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August 27, 2007 

Taliban kill 5 Western soldiers in Afghanistan
KABUL (Reuters) - Five Western soldiers, including three Americans, were killed in a string of Taliban attacks in eastern and southern Afghanistan, officials said on Monday.

The Americans were killed along with two Afghan soldiers in a Taliban ambush on Monday in Ghazi Abad district of eastern Kunar province, near the border with Pakistan, the district police chief told reporters.

NATO officials in Kabul said earlier that two soldiers had been killed while on patrol Sunday, one in an attack in eastern Afghanistan and the other in the south.

NATO did not identify the victims.

However, the Netherlands' military said a Dutch soldier had been killed overnight by a bomb in southern Afghanistan.

It said the 30-year-old sergeant was in a unit searching for explosives in the province of Uruzgan when an improvised device exploded, Chief of Staff Dick Berlijn told a televised news conference. A 23-year-old corporal was wounded, Berlijn said.

The Netherlands has about 1,700 troops in Afghanistan.

Violence has surged in the past 19 months in Afghanistan where more than 100 Western troops under the command of NATO and the U.S. military have been killed this year while fighting a renewed Taliban-led insurgency.
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US military regrets Afghan football 'insult'
KHOST, Afghanistan (AFP) - The US military in Afghanistan expressed regret Monday after footballs it distributed kicked off a storm of protest because they bore Koranic verses as part of the flag of Saudi Arabia.

The US-led coalition on Friday dropped toys, including soccer balls, into the eastern province of Khost from a helicopter as part of a goodwill gesture aimed at winning over support from the local population.

The balls showed the flags of several nations, including the Saudi standard.

A few dozen people protested Friday near the provincial capital, also called Khost, saying it was insulting for texts from the Koran to be put on the ground and kicked.

The resentment simmered on Friday. "It's an insult to our religion," said one man, named only Palawan, who was one of the protestors.

"They insult our religion and call it a gift," another man, Gilani Sanizai, said.

The coalition regretted causing any unhappiness, said a spokeswoman, Captain Vanessa Bowman.

The distribution of the toys was part of a "hearts and minds" campaign, she said.

The US-led force made "significant efforts to work with local leaders and ordinary Afghans to understand and respect their culture," Bowman said.

Deeply Islamic Afghanistan is sensitive to slights on Islam, with days of sometimes deadly protests last year about cartoons printed in Europe that were deemed to insult the Prophet Mohammed.
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Afghanistan's opium production doubles in two years
by Bronwen Roberts
KABUL (AFP) - Afghanistan's opium production has doubled in two years, reaching a new high in 2007, with the country almost the exclusive supplier of the world's deadliest drug, the United Nations announced Monday.

Production was estimated to have jumped 34 percent this year over last with the number of heroin labs also increasing, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said in its Annual Opium Survey.

The southern province of Helmand had meanwhile become the world's biggest source of illicit drugs, surpassing the output of entire countries.

This was despite a multi-million-dollar effort led by Britain and the United States to cut the opium trade which finances the growing Taliban insurgency that has killed thousands of people, including scores of Western soldiers.

The production of opium, used to make heroin, had soared to "frightening record levels in 2007," the UNODC said in a statement on the survey.

The amount of Afghan land used for growing opium was now larger than the combined total used to grow coca -- the raw ingredient for cocaine -- in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, it said.

The total opium harvest for the year was estimated at 8,200 tonnes, up from 6,100 tonnes last year, a 34 percent spike, it said. The harvest normally ends around late July.

The area planted with opium poppies had risen to 193,000 hectares (476,710 acres) from 165,000 last year, representing a 17 percent rise, it said.

Afghanistan had become "practically the exclusive supplier of the world's deadliest drug", accounting for 93 percent of the global opiates market, the survey said.

Opium cultivation was "closely linked" to the Taliban insurgency with the hardline Islamic movement, which has ties with Al-Qaeda, using the drug economy to fund arms, logistics and pay, it said.

The survey outlined several other disturbing findings.

About 80 percent of opium poppies were grown in a handful of provinces along the border with Pakistan that see the worst unrest.

Helmand, where opium cultivation rose by 48 percent, has become the worlds biggest source of illicit drugs, surpassing the output of entire countries like Colombia (coca), Morocco (cannabis) and Myanmar (opium) which have populations up to 20 times larger, the UNODC said.

There were also important opium and heroin markets in the province.

Fourteen percent more of the population was involved in opium cultivation this year than last, the report said, despite campaigns to persuade farmers to choose legitimate crops.

The gross income from a hectare of opium was 4,600 dollars, compared to 530 dollars for wheat, it said.

However, while production had soared across the country 13 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces were now opium-free, double the number of last year.

UNODC executive director Antonio Maria Costa called on the international military forces operating in Afghanistan under the NATO umbrella to help in the fight against opium -- which they have so far refused to do.

"Since drug trafficking and the insurgency live off each other, the foreign military forces operating in Afghanistan have a vested interest in supporting counternarcotics operations," he said in the statement.

Costa also said the Afghan government's poppy eradication programme should also be undertaken "more honestly and more vigorously" and farmers choosing not to grow opium should be given rewards, such as new schools and hospitals.

"It would be an historic error to let Afghanistan collapse under the blows of drugs and insurgency," he said, adding "this double threat is real and growing."
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Inside an Afghan opium market
By Bilal Sarwary BBC News, Shaddle Bazaar, eastern Afghanistan Monday, 27 August 2007 
Travelling on Afghanistan's main Jalalabad to Torkham road, you eventually arrive at Shaddle Bazaar, a market of around 30 shops in the eastern province of Nangarhar, on the border with Pakistan.

At first glance, it looks like any other normal market offering everyday goods.

But in reality, this is one of Afghanistan's biggest opium markets.

Farmers from Nangarhar and other adjacent provinces bring opium to Shaddle to sell. Much of it comes from Nangarhar and Helmand - two of Afghanistan's biggest opium-producing provinces.

Mud hut shop

Thousands of kilos of opium are bought and sold every day.

Sitting inside the shop tension between the drug dealers is visible - for a few minutes there is hot dispute and shouting over prices and the quality of the opium before the transaction is completed.

There are big scales in the shop, and the assistant weighs the opium on it - Gul Mohammad is busy counting out Pakistani rupees to pay for the opium he has bought from one of his customers.

In his mud hut shop he buys hundreds of kilos of opium every day and the smell of it is everywhere.

Outside his shop vehicles come and go - green tea is served constantly for the visitors.

But you do not have to study what is going on too closely to notice the unusual - a man carries a big bag full of hundreds of thousands of Afghanis.

The dealers all carry pistols which they say is for their own protection.

Customers enter the shop bringing opium packed secretly, which they refer to by its nickname as maal. They are constantly on the look-out for government informers.

I am repeatedly asked not to take pictures of anyone's face, nor should I name anyone. The names of those involved in the drugs trade in this piece have been made up to protect their identity.

"We could get killed or arrested," says one of the few people in the shop willing to talk to me.

Europe bound

Some villagers, like 18-year-old Abdullah Jan, have to walk for hours before reaching Shaddle. The tiredness on his face explains it all - if he is stopped by government agents or bandits he would lose money that feeds his family for the entire year.

"I left at four in the morning and got here after four hours. I have brought 10kg of opium from my fields to sell."

After a hard bargain with Gul Mohammad Khan, the opium dealer, he is getting the equivalent of $1,400 - more than he can get for any other crop. He is one of hundreds of people who travel to Shaddle bazaar to sell and buy opium.

From here the opium is taken to the nearby mountains and villages in the border areas to heroin labs set up by local drug dealers, where it is processed into heroin.

Eventually, it will hit the streets of Europe.

The market first began to sell opium openly under the Taleban regime after they permitted the cultivation of poppies.

After the fall of the Taleban in 2001, the market has been raided several times but it has re-opened again and again.

In recent months, Afghanistan's elite anti-drug force has raided the bazaar with the help of foreign forces in the country - they made arrests and seized opium and heroin in large quantities. But they did not succeed in closing down the bazaar indefinitely.

Last year, Afghanistan's poppy production reached record levels.

The US state department's annual report on narcotics said the flourishing drugs trade was undermining the fight against the Taleban.

Powerful mafia

It warned of a possible increase in heroin overdoses in Europe and the Middle East as a result.

Poppy production rose 25% in 2006, a figure US Assistant Secretary of State Ann Patterson described as alarming. Four years after the US and its British allies began combating poppy production, Afghanistan still accounts for 90% of the world's opium trade.

The US has recently given the Afghan government more than $10bn in assistance, but most of the money will be spent on security rather than encouraging alternative sources of income.

For 45-year-old Gul Mohammad Khan being a opium trader is his way of surviving.

"If we had roads, clinics, factories and if there were job opportunities I would not do what I am doing now," he said.

For the past 10 years Mr Mohammad has seen many regimes and local officials come and go. His shop has been raided many times but he has never been arrested.

Inside, I am shown various qualities of opium and other raw material that are used to make heroin. Current prices are anywhere from 10,000 Afghanis ($201) for a kilo of dry opium - that is the best quality - to around 5,500 Afghanis ($110) for wet opium.

Target traffickers

According to officials, the mafia is powerful and strong.

"They are so strong that we sometimes find ourselves outnumbered fighting them," says Gen Daud Daud, the deputy minister of interior in charge of counter narcotics.

"In these mountains of Achin district and other border villages they have everything from heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and of course better vehicles and more money than we do."

Haji Deen Gul - who is selling 20kg of opium - is critical of the Afghan government and the international community for targeting the farmers. Instead he wants the traffickers to be targeted.

"They should target the ones who are selling the heroin to Western countries. I sell my opium to feed my family and from my heroin they can even make medicine. When I have water and roads provided to me, I will stop growing poppies."

Before I leave Gul Mohammad Khan's shop, he tells me selling opium is not ideally the trade he wants to be in.

"I don't want my children to be in this trade and I hope that some day the world will help us. Only then can we stop the opium trade."

Names of those mentioned in the article have been changed to protect their identities.
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Afghan police training to be standardized
By Judy Dempsey International Herald Tribune Monday, August 27, 2007
BERLIN: The United States, the United Nations and the European Union have agreed with the Afghan government to introduce common standards in building up the police force in Afghanistan after several governments criticized the lack of coordination since the program was set up five years ago, officials said over the weekend.

The decision comes as violence there rises. The Interior Ministry said 41 people were killed and at least six wounded in suicide bombings and gun battles near the capital, Kabul, over the weekend. In the southern province of Kandahar, eight Afghan officers were killed after insurgents attacked a police patrol. Two Afghans who were guarding a convoy carrying supplies for NATO-led forces were also killed, The Associated Press reported.

The agreement to standardize police training means that different methods adopted by the United States, Germany and other countries will be put under a single new authority: the International Police Coordination Board Secretariat, based in Kabul.

The international approach, agreed to with President Hamid Karzai, could be the start of a more efficient police force able to move in quickly to maintain security once a military operation has been completed and provide protection to development agencies so that the local population can see tangible improvements to their living conditions.

"There was replication previously," Colonel Many-Bears Grinder of the U.S. Army, deputy head of the police secretariat, said during an interview with the International Herald Tribune over the weekend. "When you have limited manpower and resources, it does not make sense to waste these resources in the duplication of efforts where there are other areas that may need some of those resources."

Grinder is assigned to the Combined Security Transition Command, the American-led military unit that supervises the development of the security forces.

After October 2001, when the United States invaded Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban, Germany and the United States agreed to take over the responsibility of establishing and training a new police force.

Until 2006, the United States spent more than $1.3 billion in training a force that is mostly focused on border control and highway security in courses lasting about three weeks. Germany, in contrast, spent €70 million, or $95 million, training officers in courses that lasted up to three years and concentrated on community policing.

Security experts have said that the U.S. course was too short, and the German courses too long and bureaucratic.

The courses also failed to train a force capable of dealing with the growing narcotics trade or the re-establishment of the Taliban, those experts said. The EU took over the German police training mission this summer, increasing the number of trainers from about 50 to nearly 200.

"This is now becoming a coordinated effort," Grinder said. "We also strive for an international joint effort in reviewing the curriculums as well as projects."

She said the training for police officers and for the most basic training levels were now under review. The International Police Coordination Board Secretariat was also working closely with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.

One project, she said, involved training police officers about rights. "We are trying to get human rights offices assigned in every province, down to the district level," Grinder said.

Conflicting reports on clash

Afghan elders said Sunday that airstrikes had killed 12 civilians in the southern province of Helmand on Saturday night, but an American military spokesman blamed Taliban militants for the civilian deaths, The New York Times reported from Kabul.

Exactly what occurred in the remote area was unclear. But the charges and countercharges reflected growing tensions in Afghanistan over civilian deaths.

Hajji-Agha Muhammad, an Afghan elder, said airstrikes had killed 12 civilians and wounded 12 others in Kobar, a village in the volatile Musa Qala district, Saturday night. Muhammad said the dead included six children ages 3 to 6 and two women.
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Japan foreign min to fight to keep Afghan mission
Mon Aug 27, 2007 3:12PM IST
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's new foreign minister, Nobutaka Machimura, on Monday vowed to do whatever he could to continue Tokyo's support for U.S.-led operations in Afghanistan and boost relations between Tokyo and Washington.

The leader of main opposition Democratic Party of Japan, which won control of the upper house of parliament last month, has vowed to oppose the extension of the mission.

The DPJ and its opposition allies could force a suspension of Japan's refuelling mission for U.S.-led coalition warships in the Indian Ocean, which has been operating since 2001 under a law that expires on Nov. 1.

Machimura said he would do whatever it takes to persuade DPJ head Ichiro Ozawa and other members of his party to agree to extend the law.

"It is not just for Japan's relations with the United States. Japan, as a member of the international community, has to take responsible action, and therefore we have to do this," Machimura told reporters shortly after being named the new foreign minister.

"I believe we will be able to secure the understanding of the Democrats, and to this end I will do my best."

Opposition lawmakers in the upper house could reject the bill, forcing the LDP to present it to the lower house again, in which case it would need a two-thirds majority to pass. The resulting delay could mean a hiatus in Japan's supply mission.

Policy experts say the withdrawal of Japanese troops could sour Japan's security ties with the United States.

Ozawa rebuffed a personal appeal for support from U.S. ambassador to Japan Thomas Schieffer this month, saying the war in Afghanistan was a U.S. fight that "had nothing to do with the United Nations or the international community".

Machimura stressed the need for Japan to strengthen its relations with the United States, cooperate with China, South Korea and Russia, and boost its ties with India and Australia.

"The Japan-U.S. alliance is the backbone of Japan's foreign policy... We need to solidify the basis for Japan-U.S. relations," he said.
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Afghanistan: South Korean Muslims seek release of hostages
Peshawar, 27 August (AKI/DAWN) - The Korea Muslim Federation (KMF) has asked the Taliban to release the 19 Koreans being held hostage in Afghanistan.

A four-member delegation of the federation visited the northern Pakistani city of Peshawar and told journalists on Sunday that the Muslim community in Seoul was facing problems after the kidnapping.

“Ramadan is approaching and we request the Taliban to release the hostages immediately and prove to the world that Muslims do not believe in violence,” said Suleman Lee Haeng, the imam of the Seoul central mosque.

The delegation also includes KMF director Abdul Rahman Lee, its member Zaki Jeong and a Pakistani businessman in Korea, Zulfiqar Ali Khan.

“About 15 policemen have been posted at the central mosque in Seoul round the clock due to some minor incidents when someone hurled stones into the mosque,” said Rahman.

He said some people used bad language against the Muslims there. Although, such people were few in number, it still affected the day to day life of Muslims there, he said.

The delegation met chief of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (Sami) Maulana Samiul Haq at his seminary in Akora Khattak.

Haq is dubbed the "Father of the Taliban" because many taliban, including Mullah Omar, were schooled in a madrass he ran.

The members of the delegation said Haq had assured them that he would request the Taliban for the release of the hostages.

They said would also meet other religious figures in Peshawar.

“There are about 35,000 Muslims in Korea and before this incident we had been preaching Islam in a very effective manner,” said Khan, a native of Peshawar who settled in Korea about 10 years ago.

“While my family or other Muslims, especially non-Koreans, travel in public transport or roam around, people look at them with suspicion and some of them even say that Muslims are killers,” he added.

The group of 23 South Korean Christian volunteer aid workers were kidnapped on 19 July on the Kabul-Kandahar highway. The Taliban killed two male members of the group and released two female members. Nineteen members of the group are still being held hostage.

“Being representatives of the Muslim community in Korea, we initiated this visit to plead the case of our people and request our Taliban brothers that these hostages are innocent and they should be released for the sake of humanity," said Suleman Lee Haeng, the imam of the Seoul central mosque

The visitors said they had been advised in Korea not to visit Peshawar because of security reasons but they had preferred to travel to the city to try and put forward their request to the Taliban.

A member of the KMF, Zaki Jeong also showed some pictures of the mosque in the South Korean capital where police had been deployed and some roads in Seoul where banners had been hoisted asking the Taliban to release the hostages.
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Afghan women stores make a mark
By Charles Haviland BBC News, Mazar-e Sharif Monday, 27 August 2007
The women's affairs department in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif has launched a scheme to help women set up their own retail businesses.

Five shops, owned and run by women, have already opened in the city and the women say the stores are doing well.

The provincial governor is now planning a shopping centre with about 200 shops, exclusively owned by women.

The initiative is also helping customers as many families do not allow their women to enter shops run by men.

Since the Taleban were ousted from Afghanistan, many women have found that gaining or regaining their rights is a long and difficult process.

Yet in some places, they are managing to chip away at patriarchal institutions.

Thriving again

North Afghanistan's biggest city, Mazar-e-Sharif, is trying to put behind it the bloody years from 1997 to 2001, when it was fought over by militias, including the Taleban, and thousands of people were killed in the streets.

Today, this low-rise city, baked by the sun of the central Asian grasslands, is thriving again.

The broad boulevards have been resurfaced with Japanese funding.

Each city roundabout is being designed by a different local business, some with outlandish sculptures as their centre-pieces, and Mazar is the hub of a part of Afghanistan vastly more peaceful and secure than the south or the east.

It remains socially conservative, with most women going about in white or blue burkhas, the all-encompassing veil.

But the provincial women's affairs department has now started a scheme for women to own their own shops, something almost unheard of in Afghanistan.

The five that have so far opened in Mazar-e Sharif are mostly devoted to women's clothing or foodstuffs.

Women's garden

The shop owners are getting good returns, giving them more financial security.

And they appear to be popular with the customers - in conservative Afghanistan, many families do not want their womenfolk entering shops run by men.

And now, the number of such shops is set to soar.

The provincial governor has laid the foundation stone for a complex called Bagh-e-Zanana, or Women's Garden, which will contain about 200 shops owned by women.

Men as well as women will be able to shop there, but officials say their behaviour will be closely monitored.

Some conservative local clerics are unhappy with the moves.

One has said that the new female entrepreneurs are misleading other women, encouraging them to claim freedoms that are inappropriate. But other religious scholars are satisfied with the initiative, arguing that the new commercial activities are a step towards advancing women's role in society.

The new shopping complex is expected to open within weeks.
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Benazir, Afghanistan, “I was sold four times”
KABUL, 27 August 2007 (IRIN) - Thirty one-year-old Benazir - not her real name - was 12 when she was wedded to a 24-year-old man in Shinwaar District of Nangarhar Province, eastern Afghanistan. Benazir has been sold four times by men whom she considers her husbands - in a formally proscribed tradition known as women selling. She told IRIN of her extraordinary experiences.

"I had lived for more than nine years with my first husband and had four children from him when he decided to sell me to Qabayels [tribal groups living on the Pakistani side of the border]. He was a landlord who made money from his farms. I don’t know how much I was sold for. I was sick for a long time and my husband was always complaining that I was ugly and unattractive.

"I could not leave my two-year-old daughter so he [the husband] also sold her with me while I was two months pregnant. We were sold to a man named Ziaullah [not his real name] who was always angry and who always beat his two other wives and children. He earned money by trafficking people to Arab countries.

"Four months later my daughter disappeared. People stole her from me. I was always crying for my daughter. One day Ziaullah told me that he was fed up with my non-stop groaning and ugly face and wanted me sold to another man. I did not want to leave Ziaullah’s house because I was thinking one day my little daughter would be found and brought back to that house.

" Ziaullah sold me to a man called Haji Aman [not his real name] who was a rich man from Mumand Dara. He was both a landlord and a merchant and an importer of construction materials from Pakistani cities. He bought me because he wanted to have male children since he did not have one from his wife. He was gentle with me. I gave birth to my son, Noorullah, at his house. I was very happy with my son and Haji Aman was also happy. He was happy because I was a woman who could give birth to his own male children.

"Nine months later I gave birth to a daughter who died 15 days after birth. Haji Aman was frustrated. I was also frightened. I was praying to God to give me a son, at least to appease him [Haji Aman]. But, the next time I also gave birth to another daughter and he named her Bas Bibi [`No more daughters’].

"I do not know what was wrong with him. After I delivered my third daughter, Haji Aman was very angry and thought something was wrong with me. After my third daughter he married a young girl for whom he paid 400,000 [Pakistani] rupees [about US$6,500] as dowry. Haji Aman used to say he’d marry 40 times if necessary until one of his wives gave birth to a son.

"God gave me three more daughters. Now I had had six daughters from Haji Aman. Haji Aman loved his first wife very much, but she was very bad to me and was always blaming me for everything.

"Haji Aman was a good man and did not want to sell me again. He said it was a shame that men sold their wives. But his first wife wanted me out of the house. Haji Aman divorced me and handed me and my two youngest daughters to a Mullah [Islamic religious leader] to take me to my first husband in Shinwaar.

"The Mullah was a hypocrite. He sold me and my daughters to another man whose business was buying and selling women. This man kept me for several weeks with four other women. One evening he took us all to another village where many men had gathered in a garden. We were wearing `burqas’, and were told to remain silent.

"In the end ironically my first husband bought me, without knowing it was me and my daughters. When he took me to his house and saw my face he was surprised. He said he had paid 60,000 Afghanis [about $1,200] to buy back what he had sold very cheaply many years back.

“I have delivered 11 children, but I still miss my daughter who was stolen from me at Ziaullah's house.”
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Young Afghan Cricketers Notch Historic Success
Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
August 27, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Afghanistan's under-19 cricket team has reached the final of an international tournament for the first time in its history.

The Afghan cricketers beat the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in a semifinal match today in Kuala Lumpur, paving the way to the Asian Cricket Council's U-19 Elite Cup.

Shortly after the match, the Afghan team's coach, Taj Malik, told RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan that it was a tough match, but the young players pulled through to beat the UAE team.

Afghanistan will face Nepal in the final.

Cricket was not widespread in Afghanistan until early 2002, when Afghan refugees who had spent years in Pakistan brought their love for the game back home.
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Don't fail Afghanistan
Iraq may be hopeless, but Afghanistan is worth defending. Here's why and how.
August 27, 2007 Los Angeles Times, CA
The United States is now at risk of "losing" Afghanistan, the predictable result of committing insufficient troops and money to that catastrophically failed state after the rout of the Taliban in 2001. U.S. forces are suffering sharply higher casualties as Taliban fighters surge back in, and drug lords are coming to dominate the political and economic landscape. The collapse of the noble nation-building experiment in Afghanistan would destroy U.S. credibility in the eyes of the world, shake global security and condemn millions of people to another generation of warfare and terrorism. And it would be all the more devastating if accompanied by U.S. defeat in Iraq. Yet the effort to build a stable nation atop the wreckage of Afghanistan can still, with great effort, be salvaged.

This page has argued that Iraq's civil war is beyond the United States' ability to suppress by military means and that the presence of U.S. troops can only delay the bloody but inevitable political reckoning. Although it is unlikely that a workable political accord will be reached before the power struggle is settled on the battlefield, only the Iraqis themselves can prevent this calamity.

All is not lost in Afghanistan, however. Unlike the Iraqis, Afghans are not engaged in nationwide sectarian warfare. They have a weak but legitimate government, a corrupt but functioning parliament and an elected president who commands broad international support. Critics have dismissed President Hamid Karzai as no more than "the mayor of Kabul," but the importance of his leadership was demonstrated anew this month when he managed to convene tribal leaders -- 350 from Afghanistan and 300 from Pakistan -- in a historic "peace jirga."

Unlike in Iraq, the insurgency in Afghanistan doesn't spring from deep-seated animosity toward a fatally sectarian government. Rather, as former U.S. special envoy James Dobbins points out, the insurgents are primarily ethnic Pashtun living on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and their campaign is organized, armed, funded and directed from Pakistan. The Taliban have been Pakistan's hedge against a united Afghanistan allied with India. This thorny problem won't be easily solved, but it can be managed. Weak governments around the world have successfully dealt with insurgencies -- when they have been able to pressure the rebels' foreign sanctuaries and when they have earned popular support by political inclusion and economic progress.

Why should the United States keep forces in Afghanistan while withdrawing them from Iraq? Some argue, cogently, that if the greatest threat to U.S. national security comes from terrorist havens in failed states, then we have more to fear from a failed Iraq, with its huge population, strategic location and oil wealth, than from a failed Afghanistan, an impoverished backwater. If Al Qaeda were to dominate Iraq, it would pose a terrible security threat to the West -- but that outcome appears unlikely. Sunni tribal leaders are cooperating with U.S. forces to fight the foreign Al Qaeda; Shiites have been the primary victims of its barbaric attacks. The United States does have an interest in a stable Iraq, but its troops cannot impose peace without a committed Iraqi partner.

The Afghan government is such a partner. The U.N.-authorized, NATO-led peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan is accepted as legitimate and has made progress when and where it was properly managed and funded. And so, for reasons of history, timing and practicality, the United States should redouble its efforts to save Afghanistan from a resurgent Taliban.

First, history: The threat from Afghanistan isn't theoretical. It was the source of the attack on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, and the U.S. invaded only after the Taliban refused to hand over the avowed mastermind, Osama bin Laden. Six years later, Bin Laden and Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader, are still at large, probably in Pakistan. Bin Laden still brags of his exploits on videotape. Their triumphant impunity continues to inspire suicide bombings, beheadings of headmasters who dare teach girls, slayings of prominent women, kidnappings of foreign aid workers and terrorizing of Afghan villages. NATO troops must fight until Afghanistan has a strong enough military to prevent their return.

Second, timing: The United States would be seen as dangerously weak if it is mired in Afghanistan at the same time it is retreating from a stalemate in Iraq. Moreover, making good on unkept promises to improve the lives of the Afghan people is both a moral and a geopolitical imperative at a time when the West should be offering a meaningful alternative to fanatical Islamism. The setbacks in Afghanistan are fairly blamed on the Bush administration's decision to attempt nation-building on the cheap. It then slashed aid in 2006 and diverted military and intelligence resources to the worsening situation in Iraq. This year, the U.S. gave just $1.8 billion in direct "operations aid" to the Afghan government; the other 82% of U.S. aid was military. Afghanistan needs massive civilian economic aid now, and $10 billion a year -- what we spend in a month in Iraq -- would be a start. The Europeans have been right to criticize the United States for shortchanging nation-building, but they in turn must be persuaded to order their troops into combat. And the so-called donor nations, including the wealthy Arab states, must be shamed into paying what they've promised -- now, when Kabul needs it most.

Third, practicality: The "global war on terror" cannot be fought by primarily military means as long as terrorists have an unending supply of suicidal recruits. Al Qaeda's ideology was born in Egypt and Saudi Arabia but has appeal around the world, including in Pakistan, because of hostility to Western political, economic and cultural incursions into Muslim lands. Success in Afghanistan would show that the West can be a respectful and helpful friend to an Islamic country in which it has no oil or other economic interests.

To succeed, however, the tactics of the U.S. military in Afghanistan must change, in keeping with the Army's own counterinsurgency thinking. The military must end its over-reliance on air power, which has caused so many civilian casualties, and shift to a strategy of holding terrain long enough to allow aid projects to bear fruit. The United States can and should help Afghanistan forge a durable peace by isolating terrorists from their host populations; by offering prosperity, respect and self-determination to estranged peoples such as the Pashtun; by curbingcorruption; and by training Afghan forces to do the job themselves.

Nation-building will never be easy or cheap, and the American people may wish to make future commitments more sparingly. But the Afghan people want the international help they've been promised. We owe it to them -- and to ourselves -- to try harder.
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Let's not tear down Afghan gains
Aug 27, 2007 04:30 AM Rosie DiManno Toronto Star,  Canada
Just four months ago, I stood on the crest of Ghundy Ghar, in the company of Canadian snipers, surveying a valley that was lush, thriving and, in the context of Southern Afghanistan, remarkably calm.

Our troops held the high ground, firmly.

Others had fought for it, the previous autumn and winter, but the Royal Canadian Dragoons, Recce squadron, had made the crucial vantage point habitable, secure, battening down the hatches and clearing the approach road of mines. They had eyes on, through the telescopic sights of rifles and surveillance radar. Regularly, in convoys, they patrolled the larger area – a crucial chunk of Zhari district criss-crossed by dirt trails used to hustle out opium and muster in fighters. It was this Canadian presence that had the insurgents on their heels. They couldn't tyrannize at will.

Last week, two Van Doos were killed trying to retake that position.

What happened, in so brief a span? Short answer: Canadian troops left.

They turned Ghundy Ghar over to Afghan national security forces – an Army encampment at the bottom of the hill, Afghan police checkpoints along the arterial road on the northern bank of the Arghandab River. Gift-wrapped it for the Afghans. And they couldn't hold it. Couldn't even prevent insurrectionists from planting massive improvised explosive devices right inside what had been the Canadian compound.

"It just goes to show, in this complex country, in this complex terrain, how easy it is for insurgents to slip back into an area and intimidate the locals, in a short period of time,'' Gen. Rick Hillier told the Star on Friday.

"We've countered that in a variety of ways. Long term, the most important way is to grow the Afghan army and police. We're light years ahead of where we were last September and not as far advanced as we will be come Christmas. But there's a long way to go.''

Two Afghan battalions have been trained, one already in the field. They've certainly showed willing, more so than Afghan police who are notoriously corrupt but also infrequently paid. Neither army nor police are properly equipped.

Ghundy Ghar is a microcosm of the peril that Afghanistan faces when, as seems increasingly certain, Canadian troops depart combustible Kandahar in early 2009, hard-won military successes crushed on the anvil of domestic politics back home.

It happens repeatedly, all over the southern provinces where the neo-Taliban has been most resurgent. Villagers come back, when they feel NATO troops have pacified the environment, rural life is resurrected, families start sending their children to school, the local economy begins to percolate. Then, NATO withdraws from a location, either because they have pressing assignments elsewhere – Recce squadron was rotated to Spin Boldak – or because somebody decides the time is ripe for handoff to Afghan forces.

It was Afghan civilians who'd pleaded for Canadians to return last week.

Transferring security to Afghan forces, as long-term masters in their own house, has been promoted as the best pullout strategy for foreign troops. But the long-term is disastrously short-term, with political pressure in Canada – and other NATO countries – guaranteed to dismantle the incremental gains. Politicians, with their eyes on opinion polls, lack the backbone of soldiers. A great many Canadians have grown weary of the whole involvement, because Afghanistan is far away, theoretical, not worth Canadian lives.

Some, I think, perversely covet defeat, dead soldiers exploited as little more than ideological clubs with which to batter the mission.

Abandoning Afghanistan prematurely, on some arbitrary deadline, really will mean that those Canadians died in vain.
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Afghan Elders and U.S. Differ on Who Killed 12 Civilians
By DAVID ROHDE August 27, 2007 New York Times, United States
KABUL, Afghanistan, Aug. 26 — Afghan elders said Sunday that airstrikes had killed 12 civilians in the southern province of Helmand on Saturday night, but an American military spokesman blamed Taliban militants for the civilian deaths.

Exactly what occurred in the remote area was unclear, with local elders and American military officials giving conflicting accounts. But the charges and countercharges reflected growing tensions in Afghanistan over civilian deaths.

Hajji Agha Muhammad, an Afghan elder, said airstrikes had killed 12 civilians and wounded 12 others in Kobar, a village in the volatile Musa Qala district, on Saturday night. Mr. Muhammad said the dead included six children ages 3 to 6 and two women.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Muhammad said foreign patrols had entered the area in the early evening and faced no opposition. Several hours later, airstrikes destroyed two houses, he said.

American military officials said that Afghan and American troops had clashed with Taliban fighters who were guarding a large heroin lab. Helmand produces more opium than any other province in Afghanistan, and Taliban militants are believed to have struck an alliance with drug traffickers in the Musa Qala area.

After American and Afghan forces destroyed the lab, they were ambushed by Taliban fighters, American officials said. During the battle, the Taliban fired 82-millimeter mortars. NATO responded with airstrikes, they said, but no bombs fell on houses.

“We didn’t target any buildings or any structures,” said Lt. Col. David Accetta, a spokesman for the American forces in Afghanistan. “My guess would be that if any houses were destroyed, it would have been the result of Taliban fire.”

An official at the main hospital in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital, said two men, two women and one child arrived from Musa Qala on Sunday with shrapnel wounds. Additional wounded people were taken to nearby hospitals, he said, but he had no exact figures.

The issue of civilian deaths is causing rising anger in Afghanistan this year.

More than 300 Afghan civilians have died in NATO airstrikes, according to one international report. Under growing public criticism, President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly called for NATO to use restraint and to better coordinate its attacks with Afghan forces.

NATO officials say they make every effort to avoid civilian casualties, and they accuse the Taliban of basing their fighters in houses and using civilians as human shields. They also say the Taliban exaggerate the number of civilian deaths for propaganda purposes.

At the main hospital in Lashkar Gah, a relative of the wounded, Hajji Saeed Mohammad, told Reuters, “We can’t do anything, can’t stay in our villages and can’t go anywhere.” He added, “It is best for us to be killed all at once than being killed every day.”
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Durand Line: Fazl echoes his master's voice (Feature)
KABUL, Aug 25 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Experts say a decision on the controversial British-era borderline - called Durand Line - is the discretion of people living on both sides of the troubled frontier. Governments in Kabul and Islamabad, they believe, should have no say in sorting out the complex problem touching the lives of millions of tribespeople.

On Thursday, a pro-Taliban Pakistani political leader urged Kabul to recognise the frontier - named after British diplomat Sir Mortimer Durand who arbitrarily drew his pencil along a map in 1893, dividing British Indian territory from fiercely independent Afghanistan to the north and west - as an international border.

Addressing members of the Balochistan Bar Association in Quetta, opposition leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman claimed such a move by Kabul would help defuse tensions between the neighbours besides checking Indias 'extraordinary activities' on Afghanistan's soil - posing a grave security threat to Pakistan.

But the nostrum from the MMA leader evoked a thoroughly negative reaction from Afghan intellectuals and commentators, who believe Rehman has gone beyond the call of duty in floating the proposal. To this day, they pointed out, neither Afghanistan nor the Pashtun tribespeople on both sides of the border recognise its existence.

Political analyst Muhammad Hasan Wolesmal, speaking to Pajhwok Afghan News, argued formal recognition of the Durand Line by the Afghan government had been a long-cherished desire of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Pakistans premier spy agency, which could not achieve the goal by propping up the Taliban regime for six years, was now in a bid to exploit the position of President Hamid Karzai and the United States.

As an ISI servitor, Rehmans idea is in fact his masters voice, remarked Wolesmal, who thought: This demand from the bigmouthed Maulana is untenable. Even Karzai and Bush cant decide unilaterally on the dispute. Raking up the knotty issue will spark a devouring fire that could not be put out.

Regional Studies Centre head Abdul Ghafoor Lewal also opined peoples, not governments, were authorised to settle the long-running dispute. The JUI-F chief was not supposed to raise the question, he felt, but the Pakistan government used irrelevant people to rake up such controversies. In promoting core national interests, our religious scholars should take their cue from Rehman - so loyal to the Pakistan government.

The Durand Line spat was an international row that could not be resolved by the MMA firebrand, Musharraf or Karzai, said legislator Shukria Barakzai. The female lawmaker accused the rightist of always parroting Islamabads views on strategic subjects. The wrangle should be left to the best judgement of the masses affected by it, she maintained.

In his speech to the lawyers, the opposition leader also rejected the joint Pak-Afghan Regional Peace Jirga as a failure in that representatives from a key party to the conflict (Taliban) were not invited to it. Again, this opinion was spurned by observers.

Wolesmal scorned the statement as baseless, insisting all parties were invited to the grand gathering. Certain groups boycotted the meet at the behest of ISI, which wanted to project the jirga as a damp squib. Rehman too was among the invitees but the ISI did not permit him to attend, he alleged.

For his part, Lewal hailed as a roaring success the peace jirga, which he hoped would help bring the neighbours closer and foster understanding between them. It was a good beginning, he reiterated, urging the two sides to press on with similar confidence-building measures (CBMs).

Rehmans pessimism was essentially linked to the rejection of certain demands from the Pakistan government that sought privileges for Gulbadin Hekmatyar and others dissidents, claimed Barakzai. The Afghan delegates were dismissive of those demands, she added.

Dr Said Ghulam Farooq Mirani, a parliamentarian from the eastern Nangarhar province, characterised Rehmans address as his personal views. He slammed the Maulana for shifting his opinion on Afghanistan all too often and without any convincing reason.

Seen as a staunch supporter of Taliban, Rehman listed the presence of NATO and US forces in Afghanistan as the main reason for regional tensions. But Barakzai contended the problems existed before the NATO and US forces deployed to the region.

Parliamentarian from Kunduz Moeen Mrastyal said NATO and US forces were in Afghanistan to support the Afghan government. He warned of a return to civil strife if the foreign troops withdrew from the country, something insurgents wanted to happen at the earliest.
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Joint jirga to spur peace prospects, hopes Sherpao
PESHAWAR, Aug 25 (Pajhwok Afghan News): A Pak-Afghan jirga held in Kabul earlier this month would spur peace prospects in the region, Pakistan's interior minister hoped on Friday.

Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao believed the grand tribal forum, attended by 700 men of goodwill, would further cement the already strong bonds between Pakhtun families living on both sides of the Durand Line.

At the jirga, participants from both countries promised to work for bringing lasting peace to their respective areas, Sherpao recalled while addressing a public meeting in Charsadda. He was confident peace vows made at the jirga would be translated into action.

Promoting unity among Pakhtuns in Pakistan and Afghanistan would be a great service that would be remembered for a long time to come, remarked the minister, who chaired the four-day proceedings.

He thanked Presidents Gen. Musharraf and Hamid Karzai for participating in the event and making it a roaring success. Political parties would be taken into confidence on expanding relations with Afghanistan, he said.

Suicide attacks and brainless violence would fail to scuttle the significant peace initiative, said the former chief minister, who assured the neighbours would do all they could to defeat the forces of terror and obscurantism.
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