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February 6, 2007 



Afghan leader will likely reject war crimes amnesty bill: aide
KABUL (AFP) - President Hamid Karzai will likely reject as unconstitutional a draft bill adopted by the lower house that gives amnesty for crimes and abuse in        Afghanistan's 25 years of war, his spokesman said.

The warlord-dominated lower house last week approved the document ruling out legal action against men accused of rights abuses in the past 25 years of brutal conflict, saying the move was in the interest of reconciliation.

The MPs who presented the document want it to be approved as a law, which means it has to pass through the upper house of parliament and then be approved by Karzai.

The document was contrary to the 2004 constitution and Karzai would decide whether to approve it in this light, his spokesman Karim Rahimi said on Tuesday.

"Based on the country's constitution no one, including the president, has the authority for forgiving crimes or murder," Rahimi said.

"In Afghanistan's constitution, as well as in respected Islamic laws, no one but the victim has the right or authority to forgive," he said, adding, "Every step the president takes is within the constitution's limits."

The adoption of the draft in the year-old parliament was criticised by the     United Nations, rights groups and a faction of parliamentarians who said it was pushed through without serious debate.

Some MPs said it was presented to the parliament after alleged violators of human rights became alarmed at the execution of Iraqi dictator  Saddam Hussein and calls by Human Rights Watch for the prosecution of war criminals.

Karzai's government also formally adopted last month a five-year plan on reconciliation that includes the establishment of a justice and accountability mechanism.

Some legislators were commanders during the Soviet resistance of the 1980s and have been accused of war crimes and abuses including murder and torture during the subsequent 1992-1996 civil war.
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Afghanistan war crime amnesty denounced
By AMIR SHAH, Associated Press Writer Mon Feb 5, 5:18 PM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - A group of lawmakers on Monday denounced a nonbinding resolution passed by  Afghanistan's lower house of parliament calling for amnesty for warlords and other Afghans accused of war crimes during a quarter-century of fighting.

The resolution, which was criticized by U.N. officials when it passed by a show of hands last week, has no chance of winning passage in parliament's upper house, the nine lawmakers predicted.

Legislator Kabir Rangabar said he and other lawmakers didn't get a chance to read the resolution before the hand vote was taken. The lawmakers said they were speaking on behalf of 20 members of parliament, representing the third-biggest political group in the lower house.

"I'm sure the people who lost their lives during the communist rule and during the civil war would not forgive" warlords, lawmaker Shinkai Karukhail said Monday.

The amnesty resolution covers the mujahedeen leaders who led the resistance to the Soviet occupation of the 1980s and later turned their fighters on one another, plunging the country into civil war.

Lawmaker Sayed Mustafa Kazmi, who backed the resolution, said last week that it was aimed at fostering national unity.

But rights activists have called for Afghanistan's factional leaders and warlords to be prosecuted for the massacres and torture they allegedly committed in their struggle for power, especially during the 1992-96 civil war.

The U.N. human rights chief, Louise Arbour, criticized the resolution Friday, saying it could lead to warlords who committed serious war crimes going unpunished.

"Experience has shown time and again that effective and durable national reconciliation must be based on respect for international human rights standards and the rule of law, and must not come at their expense," she said.

New York-based Human Rights Watch has published a report calling for trials for such Afghan officials as Vice President Karim Khalili and Army Chief of Staff Abdul Rashid Dostum as well as Taliban leader Mullah Omar and fugitive warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
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Peaceful solution sought for Taliban-occupied Afghan town
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) - Taliban fighters were holed up in a southern Afghan town for a fifth day as officials said they wanted to end the occupation without military action that could cost civilian lives.

NATO planes on Sunday dropped government leaflets into Musa Qala, which was captured Friday, urging the rebels to leave or face action. Thousands of people have already left, fearing bombing raids by NATO warplanes.

"The government is still trying to find a peaceful solution to the problem to avoid civilian casualties," interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP on Tuesday.

Afghan military corp commander for the south, General Rahmatullah Raufi, said the army was on a state of alert but was awaiting the outcome of negotiations between tribal elders and the Taliban.

"The elders want to solve the issue peacefully. We respect that and we are waiting. If they fail, then government will use military means to take control of the town," he said.

Another military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the government was "waiting for as many civilians to leave the town as possible to limit the possibility of civilian casualties from military operations."

Scores of Taliban militants stormed Musa Qala late Thursday, breaking a controversial deal in September which saw British troops agree not to enter a five-kilometre (three-mile) radius around the town.

The local elders had appointed an auxiliary police force, but there had been no direct government presence in the town.

The official said there would be no more such deals in the future. "If the Taliban leave or not, police and army forces will go to the town this time," he said.

About 1,500 families were believed to have left the area, expecting action by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force that is helping the government try to stabilise the fractured country.

There have been strong protests in the past over civilian casualties resulting from NATO force aerial bombings and other anti-Taliban operations.

The tribal elders are seeking a "non-military end to the crisis," said the deputy head of the Helmand province council, Qurban Ali Uruzgani.

"Worried about NATO bombing, civilians are still leaving the town. There has been no survey but hundreds of families have already left," he said.

Musa Qala is in the northern part of Helmand province, which produces about a quarter of  Afghanistan's illegal opium, which experts say is funding the extremist Taliban in an insurgency launched after they were driven from government in 2001.

The violence was at its worst last year, leaving more than 4,000 people dead -- most of them rebels -- and raising fears of a Taliban comeback.
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Helmand province, the heart of Afghanistan's unrest and opium
by Sylvie Briand
KABUL (AFP) - The southern Afghan province of Helmand, where the Taliban have taken control of a district capital for several days, is at the heart of a drug empire that supplies Europe with most of its opium.

And the growing cultivation of opium poppies mirrors the rise in the Taliban-led insurgency that is funded by the narco-traffic, UN experts say.

The province last year saw a 179 percent rise in production of opium which, at 2,800 tonnes, is close to half of that of the whole country.

Afghanistan produces about 90 percent of the world's opium, most of it ending up in Europe, Russia and Central Asia.

Eighty percent of the province's farmers grow opium, with cultivation increasing sixfold in 2006 in the province's northern district of Musa Qala, which on Friday fell into Taliban hands.

This growth was accompanied by an explosion across most of the country last year in Taliban-linked violence, with particular hotspots being Helmand and neighbouring Kandahar province, the birthplace of the Taliban.

Production and trafficking occurs "under the protection of organised criminal groups, like the mafia, and the Taliban," says Nazir Ahmad Shah, a project director in the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

"There is a direct link between the insecurity, the absence of rule of law and drug trafficking," says Christina Gynna Oguz, UNODC representative in Kabul.

Oguz says the government should "retake control" of these regions, which she says are off limits to international organisations because of the poor security.

In her opinion, a controversial accord reached at the end of September between the tribal chiefs of Musa Qala, the government and British troops serving with a  NATO force in Helmand was "a success for the drug traffickers."

"Just after the signing of the peace accord giving control of the region to tribal chiefs, five laboratories producing heroin appeared in Musa Qala," adds Ahmad Shah.

Another laboratory is in the south of the province, close to the border with Pakistan.

Under the terms of the deal, the Musa Qala tribal chiefs recruited an auxiliary police service -- men who are trained for about two weeks in a form of "community police."

This force was the only security presence on the ground, and was easily overwhelmed by the Taliban who rode into town late Thursday.

Despite its part in the agreement, the Afghan government has also been critical of the accord, saying it does nothing to enforce the government's presence in Pashtun areas traditionally outside of official authority.

"This is not in the interest of establishing a strong powerful government," Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta said Sunday.

But the administration has itself been accused of turning a blind eye to the involvement of senior government officials and former warlords, whom observers say have no interest in seeing stability in southern Afghanistan.

The counternarcotics ministry says it is waiting for proof.

"If there is proof that officials are implicated in the trafficking of drugs, they will be dismissed -- but there is no proof," says ministry spokesman Zalmai Afzali.

"We are doing everything we can to fight this trafficking which is financing the enemies of Afghanistan and notably their purchase of weapons," he said, referring to the Taliban.

Meanwhile an internationally funded programme to tackle the problem by ploughing up poppy fields is far from meeting its promises: about 15,000 hectares (37,050 acres) of poppies out of 165,000 hectares were destroyed in 2006, according to UN estimates.

"The insurgency hinders the implementation of this programme," says Oguz. "In Helmand province less than 10 percent of the poppy production was eradicated last year."
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British troops clear Taliban base at major Afghan hydropower dam
Tue Feb 6, 1:13 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - The British military in  Afghanistan announced it had cleared a Taliban base consisting of 25 compounds near a major hydro-electric dam project in the volatile south of the country.

The clearance of the area around the Kajaki Hydro-Electric Dam in the southern province of Helmand should pave the way for work to be done to bring it to full power, the Ministry of Defence said in a statement on its website on Monday.

Once fully operational, the dam will bring power to 1.8 million people, it said. Only about 10 percent of Afghans have access to electricity.

The statement did not give details of the clearance operation by British Marines or how many Taliban may have been killed.

It said the area had been "the site of regular insurgent mortar attacks over the past two months and civilians have been forced from their homes leaving the dam largely unserviceable."

Troops who had been in the area for six weeks were regularly fired on from villages around Kajaki and came under attack during the clearance operation, calling in air and other support for help.

There are nearly 6,000 British troops in Afghanistan as the second largest deployment in the 37-nation International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) after the United States.

They cover Helmand province, Afghanistan's premier opium and heroin producer and where a district capital has been in Taliban hands since Friday.

ISAF and the Afghan government say an insurgency launched after the Taliban were driven from power in late 2001 cannot be won through military means alone. It needs ordinary Afghans to see an improvement in their lives, including through the supply of services.
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Bodies of 2 men found in Pakistan region
By BASHIRULLAH KHAN, Associated Press Writer Tue Feb 6, 4:18 AM ET
MIRAN SHAH, Pakistan - Villagers discovered the bullet-riddled bodies of two men Tuesday in a Pakistani tribal region near the Afghan border where the government is at loggerheads with pro-Taliban militants, an official said.

The two men, their hands tied behind their backs, were found on a roadside near Miran Shah, the main town in North Waziristan, an intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters. The men had been shot in the head and torso, he said.

Their bodies were taken to the municipal office in Miran Shah where no one immediately claimed them. There were no firm clues to the identity of the men or of their killers, the official said.

North Waziristan lies in the remote Pakistani tribal belt along the border with  Afghanistan where Arab, Central Asian and Afghan militants, some suspected of links to al-Qaida, have found refuge with sympathetic tribesmen.

Scores of tribesmen have been killed in the area in recent years in suspected militant attacks after being accused of collaborating with Pakistani authorities or being informers for the United States.

Last week, the beheaded body of another man, dumped near a border village in North Waziristan, was found with a note accusing him of being a U.S. spy.

Pakistan — a key U.S. ally in the war against terrorism — has deployed thousands of troops to its border areas along Afghanistan to track down militants. The government also has vowed to strengthen moderate tribal chiefs.

However, there has been a surge in militant-linked violence, including several deadly suicide attacks on police and soldiers, since a Jan. 16 military strike on a suspected al-Qaida base in the tribal zone that killed eight people.
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Pakistani Taliban kill two accused "U.S. spies"
Tue Feb 6, 1:54 AM ET
MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (Reuters) - Suspected pro-Taliban militants killed two men they accused of being U.S. spies in a Pakistani region near the Afghan border, residents said on Tuesday.

It was the second such incident in the North Waziristan region since late last week.

Militants in North and South Waziristan have killed dozens of people suspected of supporting the Pakistani government or of spying for the United States in the past three years.

The bodies of two men who appeared to be Afghan refugees were found near a village about 15 km (10 miles) east of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan, residents said.

"Their bodies were riddled with bullets and the throat of one the bearded men was slit," one resident, Mohammad Ayub, told Reuters.

He said a note found near the bodies read: "Those spying for America will meet the same fate."

The body of an Afghan refugee was found near Miranshah with a similar note pinned to him on Friday.

Many al Qaeda militants and members of the Taliban fled into Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal lands from  Afghanistan after U.S.-led forces overthrew the Taliban in late 2001.

Pakistan, a major U.S. ally in the war on terrorism, has been trying to clear foreign militants out of the area and pacify their Pakistani allies over the past three years and hundreds of people have been killed in clashes

On Monday, a roadside bomb killed two pro-government tribal elders in Bajaur, another region on the Afghan border to the north of Waziristan.

Up to 20 people were killed in a Pakistani military air strike on a militant camp in South Waziristan last month.

Since then, several suicide bombings in the northwest and one in the capital Islamabad have killed nearly 30 people and raised fears the conflict is spreading out of the remote border lands.
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U.S. general in Afghanistan seen tough on Taliban
By Terry Friel Mon Feb 5, 10:14 AM ET
KABUL (Reuters) - In the final hours of British General David Richards' command of  NATO forces in  Afghanistan, a much-vaunted and equally criticized truce with tribal elders fell apart as the Taliban overran a key southern town.

His U.S. replacement General Dan McNeill who took over the 33,000 NATO-led troops on Sunday as part of a regular command rotation is expected to place a heavier emphasis on fighting than peace deals, analysts say.

McNeill's command comes as the United States doubles its ground combat troops in Afghanistan in what is likely to be the decisive year in the battle for the country, after the bloodiest year since the Taliban government was ousted in 2001.

Some analysts say the Taliban retaking Musa Qala village in the opium heartland of Helmand province proved peace pacts could not work and only military power could best the rebels.

About 200 guerrillas overran the town on Thursday night, four months after British troops pulled out of weeks of bloody fighting when they struck a peace deal with tribal elders.

REQUESTS IGNORED
Analysts now say McNeill, regarded as tough but fair straight-talker, will abandon similar deals in the pipeline with other towns and hit back hard with the doubling of U.S ground troops that includes a rapid reaction force Richards asked for but was always refused by NATO and the United States.

"(Richards) is an exceptionally creative military thinker and had established very well thought-through concepts as regards to Afghanistan and counter-insurgency." Sean Kay, a security expert and professor of international relations at the Ohio Wesleyan University in the United States, told Reuters.

"But in the end, requests from generals to Brussels for more troops were not met through 2006. The Taliban came on stronger than ever previously, and NATO is now on the precipice of a failure so far as the current mission is defined. But this is certainly not the fault of General Richards and his staff.

"They didn't ever have the support necessary to carry this on successfully. This raises the point: If the top general with the best ideas to date can't achieve this or implement their concepts successfully, what more can we expect?"

Last year saw the worst fighting since U.S-led troops ousted the Taliban in 2001 for refusing to hand over  Osama bin Laden after September 11.

McNeill, a veteran of  Iraq who has also served in Vietnam and  South Korea, has complained the world's most powerful army has been under-funded and warns it no longer faces traditional enemies but a network of insurgents with new tactics and no regard for human dignity, the U.S. military has quoted him saying.

During his last tour in Afghanistan, he called for bold military action to bring peace.

Richards says 2006 was the crunch year for the Taliban, boosted by safe havens and training grounds in Pakistan, the former sponsor of the militants.

And NATO killed the Taliban's number three late last year and on Sunday killed the rebel's Musa Qala commander as part of an offensive to retake the village.

McNeill, one of 11 U.S. four-star generals, commanded U.S. troops here in 2002. His takeover speech on Sunday focused on building up the Afghan army and police, a strategy that has not worked here nor in Iraq, but offered no other vision.

"I have every confidence that my successor, with a big injection recently of additional, highly experienced combat troops ... will ... not only contain the insurgency but actually improve on it, to the point where people will see that genuine victory is possible, which will have a huge psychological effect on the people of Afghanistan," Richards said.

(Additional reporting by Peter Graff in London)
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Bush Seeks Aid Increases For Afghanistan, Pakistan
February 6, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- U.S. President George W. Bush has submitted his proposed budget for fiscal year 2008 to the U.S. Congress. The proposal envisions defense spending of more than $624 billion during the 12 months beginning October 1. That includes supplemental funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.


Military spending represents the largest area of growth in Bush's 2008 budget proposal.

The budget, submitted February 5 to Congress, would boost the regular Pentagon budget by 11 percent. And it separately calls for an additional $142 billion to cover war costs in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That makes a total military budget request of $624.6 billion.

"Our priority is to protect the American people," Bush said on February 5. "And our priority is to make sure our troops have what it takes to do their jobs. And we also have got priorities of national parks, and education, and health care."

Here are some of the highlights of the proposed military spending: $9.7 billion to train Iraqi and Afghan security forces; for Afghanistan, an increase in funds from $968 million to more than $1 billion to help fund drug eradication and improve government operations; and, reflecting longer-term military priorities, some $12 billion toward adding 92,000 troops to the U.S. Army and Marines over the next five years.

There is also continued funding for major new weapons systems, including money for new-generation aircraft, submarines, and ships.

The total amount of the entire U.S. government budget request for 2008 is $2.9 trillion.

Now, the president's budget proposal begins a long process of examination in Congress, where legislators can approve or seek to amend it.

In early reaction, some members of the opposition Democratic Party said they consider Bush's budget fiscally irresponsible.

"The president's proposals, if adopted as presented, would take us right over the cliff into a chasm of debt," said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (Democrat, North Dakota) on February 5.

The budget projects a deficit of $239 billion in 2008, compared to the record U.S. budget deficit of $413 billion in 2004.

Opposition Democrats are also likely to object that the budget proposal gives too little attention to education, transportation, and health-care programs.

That could mean a tough fight between the administration and Democratic leaders in Congress, who have vowed to rein in government spending.

The annual budget proposal is the first that Bush has submitted since the Democratic Party won control of both houses of the legislature from his Republican Party in November.
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Tissue Paper Plant Begins Operations In Afghanistan
Tuesday February 6, 01:34 PM
HERAT CITY, Feb 6 Asia Pulse - Afghanistan's first tissue paper factory started work on Monday in the western city of Herat with over half a million US Dollars investment.

New-Mubarak, Herat's answer to the Iranian Mubarak tissue paper, was opened today in a formal ceremony in the Industrial Park of the Herat, 20 kilometers south of the city on the Kandahar-Herat highway.

Haji Faiz Ahmad Nabizada, owner of the factory, told Pajhwok Afghan News that the factory will produce over 30,000 cartons of tissue paper on a daily basis.

Launched with an investment of $520,000, the factory began its operations with modern equipments from Germany and Iran.

Raw materials will be imported from Finland, Malaysia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates, said Nabizada.

Still at the initial phase of its work, the factory currently has 15 workers.'

They produce the papers with standardized weight and quality and sell per carton by eight to 25 afghanis which is 20 per cent cheaper than other imported tissue papers.

He said they try to help suffice the needed amount of the country for tissue papers from the factory.

Deputy chief of the Herat industrialists union Turyalai Ghousi said products of the new factory was cheaper and of better quality compared to similar foreign products.
(Pajhwok Afghan News)
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Pakistan's military to prepare plans for fencing, mining Pak-Afghan border: Akram 
Tuesday, 06 February 2007  Associated Press of Pakistan
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 6 (APP) - Pakistan's armed forces  have been tasked to work out modalities for fencing and mining portions of the Pak-Afghan border to prevent cross border movement of Taliban and other militants, Ambassador Munir has said.

At the same time, he called for stepped up efforts on the Afghan side of the border as the prevention of cross border infiltration by militants going both ways was a joint responsibility of Pakistan, Afghanistan and the coalition forces.

 
"We hope the Afghan Government and others concerned will accept their own responsibilities to address the multiple challenges to Afghanistan's security, which arise from causes within that country," he said in a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon released on Monday.

 
In Washington, a US State Department spokesman also underscored the joint responsibility of Afghanistan and Pakistan to stop cross-border infiltrations.

 "Pakistan has an interest in a stable, prosperous, democratic Afghanistan. The rest of the region has  an interest in that as well. And clearly the rest of the world does as well," Spokesman Sean McCormack told a news briefing in Washington on Monday. 

In his letter to the UN chief, Ambassador Akram assured that utmost care will be taken to ensure that sites of selective mining were clearly marked and designated crossing points established to allow the movement of extended families.

He pointed out that a relevant international convention, to which Pakistan is a party, permits the use of land mines or other measures to address the legitimate security requirements of states while addressing humanitarian concerns.

Pakistan, he said, would be open to reviewing the position if better alternatives to mining  become available to control the border.

About the steps taken to secure the border, the ambassador said while Pakistan has deployed over 80,000 troops, established 938 military posts, and directed military operations against elements indulging in cross-border militancy while losing 700 soldiers. "A commensurate effort is required on the other side of the border where less than 40,000 troops are deployed and only 100 military posts exist."

 
Drawing his attention to the last UN secretary-general's report, which identifies the main sources of Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, Ambassador Akram said that security in Afghanistan is threatened by  multiple threats from warlords, criminals, the drug mafia, inter-tribal rivalries as well as the resurgence of the Taliban.

He said that along the 22 frequented border routes where Pakistan maintains border posts, over 40,000 persons and 14,000 vehicles cross the border every day in both directions. Pakistan, he said, is planning to gradually regulate movement across the international border while respecting the 'easement' rights traditionally enjoyed by the tribal population on the two sides.  He expressed the hope that the Afghan government will extend cooperation to ensure better regulation.

Ambassador Akram expressed concern over the negative reaction from the Afghan side on the recent introduction of biometric border control system by Pakistan at one of the main border crossings. Cross border militancy was closely related to the presence of over 3 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan. The Taliban militants were able to blend in with these refugees making their detection difficult. "We would like to see all Afghan refugees repatriated to Afghanistan as soon as possible", he said. 

Pakistan desired an early repatriation of Afghan refugees and would welcome international assistance as well as the cooperation of the Afghan Government for the immediate relocation of some of the camps near the border to inside Afghanistan.

In conclusion, Ambassador Akram said Pakistan would continue to extend its cooperation to promote peace and stability in Afghanistan and combat terroris.
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Indian efforts on to develop Afghan ruler Shershah's mausoleum
New Delhi, Feb 6, IRNA India-Afghan ruler-Mausoleum
In a bid to get the mausoleum of Afghan ruler Shershah, famed for building the Grand Trunk Road, at Sasaram in the northern Indian state of Bihar in UNESCO's list of world heritage sites, the Archaeological Survey of India is mulling a proposal to remove encroachments from the tomb complex.

According to Press Trust of India, notices would be issued to those who have made illegal structures in the buffer zone of the protected site in Rohtas district, ASI sources said in Patna.

Over 200 "illegal" structures have come up within the restricted zone of the monument, also known as the Black Pagoda, violating the Archaeological Monuments Special Repair (AMSR) Act, 1992.

"After the Mahabodhi Temple at Bodh Gaya, concerted efforts have been made to get monuments listed in UNESCO's list of world heritage sites but the mausoleum of the Afghan ruler could not find entry because of encroachments," the sources said.

The state government has also decided to develop the mausoleum as a tourist spot, for which the tourism department has already drawn up a master plan, they added.
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Afghan women? Their place is in the burqa
By Ann Jones Asia Times
Born in Afghanistan but raised in the United States, like many in the worldwide Afghan diaspora, Manizha Naderi is devoted to helping her homeland. For years she worked with Women for Afghan Women, a New York-based organization serving Afghan women wherever they may be. Last autumn, she returned to Kabul, the capital, to try to create a Family Guidance Center. Its goal is to rescue women - and their families - from home-made violence. It's tough work. After three decades of almost constant warfare, most citizens are programmed to answer the slightest

challenge with violence. In Afghanistan it's the default response.

Manizha Naderi has been sizing up the problem in the capital and last week she sent me a copy of her report. A key passage went like this:
During the past year, a rash of reports on the situation of women in Afghanistan has been issued by Afghan governmental agencies and by foreign and local non-governmental organizations that claim a particular interest in women's rights or in Afghanistan or both. More reports are in the offing. What has sparked them is the dire situation of women in the country, the systematic violations of their human rights, and the failure of concerned parties to achieve significant improvements by providing women with legal protections rooted in a capable, honest and stable judiciary system, education and employment opportunities, safety from violence, much of it savage, and protection from hidebound customs originating in the conviction that women are the property of men.
I'd hoped for better news. Instead, her report brought back so many things I'd seen for myself during the past five years spent, off and on, in her country.

Last year in Herat, as I was walking with an Afghan colleague to a meeting on women's rights, I spotted an ice-cream vendor in the hot, dusty street. I rushed ahead and returned with two cones of lemony ice. I held one out to my friend. "Forgive me," she said. "I can't." She was wearing a burqa.

It was a stupid mistake. I'd been in Afghanistan a long time, in the company every day of women encased from head to toe in pleated polyester body bags. Occasionally I put one on myself, just to get the feel of being stifled in the sweaty sack, blind behind the mesh eye mask. I'd watched women trip on their burqas and fall. I'd watched women collide with cars they couldn't see. I knew a woman badly burned when her burqa caught fire. I knew another who suffered a near-fatal skull fracture when her burqa snagged in a taxi door and slammed her to the pavement as the vehicle sped away. But I'd never before noted this fact: it is not possible for a woman wearing a burqa to eat an ice-cream cone.

We gave the cones away to passing children and laughed about it, but to me it was the saddest thing.

Bold boasts
Ever since the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, President George W Bush has boasted of "liberating" Afghan women from the Taliban and the burqa. His wife Laura, after a publicity junket to Afghanistan in 2005, appeared on a popular talk show to say that she hadn't seen a single woman wearing a burqa.

But these are the sorts of wildly optimistic self-delusions that have made Bush notorious. His wife, whose visit to Afghanistan lasted almost six hours, spent much of that time at the US air base and none of it in the Afghan streets where most women, to this day, go about in big blue bags.

It's true that after the fall of the Taliban lots of women in the capital went back to work in schools, hospitals and government ministries, while others found better-paying jobs with international humanitarian agencies. In 2005, thanks to a quota system imposed by the international community, women took 27% of the seats in the lower house of Parliament, a greater percentage than women enjoy in most Western legislatures, including the United States'. Yet these hopeful developments are misleading.

The fact is that the "liberation" of Afghan women is mostly theoretical. The Afghan constitution adopted in 2004 declares, "The citizens of Afghanistan - whether man or woman - have equal rights and duties before the law." But what law? The judicial system - ultra-conservative, inadequate, incompetent and notoriously corrupt - usually bases decisions on idiosyncratic interpretations of Islamic sharia, tribal customary codes or simple bribery. And legal "scholars" instruct women that having "equal rights and duties" is not the same as being equal to men.

Post-Taliban Afghanistan, under President Hamid Karzai, also ratified key international agreements on human rights: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Treaty of Civil and Political Rights, and CEDAW: the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Like the constitution, these essential documents provide a foundation for realizing the rights of women.

But building on that paper foundation - amid poverty, illiteracy, misogyny and ongoing warfare - is something else again.

That's why, for the great majority of Afghan women, life has scarcely changed at all. That's why even an educated and informed leader like my colleague, on her way to a United Nations agency to work on women's rights, is still unable to eat an ice-cream cone.

More than just the burqa
For most Afghan women the burqa is the least of their problems.

Afghanistan is just about the poorest country in the world. Only Burkina Faso and Niger sometimes get worse ratings. After nearly three decades of warfare and another of drought, millions of Afghans are without safe water or sanitation or electricity, even in the capital city. Millions are without adequate food and nutrition. Millions have access only to the most rudimentary health care, or none at all.

Diseases such as tuberculosis and polio, long eradicated in most of the world, flourish there. They hit women and children hard. One in four children dies before the age of five, usually from a preventable illness such as cholera or diarrhea. Half of all women of childbearing age who die do so in childbirth, giving Afghanistan one of the highest maternal death rates in the world. Average life expectancy hovers around 42 years.

Notice that we're still talking women's rights here: the fundamental economic and social rights that belong to all human beings.

There are other grim statistics. About 85% of Afghan women are illiterate. About 95% are routinely subjected to violence in the home. And the home is where most Afghan women in rural areas, and many in cities, are still customarily confined. Public space and public life belong almost exclusively to men. Karzai heads the country while his wife, a qualified gynecologist with needed skills, stays at home.

These facts are well known. During more than five years of Western occupation, they haven't changed.

Afghan women and girls are, by custom and practice, the property of men. They may be traded and sold like any commodity. Although Afghan law sets the minimum marriageable age for girls at 16, girls as young as eight or nine are commonly sold into marriage. Female doctors in Kabul maternity hospitals describe terrible life-threatening "wedding night" injuries that husbands inflict on child brides. In the countryside, far from medical help, such girls die.

Under the tribal code of the Pashtuns, the dominant ethnic group, men customarily hand over women and girls - surplus sisters or widows, daughters or nieces - to other men to make amends for some offense or to pay off some indebtedness, often to a drug lord. To Pashtuns, the trade-off is a way of maintaining "justice" and social harmony, but international human-rights observers define what happens to the women and girls used in such "conflict resolution" as "slavery".

Given the rigid confinement of women, a surprising number try to escape. But any woman on her own outside the home is assumed to be guilty of the crime of zina - engaging in sexual activity. That's why "running away" is itself a crime. One crime presupposes the other.

When she is caught, as most runaways are, she may be taken to jail for an indefinite term or returned to her husband or father or brothers, who may then murder her to restore the family honor.

The same thing happens to a rape victim, force being no excuse for sexual contact - unless she is married to the man who raped her. In that case, she can be raped as often as he likes.

In Kabul, where women and girls move about more freely, many are snatched by traffickers and sold into sexual slavery. The traffickers are seldom pursued or punished because once a girl is abducted she is as good as dead anyway, even to loving parents bound by the code of honor. The weeping mother of a kidnapped teenage girl once told me, "I pray she does not come back because my husband will have to kill her."

Many a girl kills herself. To escape beatings or sexual abuse or forced marriage. To escape prison or honor killing, if she has been seduced or raped or falsely accused. To escape life, if she has been forbidden to marry the man she would choose for herself.

Suicide also brings dishonor, so families cover it up. Only when city girls try to kill themselves by setting themselves on fire do their cases become known, for if they do not die at once, they may be taken to hospital. In 2003, scores of cases of self-immolation were reported in the city of Herat; the following year, as many were recorded in Kabul. Although such incidents are notoriously underreported, during the past year 150 cases were noted in western Afghanistan, 197 in Herat and at least 34 in the south.

The customary codes and traditional practices that made life unbearable for these burned girls predate the Taliban, and they remain in force today, side by side with the new constitution and international documents that speak of women's rights.

Tune in a Kabul television station and you'll see evidence that Afghan women are poised at a particularly schizophrenic moment in their history. Watching televised parliamentary sessions, you'll see women who not only sit side by side with men - a dangerous, generally forbidden proximity - but actually rise to argue with

them. Yet who can forget poor murdered Shaima, the lively, youthful presenter of a popular TV chat show for young people? Her father and brother killed her, or so men and women say approvingly, because they found her job shameful. Mullahs and public officials issue edicts from time to time condemning women on television, or television itself.

Education gap
Many people believe the key to improving life for women, and all Afghans, is education, particularly because so many among Afghanistan's educated elite left the country during its decades of wars. So the international community invests in education projects - building schools, printing textbooks, teaching teachers, organizing literacy classes for women - and the Bush administration in particular boasts that 5 million children now go to school.

But that's fewer than half the kids of school age, and less than a third of the girls. The highest enrollments are in cities - 85% of children in Kabul - while in the Pashtun south, enrollments drop below 20% overall and near zero for girls. More than half the students enrolled in school live in Kabul and its environs, yet even there an estimated 60,000 children are not in school, but in the streets, working as vendors, trash-pickers, beggars or thieves.

None of this is new. For a century, Afghan rulers - from kings to communists - have tried to unveil women and advance education. In the 1970s and 1980s, many women in the capital went about freely, without veils. They worked in offices, schools, hospitals. They went to university and became doctors, nurses, teachers, judges, engineers. They drove their own cars. They wore Western fashions and traveled abroad. But when Kabul's communists called for universal education throughout the country, provincial conservatives opposed to educating women rebelled.

Afghan women of the Kabul elite haven't yet caught up to where they were 35 years ago. But once again ultra-conservatives are up in arms. This time it's the Taliban, back in force throughout the southern half of the country. Among their tactics: blowing up or burning schools (150 in 2005, 198 in 2006) and murdering teachers, especially women who teach girls. The UN estimates that in four southern provinces more than half the schools - 380 out of 748 - no longer provide any education at all.

Last September, the Taliban shot down a middle-aged woman who headed the provincial office for women's affairs in Kandahar. A few brave colleagues went back to the office in body armor, knowing it would not save them. Now, in the southern provinces - more than half the country - women and girls stay home.

I blame Bush, the "liberator" who looked the other way. In 2001, the US military claimed responsibility for these provinces, the heart of Taliban country; but diverted to adventures in the oilfields of Iraq, it failed for five years to provide the security international humanitarians needed to do the promised work of reconstruction.

Afghans grew discouraged. Last summer, when the US handed the job to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), British and Canadian "peacekeepers" walked right into war with the resurgent Taliban. By year's end, more than 4,000 Afghans were dead - Taliban, "suspected" insurgents and civilians. Speaking recently of dead women and children - trapped between US bombers and NATO troops on the one hand and Taliban forces backed (unofficially) by Pakistan on the other - Karzai began to weep.

It's winter in Afghanistan now. No time to make war. But come spring, the Taliban promise a new offensive to throw out Karzai and foreign invaders. The British commander of NATO forces has already warned: "We could actually fail here." He also advised a British reporter that Westerners shouldn't even mention women's rights when more important things are at stake. As if security is not a woman's right. And peace.

Come spring, Afghan women could lose it all.

Ann Jones, who was a humanitarian-aid worker in Afghanistan periodically from 2002 to 2006, is the author of Kabul in Winter: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan (Metropolitan Books, 2006, and soon to be in paperback). The New York Times described her book as "a work of impassioned reportage ... eloquent and persuasive". That's journalese for: what she saw in Afghanistan really made her mad.
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Canada backs plan to open Afghan version of Islamic school in Kandahar
Mon Feb 5, 10:29 AM By Murray Brewster
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (CP) - The Afghan government hopes to open a madrassa - a school of Islamic education - in Kandahar province this year with the active encouragement of Canadians.

The country's Education Ministry has drawn up an $890,000 pilot program for a 16-classroom school, with a dormitory for 300 students, to be located in the vicinity of the provincial capital.

Unlike madrassas in northern Pakistan seen by the West as breeding grounds for fire-breathing extremism, the Afghan model would be based on Hanafi, a less fundamentalist form of Islam.

The plan is outlined in a Jan. 7, 2007, position paper written by the ministry. A senior education official confirmed the pilot program but refused to be quoted because he was not authorized to speak on the topic.

Support for the idea was percolating at the ground level from the Canadian Civilian-Military Co-operation team - known as CIMIC - in Zhari district where NATO fought a bloody campaign last fall to root out Taliban insurgents.

"They see education as one of the keys to solving their problems around this area," said Sgt. John Courtney, one of two CIMIC members at Patrol Base Wilson west of Kandahar.

Madrassas are religious schools that can substitute for elementary and higher education in some communities.

Many of the hard-core Taliban commanders that Canadian troops faced on the battlefield last year were educated in Pakistan, in Saudi-financed madrassas that teach Wahhabism, a stern and rigid form of Islam.

With the absence of religious education in Afghanistan, many parents have been forced over the years to send their children to Pakistan. Some end up in fundamentalist madrassas where the curriculum is more about making war on infidels than on education.

With that in mind, Courtney and his partner, Sgt. Chris Augustine, suggested to the district shura - or council - that two madrassas be established, one in the Zhari district and the other in neighbouring Panjwaii. Both of these farming regions, which form an arid arc west of Kandahar, have long been pro-Taliban.

By establishing Islamic schools, "we can avoid sending a lot of these local kids to foreign countries where they are negatively influenced in terms of ways and teachings," said Courtney, a reservist from Kingston, Ont.

The district elders support the idea and "were a bit surprised we suggested it," he said.

The desire of Afghans to have their own religious education is something that even the Taliban recognize. A few weeks ago, the Taliban made the surprising announcement that they intended to open schools in regions they claim to control.

The key to making madrassas non-threatening is in the curriculum.

Ministry officials intend to travel to Jordan later this year to see what the Jordanians are doing right that can be drafted into what would be taught at the new school in Kandahar, the senior Afghan education official said.

Canada supports education in Afghanistan and by extension this endeavour, said Gavin Buchan, the political director of the Canadian provincial reconstruction team in Kandahar.

It is not something western countries should fear, he said.

The Afghans "have a right to have a religious education component in their school system, in much the same way as we would have done with Catholic school systems in Newfoundland when I was growing up," said Buchan.

He has confidence that the country's Hanafi Islamic tradition, which is more liberal and generally more open to new ideas, will exclude intolerant militant teachings and would be open to a great deal of public scrutiny.

"I think the government would maintain a very close oversight of schools like that," he said.

"And when you talk to the Afghan government, they do say they would like Afghans who wish to study Islam in depth to be brought up in that tradition in their own country, rather than go to Pakistan where they might be exposed to extremist teachings."

Throughout the 1980s and much of the '90s, Saudi wealth and charities fuelled an explosive growth of madrassas throughout the Islamic world. Students of different ages, some as young nine, are taught to read and then take religious studies.

Some madrassas, particularly those near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, preach fundamentalist doctrines. Many of their students are poor and have few other options for education. They became easy recruits for the extremist Taliban movement.

President Hamid Karzai's government, supported by donor countries, will be competing against these well-financed Saudi schools.
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Afghan gov't arrests 6 suspected terrorists 
www.chinaview.cn 2007-02-06 20:19:26 
KABUL, Feb. 6 (Xinhua) -- Personnel of law enforcing agency have arrested six suspected terrorists in Afghanistan's eastern Nangarhar province Monday, press department of the country's National Security Directorate said in a press release Tuesday.

"We took into custody six terrorists in Nangarhar provincial capital Jalalabad Monday,"the press release added.

A number of arms and ammunitions including one rocket-propelled grenade and two pistols were recovered from their possession, it added.

"All of them are Afghans and admitted that they were trained in Wazirustan area of Pakistan,"the press release said.

Afghan security personnel also arrested a Taliban spokesman Mohammad Hanif in Nangarhar province last month.
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NATO names 'killed' Taliban chief
February 5, 2007
KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- A day after saying it killed a "key" senior Taliban commander in southern Afghanistan in a precision airstrike, NATO's International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) Monday identified him as Abdul Ghafour.

"By removing him, we have disrupted their command and control and made it more difficult for the insurgency to plan their next move," said ISAF spokesman Col. Tom Collins.

"The strike was made by ISAF forces at the request of Government of Afghanistan after the Taliban had threatened the local elders and their governing authority."

Ghafour was killed Sunday in what NATO described as a "precisely planned and well executed operation" in which he was targeted and taken out while driving his car in an isolated area outside the village of Musa Qala.

On Friday, the Musa Qala district in Helmand province was overrun by Taliban militants who pushed out a locally raised force of auxiliary police loyal to the Afghan government, shattering the fragile British-backed truce negotiated with the tribal elders of the town -- a deal that had been poorly received by Western officials who saw it as a NATO retreat. The militant takeover also threatened a wider series of local peace agreements being negotiated in the Helmand province.

NATO spokesman and squadron leader Dave Marsh said Ghafour was "directly responsible for the recent uprising and insurgent attacks within the village of Musa Qala" and was "well known to have commanded insurgents within" the district.

"Several secondary explosions occurred after the airstrike, indicating there were sources of explosives and ammunition within the vehicle," Marsh added.

The operation was fully coordinated with the Afghan government and no civilians were injured or killed, although nearby surroundings did sustain "minimal damage."

The airstrike was launched on the same day American Gen. Dan McNeill took command of the NATO-led forces, replacing British Gen. David Richards.

The change in command could signal a new approach in the area since there is considerable doubt Gen. McNeill supports the same strategy his predecessor supported -- a strategy which effectively left Musa Qala tribal elders in charge of security in the area without NATO troop backing.

That situation abruptly ended Friday night after what some reports say was a 300-strong group of Taliban militants who stormed the district's center, pressured the tribal elders and took down the Afghan national flag.

Less than 24 hours after the militant takeover, Gen. Richards announced that forces would "kick the Taliban out and defeat them" and "put the tribal elders back in control of Musa Qala."
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Pakistan: U.S. Program Seeks To Reform Madrasahs
By Andrew Tully
WASHINGTON, February 6, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- A major irritant in relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan has been the charge that many of Pakistan's Muslim religious schools, madrasahs, teach intolerance and help recruit young men to the Taliban, which has become a resurgent threat in Afghanistan.

Madrasahs also have been blamed for making Al-Qaeda attractive to young Pakistanis. A U.S. think tank has been involved in an initiative to foster understanding between these schools and the West. On February 5, Douglas Johnston, the president and founder of the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy (ICRD), brought two Pakistani Muslim leaders to Washington to take part in a panel discussion of madrasah reform.

Johnston said he and his colleagues decided nearly four years ago that it was time to address the issue of the Pakistani madrasahs.

Beyond Rote Learning

The ICRD is working to persuade the madrasahs to expand their curriculums beyond religious subjects to include disciplines such as mathematics and social studies and to move beyond rote learning of the Koran to exercises in critical thinking. Another goal is to promote conflict resolution through religious tolerance.

"We appealed to their own heritage, pointing out how many pioneering breakthroughs in the arts and sciences -- even religious tolerance -- took place under Islam 1,000 years ago," Johnston said. "And when they start listening to that and thinking about it -- you hear it enough times, all of a sudden you walk a little taller and think, 'Hey, maybe we can do better.'"Johnston says starting the program was difficult because the administrators of many madrasahs felt changing curriculums might mean compromising their religious principles. But he said he and his colleagues took vital steps to win their trust.

First, Johnson said, the madrasah administrators themselves were given responsibility for making the changes. That way they didn't feel as if anything was being imposed on them or their students. He says the second step was to make the changes in a historical context.

"We appealed to their own heritage, pointing out how many pioneering breakthroughs in the arts and sciences -- even religious tolerance -- took place under Islam 1,000 years ago," Johnston said. "And when they start listening to that and thinking about it -- you hear it enough times, all of a sudden you walk a little taller and think, 'Hey, maybe we can do better.'"

'Winning Hearts And Minds'

Johnson said his group soon attracted madrasah leaders even from the Wahhabi and Deobandi movements, two conservative movements in Islam. Eventually, he said, not only was the ICRD team teaching madrasah leaders, but some madrasah leaders were beginning to teach their colleagues.

"What I would call all of this is the 'winning the hearts and minds' phase," Johnston said. "And once we get a critical mass on that, which won't be very long from now, we're going to have to come up with the kind of resources that are needed -- significant resources -- to provide textbooks in the new disciplines in Urdu, and to provide teachers in those disciplines as well."

Two of the Pakistani Muslim leaders in the ICRD program -- Hafiz Khalil Ahmed of a Deobandi school in Quetta and Qazi Abdul Qadir Khamush, a Wahabbi leader -- accompanied Johnston to the presentation.

Ahmed said it was important for him to speak out to make sure the world understands that Pakistani madrasahs aren't schools of hatred. According to Ahmed, the students at these institutions are too isolated from international politics to harbor a worldview intolerant of different religions and cultures.

From what little they know of politics, Ahmed said, they believe that if anyone is promoting militancy, it is the government of Pakistan itself.

Khamush agreed. He said there was no talk of jihad, or holy war, until the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. He said most people in Pakistan supported resistance to the Soviets.

But Khamush said that when the Soviets withdrew 10 years later, thought of war ended for most people in the region -- except for those who knew nothing but fighting. He said these men created new groups to protect what they saw as a threatened Islam.

Broader Implications

Khamush said the reforms advocated by Johnston and the ICRD are working well at madrasahs in Pakistan. And Johnston said the initiative could reap benefits far beyond Pakistan.

"Why this is important is not just because it's going to provide a better future for the children of Pakistan, which it is," he said. "But I think all of our children have a stake in this, just because if sort of gets right at the perceived heart of the global war on terrorism."

But Johnston said the initiative can't work in a vacuum. He called for the cooperation of the governments of both Pakistan and the United States to help its chances of success.
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AFGHANISTAN: Thousands of IDPs need urgent assistance - local officials
06 Feb 2007 07:16:10 GMT
More  HELMAND, 5 February (IRIN) - Some 8,000 people have fled their homes in the Musa Qala district in the southern Helmand province in the last three days and many need urgent assistance, local officials reported on Monday.

They are fleeing in fear of anticipated NATO attacks on suspected Taliban insurgents who allegedly overran the district last week.

"Thousands of displaced people have fled to the nearby Baghran, Nawzad and Grishk districts. Many of them are currently living in the desert ...without proper shelter, food and medicine in this harsh winter. Some families have come to Lashkar Gah city [provincial capital of Helmand]," Assadullah Mayar, head of the Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) in Helmand province, told IRIN.

"We are distributing food items, and blankets to some 250 displaced families," Mayar said, adding that it was not enough. Mayar said residents in Musa Qala are continuing to flee their homes.

Abdul Qadar, deputy head of the department of Rural Rehabilitation and Development (RRD) in the province called on aid agencies to provide urgent assistance. "The displaced families are in urgent need of tents, blankets and food items," Qadar told IRIN, from Lashkar Gah city.

Taliban fighters, who are waging a deadly insurgency following their ouster in December 2001 by the US-led coalition, swarmed the town of Musa Qala late on Friday and destroyed some government buildings. Villagers fled their homes fearing possible NATO air strikes on Taliban insurgents.

"We left our home after the Taliban captured the district building. All the villagers were scared that NATO would carry out heavy bombing on them [the Taliban] or a fierce battle could break out, so we decided to leave our village and find a safer place," Haji Allah Dad, 41, who fled to Lashkar Gah city with his 11-member family on Sunday, told IRIN.

"We have not received any assistance from anyone yet," Allah Dad, who is living in a rented house in Lashkar Gah city said.

Wali Mohammad, 35, was forced to move to Lashkar Gah city on Saturday along with his seven-member family: "When the Taliban came to the district [Musa Qala], several fighter planes were flying above our villages, so people were afraid and everyone was trying to evacuate their families."

"Nobody has asked us about our needs and our harsh conditions yet."

Insecurity and the military operations in Musa Qala forced the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) NGO, to stop its humanitarian activities in the area last week. BRAC is a partner of the government-led National Solidarity Programme (NSP) which is providing humanitarian and development assistance such as building roads, canals, and health clinics.

"We had around 50,000 beneficiaries in some 40 villages in Musa Qala district, but currently all of them are deprived of our assistance," Abul Mansoor, provincial programme manager of BRAC in Helmand province, told IRIN. "We will resume our activities in Musa Qala as soon as the security is enhanced."

The governor of Helmand, Assadullah Wafa, said that the government and NATO troops would try their best to avoid civilian casualties.

"Our first effort is to avoid any civilian casualties during our … military operation against the Taliban in Musa Qala. The basic aim of our military operation is to create a peaceful environment for the residents of Musa Qala," Wafa, told IRIN.

The growing Taliban-led insurgency, which claimed the lives of some 4,000 People, including around 1,000 civilians last year, has made many south and eastern parts of Afghanistan off-limit for aid workers.

British forces left Musa Qala in October last year after elders and the Helmand provincial governor struck a deal that turned over security to local leaders and prevented NATO forces from entering the town.

Taliban insurgents have blamed NATO troops for breaching the agreement and killing one of its senior leaders late last month, but the 32,000 NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) stationed in Afghanistan, said that the Taliban was never a part of the Musa Qala agreement and the deal was between the provincial governor and tribal elders, with the support of the ISAF.
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Another true story of our asylum policy
Abdullah Tokhi fled Afghanistan in fear of his life. He asked for sanctuary in Britain. We sent him back. Within a year he was dead
By Kim Sengupta in Paghman, Afghanistan The Independent (UK) 05 February 2007
They shot Abdullah Tokhi dead at midday, in a crowded street in a bazaar. It was a very public "execution", a message to show that his killers knew they would never be brought to account for their crime.

Mr Tokhi and his family had long feared this would happen. He repeatedly pleaded while seeking asylum in Britain that his life was in danger in a sectarian and political blood feud back home . But the Home Secretary at the time decided that Afghanistan was now a safe place thanks to the intervention of Britain and the US, and Mr Tokhi was sent back to his home, and his death, after the appeal process failed.

The murder of Mr Tokhi, 35, was one of many that happen every week in this country, six years after "liberation". But this was one death that could have been prevented if the officials in London who turned down his plea for refuge had acknowledged what is really going on, instead of sticking ridgidly to the official position that the rule of law prevails in Afghanistan.

A week after his father's death, 10-year-old Nasratullah was on his way to school when he was shot from a car. The bullets hit him on the arm and legs. "I was very sad about what had happened to my father," said Nasratullah. "I knew there were bad people who had killed him. But I did not think that they would try to attack me. It hurt a lot when I was shot. Now I am very scared, for myself, and also my brother and sisters. We would like to move away from here, but we do not know where to go ... I miss my father very much."

Today Mr Tokhi's widow, two sons and seven daughters live in fear at a farm in Paghman, south-east of Kabul. They say the police were complicit in the death and the suspected killers can be seen in the area, walking around with impunity. Amanullah, an elder brother of Mr Tokhi, has been killed, as well as one of his sons, Sayed Agha.

The account given by Mr Tokhi in his asylum application stated that the family originally lived in the village of Bangarak in the Kalakan region in the north at a time when the ruling Taliban, overwhelmingly Pashtun, carried out widespread persecution of the Tajik population in the area. After the American and British invasion of 2001, the Northern Alliance, predominantly Tajiks and Uzbeks, took control and began hunting down those who had helped the Taliban.

Mr Tokhi, from a prominent Pashtun family, was one of those accused of funding the Taliban, a charge his family denied. He was arrested by the Northern Alliance and spent eight months in jail. While there, his brother Ameenullah and nephew Sayeed Agha were murdered.

The Independent, while investigating Mr Tokhi's account, could find no evidence he had been an active member of the Taliban. Some Tajiks, however, voiced suspicion that he may have given money to the Islamists. His family insists that this was coerced from them.

Mr Tokhi and his family had moved to Paghman after his release. A little later he went to Peshawar in Pakistan and was smuggled from there to Dover, arriving in November 2002. After applying for asylum he moved tosouth London.

As Mr Tokhi continued his efforts to stay in Britain, the situation in Afghanistan deteriorated, with regions falling into lawlessness. The Taliban moved back into this vacuum. Mr Tokhi's apprehension about his family's safetyincreased after reports that his enemies, who he believed to be Tajiks from Kalakan, had tracked his family to their home in Paghman.

Mr Tokhi's application for asylum was turned down by David Blunkett, when he was Home Secretary, as was his appeal. He returned to Afghanistan in September 2004 and was killed in autumn 2005 .

In January last year, John Reid, as Defence Secretary, announced the deployment of almost 6,000 troops to combat the growing insurgency in Afghanistan. And the Government has just announced that a further 800 would be sent in anticipation of continuing violence.

Mohammed Shapur, Mr Tokhi's brother-in-law, said: "Abdullah's wife still cries every day. But there is nothing we can do. The police have done nothing, and we don't expect them to. I used to speak to Abdullah on the telephone and at first he was full of hope.

"He used to say that England was a good place and one could build a life there away from all the trouble. But then he became more depressed because the English authorities would not believe him. They told him Afghanistan was safe, and he should go back.

"His enemies killed him and they do not fear anything. We see them and no one does anything to arrest them. I fear for the young ones. I pray that Allah protects them."
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Repatriation of Afghan refugees to start from March:Sherpao 
Tuesday, 06 February 2007  Associated Press of Pakistan
ISLAMABAD, Feb 5 (APP): Federal Minister for Interior, Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao said on Monday that the repatriation of Afghan refugees living in the Pakistani refugees camps will start from March this year.

In this regard, the matter will be discussed in the tripartite commission talks between the representatives of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Allied forces in Afghanistan, he told APP here at his residence on Monday.

Regarding the recent spate of terrorism in the country, he said that government is specially focusing on different measures for providing foolproof security to the people in the country.

Sherpao said that government has also adopted special security measures in the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad for the safety of the people.

He added that intelligence agencies are performing their duties effectively.

The Interior Minister was when asked to comment on the details of the Pakistan's Jirga Commission which held under the chairmanship of the minister, he said that Pakistan wants peace in Afghanistan.

He said that Pakistani Jirga Commission has invited the Afghan Jirga Commission to visit Islamabad this month and "we want to work together to stop the illegal movement of people at Pak-Afghan borders".

He said that Pakistan wants peace and stability in Afghanistan because it is also in the interest of Pakistan itself.

Replying to a question regarding the process of investigation in the recent bomb blast at Islamabad, Peshawar and Dera.Ismail Khan , he said that the process of investigation is moving in the right direction.

He reiterated the commitment of the government to bring the culprits to task after the completion of the investigation process.

He said that the identity of the suicide bomber of January 26 at Islamabad has yet to be ascertained.

Regarding the negotiations for the establishment of joint working group between Pakistan and United Kingdom (UK), he said that this to be finalized in the next meeting between them.
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Uzbek customs says Afghan drug smugglers get "more sophisticated"
06.02.2007 12:03:03 UzReport.com, Uzbekistan -
Border guards in Uzbekistan fight Afghan drug traffickers who are looking for new methods to smuggle drugs into the republic.

"The inspection of cargo trains going through the Ayritom customs checkpoint on the Uzbek-Afghan border has been stepped up. It was established that hiding places for smuggled drugs are fixed in trains coming from Afghanistan," the press service of the Uzbek State Customs Committee (SCC) today told the Interfax news agency.

The source told the agency that in recent days, several attempts to smuggle small amounts of drugs had been prevented. In particular, customs officers found a fabric-wrapped plastic package containing 47.9 g of opium under an empty fuel tank on a cargo train coming from Afghanistan. Earlier, a hiding place with 44.9 g of marijuana was detected under another train.

"In our view, [by experimenting with] the trafficking of small amounts of drugs, smugglers are actively looking for new methods with the aim of slowly switching to bigger quantities," the press service said.

However, according to Uzbek border guards, it is impossible to use the Uzbek-Afghan border (its length is 137 km) for smuggling drugs into the region for transit further abroad.

"The border is guarded well and the only customs checkpoint near the bridge over the River Amu Darya has been well equipped with up-to-date facilities which make it possible to thoroughly control the movements of transport and people," the SCC said.

The source also told the agency that drug smugglers were more aggressive on the Uzbek-Tajik border (its length is 1,161 km).

About 420 kg of drugs, the major part of which was being smuggled from Tajikistan, was seized in Surxondaryo Region (the republic's south, which borders on Afghanistan and Tajikistan) in 2006 alone.

Last year's largest haul of heroin was 129 kg, which was confiscated in the region's Sariosiyo District during an attempt to smuggle it from Tajikistan. In the same district, a total of 272 kg of opium was found at a local resident's house close to the Uzbek-Tajik border.

"The methods of drug traffickers are becoming more sophisticated. Therefore, for the effectiveness of this fight, it is necessary to detect and block the main drug trafficking routes," the SCC noted.
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Kandahar PRT conducts mine awareness training for children
Release # 2007-089
Source: North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) 05 Feb 2007
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (5 February) – The Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), at Camp Nathan Smith, conducted mine and unexploded ordnance awareness training for local children in Kandahar yesterday.

"The aim of this training session is to teach the kids three simple steps to follow if they find a mine or unexploded ordnance: don't touch it; stay away from it and tell an adult, a policeman or an ISAF soldier," said Master Cpl. Brendan Hynes.

Following the training, PRT members provided the children with a snack and donated rubber boots, socks, gloves, backpacks and toys. One child also received medical attention for an infection on his foot.

Many of the children who attended the training previously received medical attention during a medical outreach patrol conducted by the Kandahar PRT at the Kandahar City fire brigade's compound on Jan. 7.
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Gardez mayor among three detained on corruption charges
GARDEZ, Feb 4 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Mayor of the southeastern city of Gardez and two of his subordinates have been detained on charges of corruption.

The action against the senior official and his two subordinates was taken on the directives of Attorney General Abdul Jabbar Sabit.

Secretary to the AG in Kabul Ahmad Samir Samimi told Pajhwok Afghan News on Sunday Gardez mayor engineer Agha Mohammad was arrested along with two of his subordinates for their alleged involvement in embezzlement one million Afghanis ($20,000). Gardez is the capital of the southeastern Paktia province.

In addition, Samimi said, the arrested were allegedly involved in corruption during distribution of land plots to people.

Meanwhile, in the eastern Nangarhar province, three officers of the canalization department, two of the education department and one from the custom revenue office have been detained and are under questioning for similar accusations.

All the detained have been handed over to concerned government departments for investigations.

AG Abdul Jabar Sabit has been striking headlines in local press for last three months since he has launched a widespread and controversial campaign against corruption in the governmental administrations.
Habib Rahman Ibrahimi
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12 detained with opium in Samangan
AIBAK, Feb 4 (Pajhwok Afghan News): A dozen drug traffickers have been detained with over 80 kilogram of contraband in the northern province of Samangan while 1,000 acres of poppy-cultivated land was cleared in the eastern Nangarhar province.

Provincial police chief Brig-Gen. Sharaf-ud-Din Sharaf told Pajhwok Afghan News the 12 men involved in trafficking illicit drugs were apprehended with 74 kilograms Chars and eight kilograms of opium in Rubatak and Firoz Nakhjir areas of during a routine car checking by police.

The outlaws wanted to smuggle the contraband to the capital Kabul from northern Balkh province, he added.

The detained from Balkh, Kandahar and Helmand provinces, on the other hand, blamed unemployment and poor living conditions for forcing them to resort to the illegal business.

In a short talk to Pajhwok, Khaliq Dad, one of the detained from the southern Helmand province said: "Joblessness forced me to go to Balkh for a tiny lawful business, but a person there took me to collection of poppies for wage in the same drugs."I wanted to sell my remuneration that was eight kilograms of opium in Helmand, but I was suddenly arrested on the way for being a drug trafficker, but I am not doing this business regularly," he added.

Officials say drug trafficking using the Mazar-Kabul highway has increased recently, but cases of arresting those involved in the business have also increased. The police chief said his cops had seized 123 kilograms of opium, 75 kilograms of Chars and 850 kilograms of heroin during different incidents in this province during the last one year, he said.

Poppy covered farmlands destroyed in Nangarhar
Meanwhile, over 1,000 acres of poppy farms were destroyed in different districts of the eastern Nangarhar province during the ongoing counternarcotics campaign during the last two weeks.

Spokesman for the provincial police headquarters Col. Abdul Ghafoor told this agency poppies were cleared from the farms in Lalpura, Spin Ghar, Ghanikhel, Deh-Bala, Nazian, Khogyani, Mumandara and Goshta districts.

The poppy elimination process was successfully going on, he said, with no confrontation from the farmers against the police so far.
Muhammad Barat and Abdul Mueed Hashimi
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Construction company workers kidnapped
KANDAHAR CITY, Feb 4 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Three local workers of a construction company have been kidnapped in the volatile southern province of Uruzgan, officials said on Sunday.

Deputy police chief of Uruzgan Mohammad Nabi said workers of Kohsar Construction Company, contracted by the government for running reconstruction projects, were abducted from Toor Baba area near the provincial capital of Tirin Kot.

They were on way from their work place to Tirin Kot Saturday afternoon when interrcepted by unidentified gunmen. The abductors set fire to the vehicle they were travelling in, and abducted the men on gunpoint, the officer told Pajhwok Afghan News.

The company is involved in reconstruction projects of the National Solidarity Programme (NSP) in the province.

Taliban fighters are believed to be involved in the kidnapping of the three workers.

Anti-Taliban Operation in Zurmat

Security officials in the southeastern Paktia province say the government and NATO forces have jointly launched an anti-Taliban operation in Zurmat district. Paktia police chief Abdul Rahman Sarjang said the operation was started two days back and would continue till the area was purged of the anti-government elements. Zurmat district is located at the border with the restive Ghazni and Pakitka provinces and has been scene to incidents of violence for the previous few months. 
Saeed Zabuli/Jamal Asifkhel
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