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February 17, 2007 


Pakistan urges Afghanistan to open dialogue with Taliban
MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (AFP) - Pakistan has renewed a call for neighbouring  Afghanistan to open dialogue with Taliban insurgents to stem the rise in violence in the war-torn country.

Ali Muhammad Jan Aurakzai, a former general who is now governor of the North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan, warned the Taliban-led insurgency was already turning into a "liberation war" in Afghanistan.

It is "developing into some kind of nationalist movement, a resistance movement, some sort of liberation war against the coalition forces," he told journalists in the provincial capital of Peshawar.

Aurakzai was speaking ahead of a rare media trip to North Waziristan, an area used by Taliban militants close to the Afghanistan border.

A group of journalists flew Saturday to Miranshah, the main city in North Waziristan where thousands of troops are deployed to stop Taliban cross-border movement, for a briefing by senior army officials.

In September Aurakzai engineered a peace deal with militants in North Waziristan, evoking suspicions from Kabul and the commanders of international forces battling the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has strongly defended the agreement, saying it has helped curtail infiltration across the porous frontier into Afghanistan.

Afghanistan has openly accused Pakistan of fostering an insurgency by the Islamist Taliban, while Islamabad's western allies have shown increasing concern over its pacts with the militants. The conflict killed 4,000 people last year.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates visited Pakistan on Monday and sought the cooperation of President Pervez Musharraf for a planned spring offensive against the Taliban.

Two weeks ago Musharraf urged  NATO and coalition forces to do more to tackle the Taliban, saying that Pakistan could not win the fight against militancy on its own.

Pakistani authorities say alienation is increasing among Afghanistan's majority Pashtun community straddling both sides of the border because of lack of representation in the ruling set up and development in the region.
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Afghanistan vows to crush any Taliban offensive
By Silvia Aloisi Fri Feb 16, 4:26 PM ET
ROME (Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai vowed on Friday to strike Taliban insurgents with "immense vigor and force" as a rebel commander said 10,000 fighters had deployed for a spring offensive against foreign troops in the country.

"As the weather becomes warm and leaves turn green, we will unleash bloody attacks on the U.S.-led foreign troops," Mullah Abdul Rahim, the Taliban's operational commander for the southern Helmand province, said by satellite phone.

"Our war preparations, especially in southern  Afghanistan and in Helmand province, are complete and for this our 10,000 fighters are ready to take up arms the moment they are ordered," he said, speaking to Reuters in Afghanistan from a secret location.

During a visit to Italy, which has sent 1,900 troops to Afghanistan, Karzai said no such offensive could take place without foreign support.

He did not mention any country, but Afghanistan's government says the Taliban fighters are still sponsored by Pakistan, their main backer until the September 11 attacks on the United States.

"Afghanistan has suffered for the past 30 years because of interference from its neighbors," he told reporters in Rome.

"As for the so-called spring offensive by the Taliban, if there is no support for them from external sources, if they don't have the use of bases and sanctuaries outside Afghanistan not only will an offensive not be possible, but the activities terrorizing the population will not take place," Karzai said.

"I hope (foreign support) is not there. And if it's there, we will strike them with immense vigor and force."

More than 4,000 people, a quarter of them civilians, were killed in fighting in 2006, the most violent year since the Taliban were ousted in 2001.

NATO commanders expect Taliban insurgents to step up violence again in coming weeks, and on Thursday  President Bush said he would keep higher troop levels in the country in anticipation of fierce fighting.

GAINING SUPPORT?
Washington has contributed more than half of the roughly 45,000 foreign soldiers deployed in Afghanistan -- of which 33,000 are part of a NATO force.

Canadian military officials, who have long complained NATO did not have enough troops in the south of the country, said on Friday the force levels were now adequate.

"The United States is putting in more forces, Britain is putting in more forces. We have sufficient force structure on the ground in the south at this moment to do the job that we have to do," said General Rick Hillier, chief of Canada's defense staff.

Insurgents have already resumed attacks, mainly in the south, where they have captured a major town and threatened a key hydroelectric dam.

An important tactic in any offensive is expected to be suicide bombings, which rose dramatically last year. The Taliban say they have 2,000 suicide bombers ready and another 3,000 in training.

A senior Pakistani official said on Friday the insurgents were gaining popular support.

"It is developing into some sort of a nationalist movement, a resistance movement, a sort of liberation war against coalition forces," said Ali Mohammad Jan Orakzai, governor of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan.

(additional reporting by Saeed Ali Achakzai in Spin Boldak, Robert Birsel in Peshawar and David Ljunggren in Ottawa)
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Fear of NATO strikes keeps Afghan villagers from their homes
by Nasrat Shoiab Sat Feb 17, 12:52 AM ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) - Villagers who fled a small Afghan town captured by Taliban two weeks ago say fear of  NATO strikes and being mistaken for militants are keeping them from their homes, even though supplies are running low.

Around 1,500 families from Musa Qala, in the southern province of Helmand, have collected in surrounding areas since the remote town was overrun by Taliban fighters, the provincial refugee head Abdul Satar Mazhari told AFP.

The  United Nations said this week it had confirmed there were 600 displaced families and its partner agencies have started ferrying in food and other aid. An average family is said to number six people.

Most of the refugees were with friends and relatives, although some were in camps for people already displaced by the Taliban-linked unrest gripping southern  Afghanistan and by drought, officials said.

"We are afraid of bombings and war," Musa Qala resident Akhtar Jan told AFP by telephone from Gereshk, where he and his family were staying with relatives.

He took his family to Gereshk, about 65 kilometres (40 miles) south of Musa Qala, soon after Taliban fighters overran the area on February 2.

"Taliban are there. If they (the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF) attack the Taliban, we will suffer," he said.

The government, wary of more civilian deaths in an area in which ordinary people have already become victims of fighting between militants and the security forces, wants to use negotiations to persuade the rebels to leave.

A tribal elder told AFP last week, however, that the rebels had rejected talks.

ISAF has used precision air strikes to take out two leaders of the uprising but this seems to have failed to dislodge the rebels.

Shopkeeper Haji Nasim said he brought his family to Gereshk the day after the fighters arrived -- according to some reports in their hundreds.

"I came out the second day Taliban took over. I closed my shop and we've nothing to eat," he said, also by telephone from the remote area.

Another Musa Qala resident, Tor Jan, took his family to the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, 90 kilometres south of Musa Qala, and said money was beginning to run low two weeks after their departure.

"We haven't got anything," Tor Jan said by phone from a refugee camp. "Our cash savings are running out. If the situation continues this way, we will have to (get) back home as soon as it's OK," he said.

Tor Jan said he was concerned about being mistaken for a Taliban fighter because of his appearance and customs.

Most men in southern Afghanistan wear turbans and beards, as do the Taliban. Many may also be Taliban sympathisers, even though they have not taken up arms against the government and its foreign allies.

"If we go home and bombing starts on Taliban, there is no difference between us and Taliban," Tor Jan said. "They would take us to Guantanamo, Bagram or Kandahar," he said, referring to US military detention facilities.

A controversial deal last year gave authority in Musa Qala to the town's elders, who said they wanted Taliban and British ISAF soldiers to keep out, after fighting there caused severe damage and disrupted normal life.

Defence Minister Rahim Wardak said Thursday that troops were ready for action to take the town but were awaiting the outcome of negotiations.

"We will be continuing to observe developments in Musa Qala but whenever the time is right and we get the approval of the political authorities, we'll launch an operation," he told reporters in the capital, Kabul.
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Italy will 'hold firmly' to Afghanistan commitments; Prodi
Fri Feb 16, 4:29 PM ET
ROME (AFP) - Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi told Afghan President Hamid Karzai that his country "would hold firmly to its commitments in Afghanistan" while expressing the need for a political solution in the troubled region.

"I reiterated the Italian position to hold firmly to our presence but made clear the need for a political solution to the Afghan problem," Prodi told a press conference.

The prime minister also warned the solution would not be immediate and would require the involvement of neighbouring countries.

Earlier in the day Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema had told Karzai that Italy would continue its military operations in  Afghanistan, even though some members of the ruling coalition had called for Italian troops to withdraw.

Prodi also reacted Friday to calls made by George W. Bush earlier in the week calling for member countries to supply more troops in order to launch a spring offensive in Afghanistan.

"President Bush's speech will not change the strategy and Italian missions ... which are already substantial," he said.

Some 1,800 Italian troops are deployed in Afghanistan as part of the 33,000-strong  NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, which is trying to expand the influence of the weak central government there.

The communists and Greens, the far-left of Prime Minister Romano Prodi's multi-party coalition, want Italy to withdraw the troops.

They are demanding a date for withdrawal as well as a shift in emphasis towards civilian aspects of the mission to be included in a bill to be taken up by parliament soon.

Earlier D'Alema also said that a fund for Kabul's judiciary expenses would be set up at a conference on justice in Afghanistan to take place in May in Rome.

Karzai expressed the "great gratitude" of his country for Italy's commitment to Afghanistan's reconstruction "at a very difficult moment".

Washington's ambassador to Rome recently sparked a diplomatic row by spearheading an open letter calling on Italy to maintain its troops in Afghanistan.
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Canada girds for new Taliban offensive in Afghanistan
Fri Feb 16, 4:25 PM ET
MONTREAL (AFP) - Canada expects a Taliban offensive in  Afghanistan in the first half of this year, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said, renewing his will to make Canada's mission there "a success."

"We do expect a renewed spring and summer offensive," Harper said during a news briefing on the prospects of an escalation of fighting against the Islamist Taliban militia in Afghanistan and further Canadian troop losses.

"We certainly are aware that those are the plans of the Taliban," he said, adding that  NATO forces had kept Taliban activity in check for several months.

Taliban militants have vowed even more bloodshed this year after 2006 was the deadliest since they renewed the insurgency after being removed from government in late 2001.

Harper recalled that Canada, which has 2,500 troops deployed in the 33,000-strong NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, is committed to remain in the country until February 2009.

He said that Canada will "be assessing our next steps as we approach that date," signaling the mission could be extended.

"I've said all along that the position of the government of Canada is that our plan for Afghanistan is to be successful," he said.

"We know it will not be easy. We know it will involve casualties, but Canada has not shrunk from these kinds of responsibilities before," he said.

Forty-four Canadian soldiers have died in Afghanistan since 2002, 36 of them last year, as NATO forces battled the resurgent Islamist militia. A Canadian diplomat also was killed in an attack there.

Harper on Friday inaugurated a medical aid distribution center in Mississauga, Ontario, sponsored by the nongovernmental organization Health Partners International of Canada.

The new center plans to send four million Canadian dollars' (3.4 million US) worth of medical supplies to Afghanistan this year.
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Pressing Allies, President Warns of Afghan Battle
The New York Times By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG Correction Appended February 16, 2007
WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 — President Bush warned on Thursday that he expected “fierce fighting” to flare in Afghanistan this spring, and he pressed NATO allies to provide a bigger and more aggressive force to guard against a resurgence by the Taliban and Al Qaeda that could threaten the fragile Afghan state.

With American and NATO commanders pressing for more troops and experts predicting that further gains by the Taliban could put the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai in danger, Mr. Bush used his presidential platform to lay out what he said was substantial progress in Afghanistan since 2001, but also a continuing threat.

The remarks, to the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research organization here, amounted to an unusually high-profile acknowledgment from Mr. Bush of the precarious state of the effort to stabilize Afghanistan, a country the administration long held up as a foreign policy success story.

The speech renewed criticism from Democrats that had the United States not been tied down in Iraq, the situation in Afghanistan would not have turned dire. At the same time, some Republican lawmakers said Mr. Bush’s new strategy would not do enough to tamp down the Afghan drug trade. Outside experts criticized the president for painting too rosy a picture.

The speech was also a striking effort by the White House to focus attention back on Afghanistan at a time when Congress is debating resolutions criticizing Mr. Bush’s strategy in Iraq and the administration is making a case that Iranian forces are supplying Shiite militants in Iraq with roadside bombs.

“Across Afghanistan last year, the number of roadside bomb attacks almost doubled, direct fire attacks on international forces almost tripled, and suicide bombings grew nearly fivefold,” Mr. Bush said. “These escalating attacks were part of a Taliban offensive that made 2006 the most violent year in Afghanistan since the liberation of the country.”

Mr. Bush said the question now was whether to “just kind of let this young democracy wither and fade away” or to step up the fight.

“The snow is going to melt in the Hindu Kush mountains, and when it does we can expect fierce fighting to continue,” Mr. Bush said. “The Taliban and Al Qaeda are preparing to launch new attacks. Our strategy is not to be on the defense, but to go on the offense.”

Mr. Bush noted that he has already extended the tour of a 3,200-soldier American brigade and called on Congress to provide $11.8 billion more to pay for operations in Afghanistan over the next two years.

The president said his administration had completed a review of its Afghan strategy, and would work to increase the size of the Afghan army from 32,000 troops to 70,000 by the end of next year, and to bring in additional allied troops to support the fledgling army.

“When there is a need, when the commanders on the ground say to our respective countries, ‘We need additional help,’ our NATO countries must provide it in order to be successful in the mission,” Mr. Bush said.

He promised to build new roads that would help spur economic development, to battle an increase in the opium trade and to try to forge better ties between Afghanistan and its neighbor, Pakistan.

At the same time, Mr. Bush pledged to work with President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan to root out Taliban and Qaeda fighters who hide in that country’s remote mountainous regions — a situation he described as “wilder than the Wild West.” And, echoing his lament that 2006 was a difficult and disappointing year for Iraq, the president said the same had been true in Afghanistan.

Some critics of the administration’s handling of Afghanistan said Mr. Bush was still understating the difficulties there.

“We underfinanced, undermanned and under-resourced the war in Afghanistan for the last four years, and now we face a serious threat that the Taliban will succeed in destabilizing the country enough in 2007 to make the Karzai government collapse at some point,” said Bruce Riedel, a scholar at the Saban Center for Middle East Studies at the Brookings Institution, a liberal-leaning research organization in Washington. He called the speech “a long overdue recognition that we need to do a lot more.”

Both Mr. Riedel and Rick Barton, an expert in Afghanistan reconstruction at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said Mr. Bush’s new strategy did not do enough to promote security and economic development. Mr. Barton, who published a report in 2005 measuring progress in Afghanistan in that year, is about to publish another, and said the situation has turned measurably worse since his first study.

“We’ve gotten into a situation where things have really turned negative and the average Afghan has lost confidence in both the safety of his country and the ability of the leadership to turn things around,” Mr. Barton said. He said the president “is definitely acknowledging that, but his reality therapy is not as thorough or as complete as I think it needs to be.”

On Capitol Hill, the senior Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, released a statement criticizing the speech. Ms. Ros-Lehtinen and several other Republicans have been pressing the Bush administration to do more to crack down on Afghanistan’s opium trade; she said the new strategy lacked “practical initiatives to target major drug kingpins and warlords whose trade in opium finances the Taliban’s campaign.”

As Iraq has dominated the American psyche, some lawmakers, most recently the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California, have called Afghanistan “the forgotten war.” The Democratic National Committee, responding to Mr. Bush’s speech on Thursday, issued a statement saying, “The Bush administration took its eye off the ball in Afghanistan.”

But Mr. Bush pointed to what he called “remarkable progress” since the American invasion in 2001: A democratically elected government with a parliament that includes 91 women; more than five million children in school as opposed to 900,000 under the Taliban; and the return of more than 4.6 million refugees.

The president’s speech came after his new defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, attended his first conference of NATO defense ministers last week in Seville, Spain. At the meeting, Mr. Gates pressed his allied counterparts to fulfill their commitments of troops in time for a spring offensive against the Taliban.

Currently, NATO has about 35,000 troops in Afghanistan, about 13,000 of them American. The United States has 9,000 more troops in Afghanistan operating outside the NATO mission, handling tasks like specialized counterterrorism work and helping to train Afghan forces. Gen. David J. Richards of Britain, the outgoing NATO commander in Afghanistan, said last month that NATO was 4,000 to 5,000 troops short.

But NATO commanders have been constrained by so-called caveats — restrictions imposed by member nations on how their troops may be used and where they may be sent. The Bush administration has been pressing the allies to lift those restrictions, and the president renewed that call on Thursday, saying NATO commanders “must have the flexibility they need to defeat the enemy wherever the enemy may make a stand.”
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U.S. move means Canada stuck in Afghanistan
We have no excuse after Bush commits more troops to war
Feb 17, 2007 04:30 AM Thomas Walkom Toronto Star, Canada
George W. Bush has breathed new life into the Afghan war. With his decision to send 3,500 more U.S. troops to that country, he has also made it more difficult for Canada to get out.

This is the real significance of the U.S. president's speech on Thursday. Bush also forgot to mention Canada when going through a list of nations contributing troops to the conflict. But that's irrelevant.

What's important is that the Americans are turning their attention back to Afghanistan.

That wasn't the original plan. A little over a year ago, U.S. commanders spoke of drawing down their troop strength there from what was then about 21,000 soldiers.

The idea at that time was that America would hand off Afghanistan to allies like Canada in order to focus on Iraq. To that end, the U.S. put the bulk of its troops in Afghanistan under NATO command.

But that was before the last congressional elections, when Bush still thought he had a free hand in Iraq. It was also when he thought he could still pacify that chaotic country.

Now, with Democrats controlling the U.S. Congress, Republican Bush is no longer free to do whatever he wants. What's also become clear is that he cannot succeed in Iraq.

All political leaders seek legacies. So far, that of George W. Bush does not look stellar. He risks being remembered as the first U.S. president to lose a war he deliberately started.

For a man who styles himself a wartime president, this must be difficult to bear. How could someone who revels in the title of commander-in-chief leave office without winning at least one war, somewhere?

For a while, it looked like Iran would provide that war. Hence, Washington backed Israel's invasion of Lebanon last summer, in the hope that Tel Aviv could neutralize Iran's Hezbollah allies there.

The Israelis botched that task, but Bush remained fixated on Iran. He tried the old weapons of mass destruction gambit, arguing that Iran's attempts to develop nuclear capability made it a world threat.

In the end, not even the Europeans bought that story.

Then, Washington accused Iran of targeting U.S. troops in Iraq. That culminated in a bizarre but unconvincing show-and-tell in Baghdad this week, where anonymous U.S. officials attempted to prove, from serial numbers on bomb fragments, that Iran was evil.

That didn't go anywhere either. Even Americans were skeptical.

Bush's remarkable U-turn on North Korea can be also explained in terms of his desire to clear the decks before embarking on another war. After years of insisting that America wouldn't bribe North Korea to give up its nuclear weaponry, the U.S. president this week suddenly decided to do just that.

The North Korean turnaround offended some of the president's more conservative partisans. They missed the point. By neutralizing North Korea, Bush ensured that he could better focus American military attention elsewhere.

But where? Was Bush really serious about taking on Iran? Or could he find a war somewhere else that was easier.

His speech on Thursday suggests the latter. Bush, it seems, has rediscovered Afghanistan. His Democratic opponents routinely hector him for not putting enough troops into that country. Now, he is taking their advice.

Conventional wisdom suggests that this is good news for the Canadian and other NATO forces already fighting there. The theory goes that if America finally puts all of its muscle into Afghanistan, the Taliban insurgents will surely be defeated.

In fact, this may not be true. The old Soviet Union adhered to the same theory when it invaded Afghanistan in force in 1979 to bolster a client government which – like that of current President Hamid Karzai – was trying to modernize the country, battle obscurantist insurgents and improve the lot of women. History will show that the Soviets lost.

History also suggests that an American public sick of having their soldiers killed in one far-off foreign country will not necessarily welcome more military deaths in another.

But all of this is for the future. The story now is that the Americans are coming.

Before Bush's speech, even the hawks in Canada had a plausible excuse for withdrawing from Afghanistan. As a Senate committee report put it this week, if other allies aren't willing to ante up more troops, why should Canadians continue to die there?

Now, our biggest ally has stepped up. So, we have no excuse.

Unless Canadians are prepared to rethink the whole rationale of this war, we are fated to remain.
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NATO south Afghan mission has enough troops - Canada
By David Ljunggren
OTTAWA, Feb 16 (Reuters) - Senior Canadian military officials, who have long complained there are not enough NATO troops in southern Afghanistan, said on Friday that alliance force levels in the region are now adequate.

Canada has 2,500 troops in the southern city of Kandahar and as recently as last October it said it could not maintain the mission without more support.

But the official tone changed sharply after President George W. Bush said on Thursday the United States would keep higher troop levels in Afghanistan ahead of an expected surge in Taliban attacks and called on NATO to commit more troops.

"The United States is putting in more forces, Britain is putting in more forces. We have sufficient force structure on the ground in the south at this moment to do the job that we have to do," said General Rick Hillier, chief of Canada's defense staff.

Canada complains that it and a handful of other nations bore the brunt of fighting with the Taliban last year while other NATO members stationed their troops in quieter parts of Afghanistan and restricted what they could do.

"Would we like to see more countries down there with us than the nine that are there? Of course we would," Hillier told reporters after speaking to a meeting of defense officials.

"Right now we are in a much better position from NATO's perspective in my view now than we were a year ago."

Since sending troops to Afghanistan in 2002 as part of the U.S.-led war on terror, Canada has lost 44 soldiers and a diplomat -- most of them killed last year.

Canadian Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor told the meeting that "I think ... we'll be able to do our job in the south."

NATO says it expects the Taliban to mount increased attacks once the snows melt but Hillier said he doubts that militants would repeat last year's tactics of trying to engage Alliance forces en masse.

"We think we'll see a surge in Taliban operations ... We don't believe for example that they will mass in conventional style warfare because when they do, they die," Hillier said.

"They learned some painful lessons ... when they tried to do that. We think they'll concentrate on suicide bombers, vehicle bombers, IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and small ambushes, hit and run attacks."

Canada's Afghan mission is due to expire in February 2009 and Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Friday that Ottawa would review its options closer to that date.
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Fazl calls for withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan
By Our Staff Reporter Dawn (Pakistan)
ISLAMABAD Feb 16: Leader of opposition in the National Assembly Maulana Fazlur Rahman has demanded of the US and the Nato to immediately announce withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan otherwise a growing resistance in the war-torn country would turn peace into a pipe dream.

Mr Rahman was reacting to reports of the deployment of more troops in Afghanistan while speaking at a press conference at his Parliament Lodges suite here on Friday.

He said in case the US and the Nato did not withdraw their troops, Pakistan should dissociate itself from the “so-called global war on terror, which is in fact an aggression against Afghanistan”.

He said there was no military solution to the Afghanistan problems and advised the external forces to leave the country and let the locals decide their future through talks.

Mr Rahman said General Pervez Musharraf was an unconditional head of state and all opposition parties were united on the issue that he must leave power at once.

He admitted that ideological differences with certain parties on internal and external issues were blocking the formation of a grand alliance against the military government.

He said General Musharraf’s policy of cooperation in the war on terror was based on self-created fear. It was due to this ‘one-sided’ cooperation that the US carried out attacks inside Pakistan without prior permission.

He said allowing General Musharraf’s further stay in power would surround Pakistan with more dangers.

In reply to a question, the MMA secretary-general said the situation in Iran was volatile, but Pakistan was in no position to do anything.

Regrettably, Pakistan’s foreign policy had failed to encompass any of its neighbours into friendly ties, he said, adding that while India was already an enemy, the Pakistan government had also lost trust of the Karzai regime.

When a reporter asked the fate of JUI-F renegade Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, he taunted: "Are you on some special duty to ask this question."
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Afghan women grow trees to lift their own lives
by Bronwen Roberts Sat Feb 17, 12:47 AM ET
QALAT, Afghanistan (AFP) - Row upon row of saplings stand in the sun in the capital of  Afghanistan's drought-hit Zabul province where war and poverty have left ancient underground irrigation channels dry and the hills bare.

These young plants have been weeded and watered and brought to life in this tough terrain by some of the poorest women of Qalat who are reaching for more in a harsh world --- at risk to their personal safety.

Almonds and apricots, cedar and cypress, pine and pistachio: a lot rides on these 203,720 saplings.

The 90 women who raise them are paid with 61 kilogrammes (134 pounds) of oil, wheat, pulses and salt a month as a part of a "food for work" programme on which many Qalat families depend.

Their labour also earns them lessons in reading and writing, nutrition and health care -- for some the first schooling in their lives.

When the saplings are ready for planting, half will go to adopt-a-tree and other projects to re-green this barren-looking land, perhaps helping to re-establish the almond orchards that are the pride of Zabul.

The rest will go to the women to seed small businesses selling the trees or their harvest, or just to provide their families with fruit and nuts.

Inside a new building under the nursery's scraggly pines, row upon row of women sit on the floor, facing a teacher.

Many have pulled their blue burqas back over their faces because there are visitors. Hands and feet are red with henna; children fidget as their mothers recite phrases written on the board.

It has been a struggle to get these women here. Zabul, like all of southern Afghanistan, is deeply conservative and influenced by the extremist Taliban religious movement, whose insurgency keeps the nation unstable.

"Women of child-bearing age are not allowed to go outside the home, only very old women and widows can have some activity," says the province's top women's affairs official, Gulnar Rashidi.

"If men are willing to let women have social activity, other men criticise them," Rashidi says.

When the nursery was set up in June 2005, anonymous letters were sent to mosques warning "if they let women go to the centre, we will burn their houses, we will not let them live in our villages," Rashidi says.

Rashidi has also been threatened: she has bodyguards and her husband has implored her to not travel with their two children. Her counterpart in Kandahar province was assassinated in September.

There was also an attempt to allow only men to take part in the nursery. Rashidi fought hard -- and won.

But even convincing women of the benefits of literacy is challenging in a province where the first girls' school is still at the planning stage.

"The women of Zabul are completely illiterate -- the educated ones come from other provinces," says Rashidi, a medical doctor from the capital, Kabul.

"The women don't know the uses and benefits of studying because they couldn't know." The lure was the chance of a job in an office to earn a bit of cash, she says.

Project coordinator Atiqullah Baramzai points to the road outside the compound where a suicide blast about four months ago shattered newly installed windows and doors.

"The women are very brave," he says, blaming the attack on the Taliban.

"Sometimes we get threats in the mosque or from men on motorbikes who ride past. We feel worried. If the door opens, we worry," says Nasreen, who wears a large black shawl.

Nasreen supervises 80 home-based nurseries run by women who cannot leave their houses because they must care for their children -- or because their husbands will not allow them.

"People warn me, they threaten me, but I still come. Everybody knows the problems but they are coming to earn something and have a better future," she says.

But 100 women have dropped out because of the insecurity.

There are other problems: water is in short supply because traditional underground irrigation systems fell into ruin during the past wars and there is little rain or snow to feed them. New wells have not been completed.

And as the project -- part of the UN-backed Green Afghanistan Initiative (GAIN) -- comes into fruition with the first trees ready for planting next month, its funding dries up in June.
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Unsung heroes of Afghanistan
By Paul Adams BBC Diplomatic Correspondent, Afghanistan Saturday, 17 February 2007, 12:01 GMT
Nato forces are preparing for a new wave of fighting in Afghanistan. But away from the battlegrounds, local and international schemes are attempting to break the country's cycle of conflict and poverty.

"Would you like to see the Taleban's last stand?" the lady asked.

Well, thanks. Yes. That would be great.

I confess I had not expected anything so conclusive quite so early on in my trip.

Wondering what she could possibly mean, I followed, along one of the wide, dusty tracks that pass for roads in Kandahar's sprawling airbase.

It was not a withering display of firepower, of course, but simply a gaping hole in one of the base's older buildings, caused by an American guided bomb back in 2001.

It had been one of the final acts of the war, destroying what was then a Taleban stronghold in their spiritual heartland.

Violent times

When I visited this same base almost two years ago, the Americans told me the Taleban were on their last legs.

And now, on his last visit to the south before handing over the reins of his Nato command, General David Richards was saying something similar. Not, to be fair, that the Taleban would disappear in 2007, but that they would cease to pose a strategic threat.

Well, we will see.

With the Taleban and Nato both promising a spring offensive - a war of words with just a touch of playground bravado - it is a reasonable assumption that some bloody times still lie ahead.

But looking for something different, we took off for other parts: from the freezing, snowy wastes of the central highlands, to the sun-drenched slopes towards the Khyber Pass.

Escaping poverty

As a bit of tourism, I must say it was not bad.

One day, the splendid mud ramparts of the ancient fort at Ghazni, rising out of the snow and still bearing more than a passing resemblance to the place attacked by British forces in 1839.

Another day, breathtaking shafts of early morning light penetrating the rocky abyss of the legendary Silk Gorge, where three years after Ghazni, a retreating British garrison, and thousands of camp followers, were cut to pieces in the snow.

It is a cautionary tale often repeated by those who warn that Nato is heading for a similarly ignominious fate.

But what we saw along the way were efforts - Afghan and international - to try to make sure the country breaks out of its cycle of poverty and war.

In a dingy room in Charikar, north of Kabul, I watched as women in identical blue burkas sat patiently on the floor, clutching pieces of pink paperwork. They had all joined a Bangladeshi microfinance scheme, receiving loans to set up small businesses, and getting free healthcare and education for their children.

The room was tiny, as was the tailoring shop set up nearby. But across the country, there are 160,000 scheme members, almost all of them women.

Poppy 'threat'

In Ghazni and Jalalabad, I met American officers committed to running effective provincial reconstruction teams, proud of the roads and bridges they had paid for. And they argued, with quiet conviction, that they had important stories to tell.


Beyond Jalalabad, in the foothills of the snowy peaks that mark the border with Pakistan, we were taken to see poppy seedlings being ploughed under in a village where eradication had never taken place before.

In the course of an impromptu Jerga, or meeting with village elders, the governor's son, also an employee of the Ministry of Counter Narcotics, explained why this vital source livelihood had to be abandoned.

The villagers turned out en masse and watched, with a mixture of fatalism and concern, as the tractor did its work, ploughing under the tiny plants.

Countering narcotics remains one of Afghanistan's most contentious issues, with no clear consensus about how best or whether to proceed, but an understanding that the humble poppy - the corruption and the conflict it engenders - still threatens to wreck the country's efforts to recover.

Of course, sometimes it seems the country is struggling simply to deal with the consequences of previous conflicts.

Mine clearance

Rounding a corner, on the dramatic drive down from Kabul to Jalalabad - a drive, by the way, which since December takes just two-and-a-half hours, not six, thanks to a fine road built by the Chinese with money from the EU - we suddenly spied a dotted white grid picked out on the rocky mountainside up ahead.

Across the barren slopes, tiny figures moved slowly, metal detectors hovering just above the ground.

As they methodically cleared the deadly crop of Soviet land mines, laid more than two decades earlier, they splashed white paint on the rocks.

The Afghan team of 70, paid for by the UN, had been here almost a month, uncovering just nine mines. Five days earlier, one member had lost a leg.

And so, while the country braces itself for someone's spring offensive, the clearing up, the eradication, the rebuilding and empowerment go on.

A lot of it is unsung. It is undoubtedly not enough. And if the fighting and the corruption continue unchecked, it could all still come to nought.
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Afghan warlord fails his appeal
Wandsworth Guardian - Feb 17 1:25 AM
An Afghan warlord found guilty of torturing civilians at a series of checkpoints in his homeland has failed to clear his name at appeal.

Faryadi Zardad, 39, who lived in Mitcham before moving to Streatham, was convicted in a landmark case at the Old Bailey in July 2005. He was jailed for 20 years after he was convicted of conspiring to kidnap and torture people travelling along a main road from Kabul to Pakistan.

Zardad fled to the UK on a fake passport in 1998 and sought asylum here, living in Marsh Avenue, Mitcham, for at least three years. It is not known when he moved to Streatham, where he was first arrested by anti-terrorist officers in 2002. The case is thought to be the first time torture offences committed in one country were prosecuted in another.

advertisementHowever, lawyers on his behalf last week argued his convictions were "unsafe" due to the trial judge having "misdirected" the jury regarding crucial evidence they heard from an eyewitness.

But, after a morning of intense legal debate, Lord Justice Keene, sitting with Mr Justice Stanley Burnton and Mr Justice Mackay at the Appeal Court in London, ruled that the convictions must stand.

The judge said Zardad controlled a series of military checkpoints between Kabul and Jalalabad and was "in a position of real power."

He was said to be "personally involved in these acts of torture and hostage-taking" and even kept a "human dog" in a hole which he used to set on people, biting them and "eating testicles".

The Old Bailey jury found Zardad guilty after hearing in a lengthy retrial of numerous incidents of hostage taking between 1992 and 1996.

The warlord was first tracked down at his south London home by John Simpson, for BBC Newsnight, and police then made several trips to Afghanistan under armed escort to track down the warlord's victims.

Evidence from several of the victims was beamed live from Kabul into the Old Bailey during the trial.

Anthony Jennings QC, for Zardad, argued that the convictions were "unsafe" - as the trial judge had wrongly directed the jury regarding key evidence submitted to the court by the only western eyewitness to the crimes.

And, although Lord Justice Keene agreed the judge had indeed misdirected the jury, he ruled the mistake was not so serious as to undermine the convictions.

He concluded: "Taking the matter in the round, this court is satisfied as to the safety of these convictions. This appeal is dismissed."
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Afghanistan brings ‘community cops’ into the fray
Saturday, 17 February, 2007, 08:44 AM Doha Time
QALAT, Afghanistan: ‘Go, go, go!’ shouts a burly American as dishevelled Afghan men leap off the back of a truck and uncomfortably assume the pose of a policeman carrying a rifle.

This is a mock vehicle search by men who will in a few days be given real guns and uniforms and call themselves policemen, having 80 hours of training at a US-military-led base in rural Zabul province under their belts.

They are among the newest recruits to Afghanistan’s projected 11,200-strong “auxiliary police” force, likened to community police in the West.

The force is being assembled after the bloodiest year in the Taliban insurgency to back the undermanned, often inept and famously corrupt police, who at about 60,000 are severely undermanned.

The ragged recruits, some apparently still in their teens, will be sent home to police their remote districts in Zabul, part of a swathe of southern border regions where the insurgency is at its fiercest.

“We are not worried about the Taliban because when we graduate from here, we will be able fight against them,” says Gulbaddin, an eager trainee in his early 20s. “The Americans have more experience than us.”

If Gulbaddin sticks to his new job, he will get three weeks more training over a year, adding up to the total for the regular police which he will have the option of joining.

Straightaway he gets a uniform, a gun and a policeman’s salary of $70. Some observers give little credence to these new recruits, fearing instead that local militias are being handed guns and badges and that national security will be further compromised.

“They are ill-trained. We are talking about men getting 10 days’ training and guns and badges,” says International Crisis Group analyst Joanna Nathan.

“Nearly everyone you talk to fears the police rather than looking to them for security. So putting out people who are more ill-trained and less controlled is no solution.

“I think it will prove in many cases to be little more than local militias now given badges by the government,” she says.

It is a desperate measure that could sabotage a “very painful” process under way to disband and disarm hundreds of private armies in Afghanistan, added a European diplomat.

And it remains to be seen if they will indeed be loyal to the police command, he said on condition of anonymity.

Colonel Gary Stafford, the head of the auxiliary police programme in the US-led coalition force, has met scores of the trainees and is not concerned.

“They are there because they want to serve their country,” the Canadian officer says. “The majority are going out to do the right thing.”

Nearly 3,400 auxiliary policemen have been trained and equipped nationwide, most of them in the tribally divided south which was last year the focus of Taliban violence and will get nearly half of the completed force.

One group was easily overwhelmed by Taliban in the southern town of Musa Qala early February.

Back in Zabul the trainers brief their students, most of them probably illiterate, on human rights, ethics and the constitution on top of more conventional policing subjects like stopping vehicles.

The programme aims to instill national pride and loyalty to the government instead of local powerbrokers, say Steve Barlag, a trainer from private US military contractor DynCorp

Recruits are also vetted by the police ministry, he says, though he concedes that the trainers have no real way of knowing who their students are and even if they meet the minimum age of 18.

“We leave it up to the Afghans to bring us the people to train,” he says. Nearly 500 of a planned 800 have already gone through the Zabul course.

Asked if Taliban or criminals try to sneak in, he says: “I can only think of two that the police came to us and wanted removed because of something they had found out.” Another handful were thrown out for using or carrying hashish.

Zabul’s acting chief of police, Colonel Ghulam Rabanni, is aware of the potential shortcomings of the project but he is desperately short of policemen.

The province has a population of about 258,000 people but fewer than 500 regular policemen; it needs seven times as many, he says.

“If they are left without any follow-up training, there might be some problems because they might change over time,” he admits. “But if they are trained properly, we are very optimistic they will serve the nation.” He wants the first recruits to be sent to the “vast, open border with Pakistan” where militants cross to launch attacks including suicide and roadside bombings.

But Qalat base commander, Lieutenant Colonel Kevin McGlaughlin, emphasises the community policing aspect of the new force in what he says is a relatively stable area.

“This is not the Wild West. You do not have people carrying guns and shooting people in the streets,” he says.

When there are “guys with tanks and big guns and stuff we have the entire Afghan national security forces to deal with that - trained soldiers who have heavier weapons that will support the police where required.

“This is about strangers coming in and stealing, and all the things we are used to at home,” the American says, above the shouts of the drill masters. - AFP
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