Taliban demands for the release of some of their men from prisoner in exchange for the hostages' liberty had not been met by the Afghan government.

"Further talks will not achieve anything, the Koreans told us that the Americans and the Afghan government are not ready to release our prisoners," he said.

The Taliban freed two women hostages on Monday in what they said was a "gesture of good will". The two were the first to be released since the South Koreans were seized on July 19 on the main highway south of the capital Kabul.

Two of the men in the group have been murdered, and the Taliban have threatened to shoot more if their demands are not met.
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Harper praises benefits of Canada's mission in Afghanistan at Quebec concert
Sun Aug 19, 12:13 AM By Norman Delisle
LEVIS, Que. (CP) - Prime Minister Stephen Harper continued his campaign to drum up support for Canada's mission in Afghanistan at a concert on Saturday night near Quebec City.

"The situation of Canadians in Afghanistan is difficult and dangerous, but Quebecers can be proud of their soldiers," Harper said.

He made his comments at an annual concert of music and fireworks at the Levis Forts National Historic site of Canada.

Harper lauded the Canadian military's humanitarian efforts in Afghanistan, highlighting the construction of bridges, roads, schools and medical centres in the country.

The work of Canadians in Afghanistan has started to produce benefits, he said.

He said "Quebecers, in particular, can be very proud of the women and men of the Royal 22nd who are writing another glorious page in the history of this regiment."

Six million Afghan children now have access to school and seven million were vaccinated for polio, he said.

Harper also said the country is more and more responsible for its own security.

"These advances have been realized because of the efforts of the men and women in uniform on the front lines," he said.

Harper paid homage to parents and spouses of troops stationed in Afghanistan. He gave paintings depicting the Canadian war memorial in Vimy, France to the parents of nine soldiers from Levis currently serving in Afghanistan.

The visit comes at time when the Conservative government has been heavily criticized in Quebec over Canada's role in Afghanistan. Recent polls suggested around 70 per cent of Quebecers oppose the mission.
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War in Afghanistan: Mission is complete for I-Corps
By Matthew D. LaPlante The Salt Lake Tribune 08/19/2007 12:43:09 AM MDT
Like all combat commanders, Jerry Acton wanted nothing more than to return home with all of his soldiers.
   
That hope died Nov. 25 when West Valley City resident Scott Lundell was killed in a firefight in the Oruzgan Province of Afghanistan.
   
"His loss just made everyone more committed to complete the mission and do our best, as he did," Acton said Friday as he made final preparations to bring home the rest of his 130-member unit of artillerymen, many of whom have served as advisers to Afghan forces over the past year.
   
Indeed, the mission continued.
   
And the I-Corps commander believes that, true to Lundell's spirit, his soldiers remained committed to their mission and found significant successes.
   
"As I have spoken to the soldiers, I have seen and felt a great sense of pride in what we all did," Acton said. "We have truly seen the Afghan National Army and National Police make huge strides in their development. All of us became very close with those we mentored and I know that we are making a huge difference in the country."
   
Still, Acton noted, challenges remain.
   
He said the U.S. military needs to do more to reach the large number of Afghans in the country's rural, tribal areas.
   
"I believe we are doing well at the senior level of government and with the military and police," he said. "We still need to do more to reach the people in the villages and tribes. We need to do more to help them realize that we are offering a much better way of life and opportunity."
   
Acton's soldiers departed Utah in May 2006, arriving in Afghanistan a few months later in time for what was anticipated to be a major offensive by Taliban forces. While the Taliban push proved to be less intense than expected, the 12-month period the Utah-based I-Corps spent in the country was the deadliest for coalition forces since the war began in 2001.
   
National Guard officials said the unit is expected back in Utah by the end of this month.
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Four Afghan nationals, agent held at IGI with fake passports: Police
By IE Saturday August 18, 04:00 AM Indian Express via Yahoo! India News
Four Afghan nationals and a travel agent were arrested late Wednesday evening for traveling on fake passports, IGI Airport police said.

The Afghan nationals--Kirat Singh, his wife Harjeet Kaur, their daughters Jagdeep Kaur and Manpreet Kaur--had given a tout from Amritsar Rs 12 lakh for traveling to the UK on forged passports, said police.

The family was reportedly carrying passports in the name of Mohan Singh, Charan Kaur, Muskan Kaur and Babllein Kaur. The agent was traveling on his own passport, police said.

They were, however, deported by UK immigration authorities after their passports were found to be fake, police said. They arrived by an Alitalia Airlines flight from UK, and the Customs officials handed them over to the airport police at around 10 pm on Wednesday.

Singh told the police during interrogation that they are Afghan nationals and had been staying in Govindpuri for some time. They had arranged their UK tour with the help of agent Kamaljeet Singh, who hails from Amritsar.

Police said they left for UK on August 14 along with Kamaljeet and his courier Amandeep Singh Narang. "Kamaljeet gave them the slip after taking money from them. But since they were new and had no knowledge about immigration procedures, they were refused entry there," said a police source.

Amandeep reportedly confessed to the police that he had taken US $ 1,000 from the family for accompanying them. A case of cheating under the Passport Act has been registered and investigations are on, police said.
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Musharraf greets Karzai on Afghan national day
Daily Times, Pakistan
ISLAMABAD: President General Pervez Musharraf, in his felicitation message to Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday, greeted him on Afghanistan’s national day today (Sunday) and hoped that the relations between both neighbours would grow to benefit their people.

“It is my earnest hope that we will be able to overcome challenges, and the relations between the two countries will continue to grow for the mutual benefit of their people,” President Musharraf said.

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz in a separate message said Pakistan attached a high priority to its relations with Afghanistan, which had grown steadily over the years because of mutual trust and goodwill. Separately, the Afghan president telephoned Interior Minister and Pak-Afghan Joint Peace Jirga Chairman Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao and hoped that the recent peace jirga would strengthen the relations between the two countries.

Karzai thanked the chairman for successfully conducting the jirga. He said it was an ample proof that Pakistan was making sincere efforts for bringing peace and prosperity in Afghanistan. Sherpao also thanked the Afghan president for according a warm welcome to the Pakistani delegation during its visit to Kabul. agencies
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Army cuts time spent on training
Aims to bolster front lines quickly
By Bryan Bender, The Boston Globe Staff  |  August 19, 2007
FORT MONROE, Va. -- The US Army, struggling to cope with stepped-up operations and extended deployments of its soldiers to Iraq, has shortened the duration of several of its bedrock training courses so that troops can return to fighting units on the front lines more quickly, according to senior training officials.

One training course that is considered the "first step" in educating newly minted sergeants -- the noncommissioned officers considered the backbone of Army units -- has been cut in half to 15 days. Meanwhile, an intensive program designed to prepare young officers for advanced leadership has been compressed from eight months to less than five months so that the Army can fill positions in constant demand from commanders in the Middle East.

In a series of interviews in recent weeks, Army training officials expressed confidence that soldiers are able to master the skills they need to perform their jobs, and stressed that their units are gaining invaluable, real-time experience in both wars. But they also acknowledged that it is becoming increasingly difficult to prepare them for all the missions they are assigned, such as tank crews and artillery battalions that are participating in patrols and counterinsurgency operations.

"We are doing everything we can without jeopardizing the quality of the training to make it more efficient and compress it," Colonel Joe Gallagher, chief of plans for the US Army Training and Doctrine Command, said in an interview earlier this month. "The whole intent is to get the soldier into the unit where he can be used faster. Time will tell if something is missing."

Gallagher is among a team of officers at the Civil War-era post at Fort Monroe who are engaged in a day-to-day struggle to keep an Army of volunteers that has been at war longer than World War II trained and ready to respond to the unpredictable.

The training command, which operates more than two dozen schools and training centers around the country and overseas, estimates it will train and educate 511,000 soldiers this year. To accomplish this complex task, Gallagher and his team are constantly updating a detailed matrix of unit deployment schedules, lessons learned from the battlefield, and staffing levels so that the Army can place soldiers in the right classrooms and training bases, -- at the right time -- during the limited window between deployments.

The Army has two major types of training: individual training to teach soldiers for their particular specialty, such as infantry, engineering, or military police; and collective training, in which units hone battlefield tactics in a series of combat-related field exercises. In recent years the Army has overhauled its field training regimen to better prepare soldiers for the guerilla and urban warfare they will face in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Units preparing to deploy overseas receive a heavy dose of "live-fire" combat weapons training and spend hours sharpening critical skills -- how to conduct patrols, clear dwellings of possible insurgents, and defend convoys from roadside bombs. All soldiers, meanwhile, receive enhanced instruction in cultural issues to help them better interact with local inhabitants in Iraq and Afghanistan.

However, soldiers have dramatically less time to spend in the classroom.

The Army's goal has been to keep its front-line units home for at least two years for every year spent overseas to give them time with their families and enough time to rest, repair damaged equipment, conduct field training, and attend a series of increasingly advanced technical schools. However, to sustain the missions in Afghanistan and Iraq -- including the "surge" security plan -- the Army can keep most fighting units home for only a year before sending them back to the war zone.

President Bush's decision last spring to quell widespread violence in Iraq by deploying 30,000 additional troops -- followed by the extension of all Army combat tours from 12 months to 15 months -- will mean some units have less than a year at home, and in the classroom, between deployments.

Soldiers face a "time-restricted environment," said Colonel James Markley, the training command's director of training development.

As a result, the duration of the Warrior Leader Course, which the Army says is intended to teach sergeants to "lead from the front," has been cut in half from 30 days, and two follow-up courses for noncommissioned officers have also been drastically shortened.

The Basic Noncommissioned Officer Course, which assesses leadership and technical skills, used to last up to 15 weeks, depending on a soldier's area of expertise; now it often lasts eight weeks, according to Training and Doctrine Command. Likewise for the Advanced Noncommissioned Officer Course, which prepares sergeants first class and staff sergeants to become senior noncommissioned officers.

Newly promoted captains now take a Captains Career Course, designed to prepare them to be company commanders or battalion or brigade staff officers, for a little less than five months, lopping three months from the normal eight-month curriculum.

"You go through and you prioritize what is most important," said Gallagher.

To help compensate for less time in the classroom, the Army has established a growing number of mobile training teams. These small groups of instructors, relying on computers and other advancements, bring some training courses to soldiers in the field.

The Army is also increasing its reliance on "distance learning" and other computer-based education tools so that soldiers can earn some certifications without having to travel to a specific training site. And many training courses are now held more often to accommodate deployment schedules.

"We have done that in basic training, advanced individual training, basic officer leadership . . . and we are starting to do it in the Captains Career Course," Gallagher said. "You don't make the family or soldier any happier if you bring him home and you send him off to school by himself for 6 to 8 to 12 weeks."
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Fifteen years in jail for love
Globe and Mail 08/18/2007 By Graeme Smith
KANDAHAR
 "Have you ever heard The saddest story in this prison?"

In the crumbling cell blocks of Sarpoza prison, on the western edge of Kandahar city, the question seems impossible to contemplate. This is a place full of terrible stories, some true and others bred in the imagination of men who survive on little but gruel.

But the deputy warden, Nadi Gul Khan, has something specific in mind.

He looks over at his friend, Mohammed Nader, who nods in agreement. Mr. Nader, thuggish and meaty, serves as an informal boss in Sarpoza's national-security wing. A prisoner from a wealthy family, he has connections that give him influence in the worst corner of the prison, reserved for accused murderers, kidnappers and Taliban insurgents.

Many of the convicts here languish in dark cells where chunks of masonry fall from the ceiling as they sleep. Mr. Nader has a better room, with a bed, a television, and windows that look out on a garden.
His cell is swept clean, his dishes washed, and his tea carefully poured by a little man named Abib Rahman.

"Yes, it's true," Mr. Nader declares, solemnly. "My tea boy has the saddest story."

Tea boys often suffer in places like this, where the role can require working as a sexual servant for other inmates. Maybe that is why the deputy warden feels it necessary to add: "It involves a girl," he says. "It's a love story."

The prison boss summons Mr. Rahman, and he scurries into the room like a hobbit.

Everybody else lounges on cushions, but the young man with downcast eyes takes a spot on the floor.

"Tell your story," the deputy warden says.

Mr. Rahman obeys, and begins, in a soft voice, the unravelling of a tale that starts a decade ago with a child fleeing the slums to find his fortune, and the love that lured him into prison.

He introduces himself as the 22-year-old son of Mir Alam, of the Amirhil tribe, which makes him an ethnic Pashtun like most others here in southern Afghanistan but without any connections to the powerful tribes that hold sway in this region.

He lived in the slums of Kabul until he was 12 years old, he says, when his family sent him to Kandahar in search of work. The Taliban ruled the city in those days, and jobs were scarce.
A rich landowner from Panjwai took pity on the child. The farmer promised to pay Mr. Rahman the equivalent of $50 a month, he says, in exchange for menial work in his fields of wheat and grapes southwest of the city.

The boy moved into the farmer's house and spent his days watering the crops, driving a tractor, and tinkering with the irrigation pumps.

A year passed. Mr. Rahman started to feel accepted by the family; the daughters didn't cover their faces in his presence. He felt grateful for the work and the shelter, he says, but he grew worried about the fact that he hadn't yet been paid.

"He was like my father," Mr. Rahman says. "It was hard to talk to him about the money."

When Mr. Rahman did broach the subject, the farmer was apologetic, saying he had little extra money. But he did have another kind of wealth: His daughters, which are worth about $5,000 each in southern Afghanistan, where brides are regularly purchased with cash, land, or cattle.

The farmer said he noticed that Mr. Rahman had grown friendly with one of his daughters. He calculated that it would take the boy eight years to earn the bride-price by working the land, after which he would give permission for them to marry.

"She was a year younger than me," he says, remembering her with a shy smile. "We were children together, we knew each other. We were very happy."

Afghans usually keep their families hidden from strangers. Mr. Rahman declines to say his sweetheart's name, or describe her. He says only this: "She is beautiful."

More years passed. The girl started wearing a burka, the concealing blue shroud, after she reached puberty. Sweating in the fields added ropy muscles to the young man's frame. He grew a light-brown beard.
The teenagers were no longer allowed to meet in private, because of local traditions, but one night the girl visited the young man in secret. She begged him to take her away from her father's house, he says. She claimed that her mother had given her blessings, and she wanted to escape with him to Kabul. She never gave him details about why she wanted to get away from her father.

Horrified, the young man refused. He could not betray the man who had protected him like a parent, he says, and Pashtun tradition forbids marriage against a father's wishes.

Still, he says, the daughter persisted. She would often find ways of getting him alone, sometimes only for a minute, to repeat her request.

His willpower started to break when he was 20 years old, he says.

Eight years had passed and the farmer showed no interest in a wedding.

The daughter visited him again one evening, with a variation on her usual plea. This time she brought a bundle of money, 30,000 Pakistani Rupees, or about $520. She had stolen the cash from her father, she said, and she wanted him to buy a motorcycle.

He picked out a red Chinese motorbike a few days later, paid cash, and stashed away the leftover money for their journey. Still, he hesitated. He told the farmer he'd purchased the bike with gift money from his family in Kabul, and the old man seemed pleased, sending him on errands along the dirt tracks that wind like brown streams around the green Panjwai valley.

Two months later, he finally worked up the nerve. The daughter packed a few dresses in a bag; he didn't own anything except the clothes he was wearing. They drove away at night, up the bumpy paths in Panjwai, onto the paved roads that lead through Kandahar. The city teems with traffic by day, but the streets are empty by late evening and noise of their little bike's engine would have echoed down the rows of shuttered shops.

They passed under the arched eastern gates of the city and took the northern fork in the road, puttering across the darkened scrublands.

Two hours later they reached Qalat, where truckers often stop on their way to Kabul, and hit a police roadblock.

It was September of 2005, and police were watching the highways carefully in hopes of preventing any disruption of the upcoming parliamentary elections. As usual in this country, the police also used the checkpoints to enrich themselves. Officers told Mr. Rahman it was forbidden to travel by motorcycle to Kabul because the road was too dangerous; instead, they would give him two seats in a shared taxi and hold his bike for safekeeping.

The young man had little experience with such situations, and didn't argue with the officers' logic. The young couple squeezed into an overcrowded taxi, a yellow-and-white Japanese sedan, and reached the capital city the next morning.

A cold welcome awaited them in Kabul. Mr. Rahman had not seen his hometown since boyhood, and his parents had died while he was away.

His three brothers were still living at home with their wives and children, a total of 16 people crowded into a modest five-room compound in the city's western slums.

The family was scandalized by his attempt to elope. He introduced the 19-year-old as his future wife, and his brother exploded in rage.

"My brother said, ‘You don't have a wife! Who is this woman?' " Mr. Rahman says.

His brothers sent word to the Panjwai farmer that they had located his daughter. The landowner arrived quickly, all smiles, ate lunch with the family and spent a night in their home. In the morning he declared himself satisfied with the Rahman family and gave his consent for a wedding, on the condition that his daughter return home so they could prepare for the celebration.

The daughter wept at this news, Mr. Rahman says, because she didn't want to go back.

"I knew he was dishonest, but there was nothing I could do," he says. "I tried to argue with him, but I'm not so strong."

Mr. Rahman watched his bride loaded into a car, and saw it disappear into the ramshackle slums. He was penniless, with nothing to show for his labour. His brothers tried to console him: As a healthy young man with no debts, they said, his prospects were good. The regime of President Hamid Karzai had brought prosperity to the capital; surely he could start again in the new Afghanistan.

The young man says he knew that returning to Kandahar wasn't a good idea. By promising a wedding, the farmer had taken back his daughter with a face-saving untruth, and everybody involved knew it. Asking the farmer to make good on his promise would only invite trouble.

But Mr. Rahman was in love. He caught a southbound bus a week later, and showed his naivety by stopping in Qalat to inquire with the local police about his motorcycle. In the course of his explanations about the missing bike, Mr. Rahman mentioned the name of his former employer. One of the officers phoned the farmer, Mr. Rahman says, and moments later he found himself under arrest.

He spent the following months shuffled from jail to jail, from Qalat to the secret police headquarters in Kandahar, and onwards to the crumbling prison on the west side of the city.

He told his story countless times to police interrogators, he says.

The formal charge laid against him was kidnapping, but a prosecutor who listened to his story seemed sympathetic and predicted he would be set free within a month.

The poor and powerless often fare badly in Kandahar's justice system, however. Mr. Rahman says the farmer used his tribal connections to influence the case, and he was sentenced to 15 years in jail.

The young man goes silent. The prison cell is quiet for a moment, except for the clicking of the deputy warden's prayer beads. Birds sing in the garden. The prison boss stretches his heavy limbs and settles himself back on his bed with a chuckle at his tea boy's misfortune.

Mr. Rahman stares down at his dirty feet. He is asked whether he regrets coming back to chase after his love, and he looks up with a glance that suggests he couldn't have done anything else.

"Everything turned out the way I expected," he says.
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US steps closer to war with Iran
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi Asia Times Online / August 18, 2007
The Bush administration has leaped toward war with Iran by, in essence, declaring war with the main branch of Iran's military, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), which it plans to brand as a terrorist organization.

A logical evolution of US President George W Bush's ill-defined, boundless "war on terror", the White House's move is dangerous to the core, opening the way for open confrontation with Iran. This may begin in Iraq, where the IRGC is reportedly most active and, ironically, where the US and Iran have their largest common denominators.

A New York Times editorial has dismissed this move as "amateurish" and a mere "theatric" on the part of the lame-duck president, while at the same time admitting that it represents a concession to "conflict-obsessed administration hawks who are lobbying for military strikes". The political analysts who argue that the main impact of this initiative is "political" are plain wrong. It is a giant step toward war with Iran, irrespective of how well, or poorly, it is thought of, particularly in terms of its immediate and long-term implications, let alone the timing of it.

Coinciding with President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's highly publicized trip to Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan, the news received front-page coverage in the New York Times, next to a photograph of Ahmadinejad and his Afghan host, President Hamid Karzai, as if intended to spoil Ahmadinejad's moment by denigrating the Iranian regime. Just two weeks ago, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice implicitly put Iran on a par with the Soviet Union by invoking comparisons to the Cold War, and in essence compared it to al-Qaeda.

Thus if an unintended side-effect of the Cold War terminology was to enhance Iran's global image, the "terrorist" label for the IRGC aims to deliver a psychological blow to Iran by de-legitimizing the country.

Also, it serves the United States' purpose at the United Nations Security Council, where a British-prepared draft of a new round of sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program has been floating around for a while and will likely be acted on this autumn. The draft calls for tightening the screws on Iran by broadening the list of blacklisted Iranian companies and even may lead to the interdiction of Iranian ships in the Persian Gulf. This is indeed a dangerous move that could easily trigger open confrontation.

With the window of opportunity for Bush to use the "military option" closing because of the US presidential elections next year, the administration's hawks - "it is now or never" - have received a huge boost by the move to label the IRGC as terrorists. It paves the way for potential US strikes at the IRGC's installations inside Iran, perhaps as a prelude to broader attacks on the country's nuclear facilities. At least that is how it is being interpreted in Iran, whose national-security concerns have skyrocketed as a result of the labeling.

"The US double-speak with Iran, talking security cooperation on the one hand and on the other ratcheting up the war rhetoric, does not make sense and gives the impression that the supporters of dialogue have lost in Washington," a prominent Tehran University political scientist who wished to remain anonymous told Asia Times Online.

The US has "unfettered" itself for a strike on Iran by targeting the IRGC, and that translates into heightened security concerns. "The United States never branded the KGB [Russian secret service] or the Soviet army as terrorist, and that shows the limits of the Cold War comparison," the Tehran political scientist said. His only optimism: there are "two US governments" speaking with divergent voices, ie, "deterrence diplomacy and preemptive action", and "that usually, historically speaking, spells policy paralysis".

However, no one in Iran can possibly place too much faith on that kind of optimism. Rather, the net effect of this labeling, following the recent "shoot to kill" order of Bush with regard to Iranian operatives in Iraq accused of aiding the anti-occupation insurgents, is to elevate fears of a US "preemptory" strike on Iran. Particularly concerned are many top government officials, lawmakers and present or former civil and military functionaries who are or were at some point affiliated with the IRGC.

There is also a legal implication. Under international law, the United States' move could be challenged as illegal, and untenable, by isolating a branch of the Iranian government for selective targeting. This is contrary to the 1981 Algiers Accord's pledge of non-interference in Iran's internal affairs by the US government. [1]

Should the terror label on the IRGC be in place soon, US customs and homeland-security officials could, theoretically, arrest members of Ahmadinejad's delegation due to travel to the UN headquarters in New York next month because of suspected ties to the IRGC. Even Ahmadinejad, with his past as a commander of the Basij Corps, a paramilitary arm of the IRGC, risks arrest.

The US has opened a Pandora's box with a hasty decision that may have unintended consequences far beyond its planned

coercive diplomacy toward Iran. The first casualty could be the US-Iran dialogue on Iraq's security, although this would simultaneously appease Israeli hawks who dread dialogue and any hints of Cold War-style detente between Tehran and Washington.

It would also become more difficult for Syria to collaborate with Iran with respect to Lebanon's Hezbollah, who owe much to the IRGC since their inception in the early 1980s. The consensus in Iran is that chaos in Iraq is in Israel's interests, but not that of the US, and that the United States' Middle East policy is being held hostage by pro-Israel lobbyists who have painted an enemy image of the dreaded IRGC that is neither accurate nor in tune with the history of US-IRGC interaction.

The US and the IRGC

The current noise masks a hidden history of cooperation between the US military and the IRGC - in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Afghanistan and, more and more likely, Iraq.

In Bosnia, the US military and intelligence interacted with the IRGC, which had trained Bosnian Muslims, and fought alongside it against their Serbian enemies. They also funneled arms to the IRGC, mainly through Croatia, with the tacit consent of the US government.

In Afghanistan, US military commanders have had similar interaction with commanders of the IRGC, including the elite Quds division of the IRGC, which supported anti-Taliban forces and helped those forces take over Kabul in 2001 with relative ease.

In Iraq, the IRGC has supported various Shi'ite militias as well as the Iraqi military and intelligence and, unofficially, it can credit for the relative stability of the eight Shi'ite provinces, including those in the south. The new US diplomatic engagement of Iran over Iraq is having direct and immediate effects on Iran's behavior inside Iraq, promising further results by the joint expert committees set up as a result of the latest round in the dialogue.

Yet true to the United States' traditional Janus-faced approach toward Iran, just as Iranian and US military and intelligence officials are about to embark on systematic discussions over Iraq and regional security, they will in effect be prevented from doing so by the labeling of the IRGC as terrorist.

Coming 'war of attrition'?

The idea of an all-out military confrontation between the US and Iran, triggered by a US attack on the IRGC, has its watered-down version in a "war of attrition" whereby instead of inter-state warfare, we would witness medium-to-low-intensity clashes.

The question, then, is whether or not the US superpower, addicted to its military doctrine of "superior and overwhelming response", will tolerate occasional bruises at the hands of the Iranians. The answer is highly unlikely given the myriad prestige issues involved and, in turn, this raises the advisability of the labeling initiative with such huge implications nested in it.

No matter, the stage is now set for direct physical clashes between Iran and the US, which has blamed the death of hundreds of its soldiers on Iranian-made roadside bombs. One plausible scenario is the United States' "hot pursuit" of the IRGC inside Iranian territory, initially through "hit and run" commando operations, soliciting an Iranian response, direct or indirect, potentially spiraling out of control.

The hallucination of a protracted "small warfare with Iran" that would somehow insulate both sides from an unwanted big "clash of titans" is just that, a fantasy born and bred in the minds of war-obsessed hawks in Washington and Israel.

Note

1. The Algiers Accords of January 19, 1981, were brokered by the Algerian government between the US and Iran to resolve the situation that arose from the capture of American citizens in the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979. Through this accord the US citizens were set free. Among its provisions it was stated that the US would not intervene in Iranian internal affairs. - Wikipedia

Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author of "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear potential latent", Harvard International Review, and is author of Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.
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Italian officers on trial for Afghan rug thefts
Nick Pisa in Rome and Gethin Chamberlain, Sunday Telegraph 12:42am BST 19/08/2007
The orders were clear: Operation Flying Carpet was to be carried out with military precision.

The six Italian officers knew it would be a difficult and dangerous mission.

They would have to outwit the Taliban to infiltrate an area of Afghanistan close to the Iranian border, before seizing their targets and effecting their escape.

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But there will be no medals for their derring-do. Instead, the officers are facing a court martial after investigators discovered that their targets were Afghan rugs and that they had been using troops and military helicopters to smuggle them out of the Herat area and back to Italy.

Hundreds of carpets are believed to have ended up in the homes of officers and their friends, while others were sold in carpet shops or markets.

A spokesman at the Military Tribunal of Rome said six men - three captains, two lieutenant colonels and a warrant officer - from the 1st Aves-Antares regiment were under investigation for misusing an armed escort.

"The investigation centres on troops being used to guard Afghan carpets which were then flown to Italy via other countries and their transport was not reported through the proper channels,'' the spokesman said.

To avoid checks by Italian military police, the carpets and other trinkets were flown to Viterbo by complicated routes through other European Nato countries.

Prosecutors had intended to investigate cigarette smuggling but changed tack when tipped off about the carpets.

The six face court martial under Italian military law for breaching rules on bringing back unauthorised material from a war zone and for the misuse of an armed escort.

The regiment has been in Afghanistan for two years and has three CH47 helicopters which are meant to be used for emergency evacuation and transportation.

The Italian preoccupation with interior design is unlikely to impress their British and American counterparts, who have complained about the reluctance of some of their European allies to get involved in fighting.
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