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Taliban bomb kills two policemen in Afghanistan
Security still trumps reconstruction for Afghan elders
Mullah Omar issues Eid message
Afghanistan unable to melt down tons of old tanks, planes
Gambling on China for an Afghan epic
US will never find a more willing ally than Musharraf: former CIA chief
Taleban torch Afghan office; police chief missing
World of difference between front line and hospital for medics in Afghanistan
War in Afghanistan chosen as Canadian news story of the year
Saarc can help calm Pak-Afghan border
East Bay man runs psychology clinic in Afghanistan
Taliban bomb kills two policemen in Afghanistan
Mon Jan 1, 6:57 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - A Taliban-planted bomb killed two policemen in western Afghanistan as authorities investigated the killing of two civilians by foreign forces at the weekend.
The government was meanwhile back in control of a district in the west that dozens of Taliban in pick-up trucks briefly captured overnight, taking advantage of low police presence during the Eid holidays, police said.
A third policeman was injured when the remote-controlled bomb exploded and struck a patrol vehicle in the western province of Herat early Monday, a district governor said on Monday.
"It was a Taliban attack," said Mohammad Naim Karimi, governor of Shindand district where the attack occurred.
A Taliban spokesman, Yousuf Ahmadi, said rebels with the movement were behind the blast, which was similar to hundreds carried out by the Al-Qaeda-linked militants in an insurgency that was its bloodiest last year.
Ahmadi also said Taliban were holding a district police chief and three other men whom they captured after raiding a district in the neighbouring province of Farah late Sunday.
Dozens of Taliban attacked the centre of Khaki Safed district and took control for nearly an hour, provincial police chief Sayed Agha Sabet said.
They looted and torched buildings and kidnapped the district police chief and a bodyguard, he said, adding the men had taken advantage of the low police presence over the three-day Eid holidays to strike.
The attackers were repelled when reinforcements arrived. Ahmadi claimed the fighters had held the district for several hours.
Rebels fighting to reinstall the Taliban government toppled in late 2001 briefly captured various underpoliced and remote districts last year but officials dismissed this as an insignificant show of force.
The governor of the eastern province of Nangahar had meanwhile appointed a team to investigate the shooting dead of two men in a raid by foreign forces on a home in the area.
More than 200 people travelled in convoy to Nangarhar capital Sunday with the bodies of the men killed hours earlier to demand authorities confront the forces involved, provincial governor Gul Agha Sherzai said.
Afghan interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said foreign special force troops had raided a house in Chaparhar district on a tip-off that it may have been a hideout for "bad elements" -- a reference to Taliban or other rebels.
A confrontation erupted, resulting in the shootout, Bashary said. Sherzai said the troops had been shot at and returned fire.
The US-led coalition and separate NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said they were not involved; Bashary said there was "no doubt" the soldiers were foreign.
The activities of special forces in Afghanistan are secret.
The troops took two other people with them for questioning, Bashary said.
Civilians are regularly caught up in violence linked to an insurgency by the hardline Taliban and its Islamist allies, and the efforts of thousands of foreign and Afghan troops to put down the rebellion.
About 1,000 were killed last year, many of them in more than 110 suicide bombings carried out by the Taliban or in anti-rebel air strikes by foreign forces.
Some Afghans allege foreign forces are sometimes fed misinformation, including by people wanting to settle personal scores.
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Security still trumps reconstruction for Afghan elders
by Sardar Ahmad Sun Dec 31, 11:08 PM ET
TIRIN KOT, Afghanistan (AFP) - Tribal chief Naqibullah tells the visiting officials his village needs a road; chief Ghulam Jilani wants a school for his; and local legislator Hamdullah asks for a hospital.
But everyone at the meeting between tribal elders, and government and Western military representatives in the southern city of Tirin Kot is united on the top priority.
"We want security," the local elders tell the official delegation dispatched from the capital Kabul to assess the reconstruction priorities of four Taliban-dominated provinces in southern Afghanistan.
"We want reconstruction but ahead of that, security is vital," stresses Hamdullah in Tirin Kot, capital of Uruzgan province and one of several towns the delegation visited last week.
The visitors agree, adding reconstruction is an important part of ending the unrest that this year shot to its highest level since the hardline Taliban were toppled from government in 2001, later launching an insurgency.
Out here in the provinces, the difficulties facing ordinary people range from A to Z.
From the chopper that brought the visitors to Tirin Kot -- a shabby town made up of little more than a line of shops and a conglomeration of mudbrick buildings -- small, snowbound villages could be seen cut off from the outside world because they had no proper roads.
In some areas, fields and homes appear to have been abandoned after the drought which ravaged the area during last year's harsh summer.
Much of the infrastructure destroyed by nearly three decades of war has yet to be rebuilt, and new facilities are lacking.
"Unless there is a massive reconstruction in this region, we won't have security," says Asif Rahimi, the deputy rural development minister who headed the delegation to the Taliban-troubled south.
"Once the roads are rebuilt, once they get their towns rebuilt, their schools reconstructed and hospitals reopened, people will think ... 'Look, we got a government which works for us,'" he says.
"Then they'll support their government," he adds. "This is what we're doing."
The spike in Taliban violence in 2006 -- with about 4,000 people killed, most of them rebels -- has lead to some soul-searching and a new focus on development.
There is an acknowledgement the massive campaign that has put nearly 40,000 troops and sophisticated military hardware from 37 nations alongside Afghan forces is not enough to defeat the Taliban.
Ordinary villagers must be brought on the government's side and persuaded to reject the militants, officials say.
"Only fighting the Taliban by picking up arms and attacking them is not enough," says Dutch Lieutenant Colonel Gerard Koot, commander of a civilian and military reconstruction team in Tirin Kot.
"Reconstruction is the future," he told AFP. "Security is not only provided by attacking Taliban ... if the (people) are convinced the government is really working, they'll choose the side of the government."
But this is still going to take "much time," he warns, adding that support for the extremist militia is strongest in areas where there is little government influence.
"They are supporting the Taliban not only because they're forced to, but also people are supporting the Taliban because they believe in Taliban," Koot says at his base overlooking the poverty-stricken town.
In neighbouring Zabul province, the situation is similar. The poverty is striking, there is little evidence of reconstruction and the area is another Taliban stronghold.
"The people are so tired," says provincial governor Delbar Jan Arman. "They don't have roads, they don't have clinics, schools, and we don't even have buildings for our institutions."
"How can one expect the people to support us while we don't deliver services to them?" he asks AFP in his mud-brick office in Qalat town, the dusty provincial capital that comes under Taliban attack from time to time.
The latest strike on Qalat was a suicide bombing that killed four people and injured 29 others on December 14.
A high-ranking police official says on condition of anonymity that his men are sometimes unable to respond to Taliban attacks because of a lack of decent roads to troubled areas.
In Kandahar, the main city in the province of the same name and where the Taliban first made their mark in the early 1990s, plans for massive reconstruction are being drawn up to tackle these problems, according to officials.
A focus is the Panjwayi area about 35 kilometres (19 miles) west of the city.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) believed in September it had routed Taliban it said wanted to use the area as a launchpad to capture Kandahar city. But months later it is still battling reinfiltration.
Reconstruction projects will nonetheless be pushed ahead over winter as the Taliban are forced out or withdraw for the cold months, according to an ISAF official.
"I'm sure they will come back next spring," the high-ranking official tells AFP on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to speak to media.
But "next spring, when they come back, they'll find it totally different," he said, referring to "serious reconstruction."
Not everyone is sure about such plans.
"There have been promises that never were fulfilled," says Hamdullah, the legislator in Uruzgan who like many Afghans uses only one name. "We want action this time, not just another promise."
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Mullah Omar issues Eid message
Al Jazeera / December 31, 2006
Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban, has promised to drive foreign forces out of Afghanistan in a new message timed to coincide with the Muslim Eid al-Adha festival.
Speaking on an audio-tape released on Friday by the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency, Omar also called on his fighters to avoid harming Afghan civilians.
"I am confident that the enemy will run away in degradation and embarrassment," Omar said.
"Afghans have always expelled their enemies by force and no enemy or aggressive force has left Afghanistan at its own will... They have committed aggression and we will drive them out."
Omar also said the Eid festival, which began on Saturday, offered an example of sacrifice which could inspire his fighters.
An ideology based on sacrifice, such as the Taliban's, "never submits and accepts defeat", he said.
"You can see that present resistance and struggle in Afghanistan has amply proved the point."
Omar's Taliban movement governed large parts of Afghanistan before being defeated by the Northern Alliance and a coalition of international troops in 2001.
Omar denounces government plans
In the tape, Omar also criticised a new plan by the Afghan government to hold tribal councils (jirgas) on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border in an effort to find ways to end recent violence.
"Now the aggressor forces in our country want to entangle our valiant nation and tribes in their devilish trap by way of jirgas," he said.
"But I am sure that no Muslim will participate in something that is created by the aggressors and puppets. Those who attend will only be people who have sold out."
"Our aggressor enemy has been defeated and now they are hatching new conspiracies for their survival," he said.
Afghanistan and Pakistan are still considering how the jirgas can be organised and who will take part.
Taliban urged to focus attacks
Omar also instructed his fighters to be "mindful of not resorting to actions that may result in casualties of innocent ordinary people".
"We must be more cautious and careful in focusing the target. We should have friendly and sincere relations with our own Muslim people."
His advice echoes similar statements by al-Qaeda leaders who are concerned that indiscriminate attacks by Islamist groups have undermined Muslim support for their causes.
More than 4,000 people have been killed in Afghanistan this year, the bloodiest since the Northern Alliance ousted the Taliban government in 2001.
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Afghanistan unable to melt down tons of old tanks, planes
Mon Jan 1, 2:30 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - Afghanistan has two million tons of old army tanks, buses, planes and other machinery stacked up after its years of war but no way to melt the scrap down, a report has said.
Officials are concerned the metal is losing its worth, depriving the destitute country of its use, the Pajhwok news agency reported.
The scrap could amount to about two million tons of iron, it cited mines ministry spokesman Khogman Uloomi as saying. However there are no factories capable of melting down the metal, he said.
Abandoned tanks are a common sight in Afghanistan, many of them dating from the 10-year Soviet occupation that was fiercely resisted by Afghan fighters.
The occupiers were forced out in 1989 but conflict continued to engulf the country for years, with a bitter civil war only ending with the extremist Taliban movement's takeover of government in 1996.
Most of a fleet of about 1,600 passenger buses that had been on the roads about 20 years ago were ruined during the fighting, Pajhwok quoted an official from the bus corporation saying.
Skeletons of dozens of the buses can be seen stacked several deep in the war-scarred capital.
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Gambling on China for an Afghan epic
By Howard W. French Monday, January 1, 2007 KASHGAR, China International Herald Tribune
The sun is setting fast and early over Yarbeshe, a hillside neighborhood of crumbling brick houses, dark alleys and a creaky wooden drawbridge that sways uneasily over a stream in this fabled gateway city that links far western China to the recesses of central Asia.
Winter is arriving. You would know it instantly by looking at the director Marc Forster, who is bundled in a parka as he paces the chilly interior of a smart two-story villa built specially for his film in one of the poorer parts of town.
But it is not arriving fast enough for the demands of this evening's scene, which is set in Kabul. So a crew on the villa's rooftop busies itself operating an artificial snow machine that blows out a respectably thick simulacrum. The lights go on and, long into the night, the cameras roll.
There are many challenges involved in turning a runaway best-selling novel into a Hollywood film. But when the novel is largely set in Afghanistan, and ranges widely over that country, which after Iraq is perhaps the second most dangerous place in the world for Americans, making snow is the least of the filmmakers' problems.
Khaled Hosseini's novel, "The Kite Runner," has the added complication of being an epic, once a staple of big-budget Hollywood productions but nowadays an increasingly lost art. The story, about the doomed friendship between two boys, sprawls over generations and roams well beyond Kabul, notably to parts of Pakistan and to San Francisco, where Afghan exiles live bound and haunted by a common sense of loss.
"For me from the very beginning this was a story that needed to be told on an epic scale, and you tell a story on an epic scale with a little bit of fear," said Forster, whose film is scheduled for release by DreamWorks and Paramount Vantage in November 2007.
Specifically, he said, he tried to recreate a feeling of Kabul in the 1970s, of streets filled with color and of life in a country whose middle class brimmed with hope, and then revisit the city a few years later, after the Soviet invasion, to explore the sense of lost identity among exiles and returnees "whose country has been raped and destroyed."
Hollywood does not have a happy history of managing what has been two of the film's most daunting problems: finding the ideal remote location and casting a large-canvas story about brown-skinned people from a faraway and little-understood country. Traditionally big films have required Western actors in lead roles, and preferably stars at that. The needs of marketing typically dictate that the dialogue be in English, very often resulting in inconsistent or even ridiculously stereotypical accents. Extras could be relied upon to help moviegoers suspend their disbelief, uttering a few incomprehensible lines and stumbling colorfully about. And once these details have been nailed, location has never loomed terribly large.
For "The Kite Runner," though, filmmakers have placed a huge wager on authenticity. They are betting, among other things, that audiences can be persuaded to sit still through two-plus hours of subtitled plot development - something moviegoers have become more accustomed to lately, thanks to studio films like "Apocalypto," "Letters From Iwo Jima" and "Babel," all of which unfold completely or largely in languages other than English.
The crux of this gamble is here in Kashgar in China's Xinjiang region, where a large slice of the film was shot, and the story of how this came to pass is something of a tale itself.
The production team spent three months researching locations, giving little thought to Afghanistan itself, for obvious reasons, as they drew up an initial list of 20 countries and deliberated on which one would get them closest to Afghanistan's look. The possibilities ranged from India to Morocco to South Africa, but E. Bennett Walsh, who oversaw the search, said the conversations kept returning to Kashgar, a place that few people in Hollywood had ever heard of and where no Western film had ever been made.
Kashgar was always the best fit in terms of appearance, beginning with a diverse but overwhelmingly Muslim population and a countryside that plausibly resembles Afghanistan. "In some locations you are limited to working small, little corners, whereas here you can shoot 100 yards down the road," Walsh said. "The streets of this city are just dripping with production value. All you have to do is change the signs."
The search for a cast proved even more challenging. The streets of Kashgar, teaming with bearded men and women in burkas might fool the eye into thinking one is seeing Kabul. But dialect cannot be finessed so easily, and the producers needed to find a Dari-speaking cast once the decision was made to film in the original language. Homayoun Ershadi, a 59-year-old Iranian actor who played the lead in "Taste of Cherry," which was one of the winners of the Palme d'Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, was recruited from Tehran to play the role of Baba, the father of the principal character, Amir.
Khalid Abdalla, a British actor of Egyptian extraction who starred in "United 93," plays Amir as an adult. He traveled to Kabul to learn Dari in a crash effort that left a deep impression on the author, Hosseini, who spent time on the set here, and on all of the native speakers involved in the film. And Shaun Toub, the Iranian-born actor who appeared in the movie "Crash," appears as Rahim Khan, Baba's close friend and a mentor to Amir.
Abdalla emphasized the desire to get the portrayal of Afghan society right, echoing a sentiment common among many of the actors. "One of the things about this film that is particularly wonderful for me is that the starting point is not violence but rather, ordinary people," he said. "When you say Afghanistan, the first thing most people will think about is the Taliban or Al Qaeda, which is horrendous. One of the most common reactions to the book is surprise at how rich and interesting Afghan society is."
Since the story of "The Kite Runner" is centered on the childhood relationship between Amir, the son of an elite family, and Hassan, the son of its servant, the most important piece in the puzzle was finding young actors.
That task fell to Kate Dowd, a casting specialist.
In Kabul, she roamed the streets and spent nearly a month visiting schools and orphanages, video camera in hand, in search of the perfect Hassan and Amir.
In addition to keen eyes Dowd needed extraordinary patience. She spoke, for example, of having to drink 45 cups of tea with the director of one French- run school in Kabul before the director trusted her enough to let her tour his 25 classrooms. He then granted her all of three mornings to complete her search.
On her ninth classroom, she asked the students who was the naughtiest kid in class. "There was one child who stood out as the most extroverted, but right next to him there was another boy who was quiet, but who was responding to the scene," said Dowd, speaking of an 11-year-old named Kekiria Ebrahimi. "There was a special little moment of energy from him, and it stayed with me. He ended up playing Amir."
A precociously witty 10-year-old, Ahmad Khan Mahmiidzada, plays the role of Hassan, the servant boy who is betrayed by his best friend, Amir. The boys did not know each other before being brought to China, but off camera they became close.
"He and I are going to be good friends in real life," Kekiria says tenderly and unprompted. "I don't know why Hassan had to get hurt like that. I hope you can tell me."
"Yeah," says Ahmad. "I want you to tell me too."
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US will never find a more willing ally than Musharraf: former CIA chief
Washington, Dec 31 (ANI): Former CIA chief and head of the Osama bin Laden unit, Michael Scheuer has said that the US will never find an ally more willing than General Pervez Musharraf for furthering US interests, which in no way serves its own.
Scheuer said the US was still following its Cold War-practice of trying to find foreigners to do "America's dirty work, and had blithely assumed that Musharraf's Pakistan was an American proxy, with national-security interests that mirrored those of the United States".
"The truth is that virtually none of the many things Musharraf has done to assist the US in Afghanistan has been in Pakistan's national interest; indeed, by sending the Pakistani Army into the Pashtun regions he brought his country to the brink of civil war," the Daily Times quoted Scheuer as saying.
He said: "in future years, when America's defeat in Afghanistan is apparent, and if he survives, Gen Musharraf would be able to reflect on his relationship with President Bush and say - as President Lincoln said about Union General McClellan - "Poor George, I did all I could to help him, but he proved unable to do anything to help himself".
He said the way ahead in Afghanistan and along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border would ultimately lead to the defeat of US and NATO forces and the demise of the Hamid Karzai government.
"By failing to accomplish the only mission that had to be accomplished in Afghanistan, the US was now faced with a growing insurgency that probably already outnumbered the combined US-NATO force," he added.
via DailyIndia.com
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Taleban torch Afghan office; police chief missing
(Reuters) via Khaleej Times - Jan 01 1:13 AM
KABUL - An Afghan police chief was missing after Taleban insurgents raided and torched a district-level government office and clinic, police said on Monday.
The insurgents, who over the past year have mounted their bloodiest campaign of violence since they were ousted from power in 2001, raided a district headquarters in the western province of Farah on Sunday night.
Provincial police chief General Sayed Agha Saqib told the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) news agency the district's police chief was missing after the raid in which the Taleban also set fire to a wheat storage depot.
A spokesman for the Taleban, Qari Mohammad Yousaf, told AIP that Taleban fighters had captured the district police chief and nine of his men but Saqib said only the district police chief was missing.
Most Taleban attacks over the past year have been in the south and east, in areas near the Pakistani border, but insurgents have also been launching some raids in western, central and northern areas.
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World of difference between front line and hospital for medics in Afghanistan
By Bill Graveland
HOWZ-E MADAD, Afghanistan (CP) - The 45 kilometres from where Canadian troops sit here to the Role 3 hospital at Kandahar Airfield might as well be 1,000 kilometres if there's a medical emergency. But the goal is the same for medics here at the front line and those back at the base: finding a way to keep Canadian troops alive.
Last year was a bloody one in southern Afghanistan, with 36 Canadian soldiers dying. That made 2006 Canada's worst year on the battlefield since the Korean War. Since 2002, 44 soldiers have died in Afghanistan.
While soldiers fight the Taliban in day-to-day skirmishes or in major offensives like the Canadian-led Operation Medusa in September, it is the medics who are responsible for providing the initial care once someone is hurt.
"I've seen more trauma out here than I've ever wanted to see in my entire life," said Master Cpl. Brent Schriner, 41, a senior medic with the 2nd Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry based in Shilo, Man.
"It literally is an eyeopener for medics. Back home you're within five or 10 minutes of definitive care where out here it can be 40 minutes," he explained.
Medics like Schriner must rely on soldiers doing buddy first aid while they take care of the more serious cases. The first minutes of care can mean the difference between life and death. Schriner, called "Doc" as a sign of respect from his patrol mates, joins them on foot patrols, carrying everything he needs in one large backpack. If there is a battle, he is there providing initial care. It's a job that's not for everyone.
"I'm out with the guys, out in the field where I feel a medic should be. Not everybody wants to be out in the field but we have a need for everyone right through the chain of care," Schriner said while on a foot patrol near the village of Howz-e Madad.
The Role 3 hospital back at Kandahar Airfield deals with the more serious cases after initial battlefield first aid is administered. Often wounded soldiers are airlifted in for emergency surgery.
"Priority 1 is immediate and life-threatening, Priority 2 seriously wounded but can wait for surgery and 3 is the walking wounded," said Master Seaman Eric Thiboutot, 39, a medical technician from 5 Field Ambulance, from Val Cartier, at the Role 3 Medical Inspection Room.
"There's a Priority 4 but that means there's nothing we can do," he finished. "We put them aside."
Thiboutot is on his fifth tour with the Canadian forces, having served in Croatia, Bosnia and Kabul.
"The reason I joined the military was I wanted to go on missions, to live the adventure. Back at home everything is routine and I feel I am really doing my job when I am out doing missions," said Thiboutot, who will return home in February.
But this current mission has been different. Dealing with a rising number of Canadian casualties dating back to August takes it toll on the caregivers as well.
"Each person has their own coping mechanism. There is mental health and if we have problems we can go talk to them, we talk among ourselves and we each have our own way," he said.
"But after a while you get used to it, even though it's not normal. As a med tech we are doing our job but we are actually dealing with people that are severely injured."
Thiboutot has his own way of dealing with the stress of the job. For the first time in his life he started writing every day in a journal.
"I maybe write it because the story has to be told at some point. For me it's like talking to myself and it allows me to vent out," he added.
"We are very proud of what we do mission-wise because we help the soldiers get home."
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War in Afghanistan chosen as Canadian news story of the year
Canadian Press Monday, January 01, 2007
It's being waged half a world away, yet the war in Afghanistan is the overwhelming choice as Canadian news story of the year.
In the annual poll of newspaper editors and broadcasters conducted by The Canadian Press and Broadcast News, the war easily outranked the Conservatives' federal election victory with a margin of 91 to 44.
Last week, the Canadian Soldier was chosen Canadian Newsmaker of the Year in the same poll.
For the first time since the Korean War, Canadian soldiers went into sustained, major combat and suffered hundreds of casualties, including 36 deaths this past year.
Images of Maple Leaf-draped coffins returning home became crimson staples for front pages and newscasts, and delivered the reality of war to millions of Canadians.
As historian and author Serge Durflinger put it, "nothing can bring it home like the faces of the dead."
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Saarc can help calm Pak-Afghan border
Asian Age 12/31/2006 By Salman Haidar
In another turn of the wheel, the ever-changing relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan have taken a sharp plunge. This has much to do with Afghanistan's acute security problems - explosions in the cities, suicide attacks, raids and military encounters. Behind this spate of violence and disorder lie the regrouped Taliban, now emerging once more after their summary expulsion five years ago. They are lodged in remote tribal areas, mingle readily with local people from whom they are indistinguishable, and have proved almost impossible to get rid of. Tried and harried by these rebels, the Afghan President has accused Pakistan of complicity in their activities, a charge that has been scornfully rejected. The falling out of these two countries, both its allies in the war against terror, has disturbed the United States to the extent that President George W. Bush made a special effort to restore matters over a dinner at the White House for Presidents Karzai and Musharraf. But this seems to have yielded little more than a few frozen smiles for the camera: there has been no let-up and relations remain icy. With that, some old ghosts like irredentist Afghan claims across the Durand Line and the matter of Pakhtoonistan are once more being encountered. More immediately challenging is that the rift between the neighbours creates space for fundamentalist forces to flourish and strike.
Afghanistan is in a frustrating dilemma. Politically, it has advanced: Mr Karzai has democratic credentials and can lay reasonable claim to have acquired office through proper elections. But Kabul's writ does not run far. Afghanistan has been plagued by warlordism, its cohesion tested by ethnic and regional divisions. Security - including that of the President himself - has had to be provided by outsiders. The United States, earlier in the lead, has now passed on much of the burden to Nato, which has not helped matters. The rules of engagement for the various national forces under Nato's overall command can differ in vital respects, which can reduce their efficiency and provide an opportunity to the rebels. Thus the security situation is not getting better. Development activity is virtually at a standstill, especially where rebel groups are active. After the Taliban had been swept aside by the US-led coalition, external aid for the rebuilding of Afghanistan was promised in extravagance, but has been delivered only in a trickle. And much of what arrives is taken up by the delivery process itself, in housing, vehicles, security and comforts for the large body of aid officials. Performance is poor but external armed and monetary assistance remains crucial to the regime - and that, too, is a double-edged weapon among the proud Afghans. Religious sentiment is another complicating factor: the Taliban may have been routed five years ago but this is a very conservative, tradition-bound society. Islam and its local leaders, clerics for the most part, have not lost their hold and can be exploited by the strengthening resistance to Kabul's rule.
If Afghanistan has these problems that cut away at the legitimacy of the state, Pakistan has its own difficulties. The tribal area along the Afghan frontier has never been too firmly under the control of whoever has been in charge in Pakistan. Its local chiefs hold sway, very similar in their ways to the tribal Pashtuns on the other side. Somewhere here, in the wild border tracts, is where Osama bin Laden hides out.
There can be no denying that support is provided from these areas to tribal elements in Afghanistan that resist foreign occupation - as they see it - and the foreign-supported government of President Karzai. Is there official Pakistani complicity, or helplessness, or a bit of both? It is difficult to establish what exactly is going on. Pakistan has tried to clamp down and has mounted a major military operation in the tribal areas. There have been some dreadful incidents, most notably the bombing of a madrasa where rebels were believed to have congregated, leading to the loss of more than 80 lives, several of them children. Concerns have also been raised that US troops may have conducted missions across the border into Pakistani territory. The military operation appears to have been inconclusive and the tribal chiefs seem to have held on to their historic freedoms. A "pact" between them and the Pakistani authorities establishes certain rules of conduct that in effect leave the frontier areas lightly policed and autonomous in many respects. Thus Pakistan's military effort has not made any great difference to local tribal ability to reach across and help their kith and kin in Afghanistan. Islamabad also has to reckon with some mainstream sympathy for the tribes among political leaders in Pakistan's Frontier Province, which is dominated by the religion-based MMA. Thus even if he were inclined to be helpful, President Musharraf may not be able to do much more.
Where does India fit in? In some ways, we are seeing a reversion to what was once familiar: Afghanistan and Pakistan at daggers drawn; India and Pakistan set against each other; India and Afghanistan drawing closer. Mr Karzai may be unhappy with President Musharraf but he basks in Indian approval, as demonstrated during his recent visit to this country. Pakistan has made accusations of Indian meddling from its consulates in Jalalabad and Kandahar, which it regards as nests of interference. These traditional diplomatic games apart, the events of the past few years have shown how much India has to guard against the dangers of infiltration along this exposed flank. A Taliban-dominated Afghanistan would be a threat to India's equanimity, and a collapsed state there could be even more problematic, for dangerous groups of activists could form outside anyone's control. Such groups could not be an immediate danger to India without the connivance of Pakistan in filtering them through into Jammu and Kashmir. At present Pakistan is trying to restrain the militants, along the Kashmir front as well as in the Frontier, but it would not take much to reverse that policy.
In this midst of these uncertainties, India's clear interest is to help bring stability to a currently unstable situation. This indeed is what is being attempted through the sizeable development assistance being provided to Afghanistan as part of the international aid effort. India has long been active in Afghanistan's development effort and there is a good deal of accumulated experience to draw upon in fields such as health, water, power, small-scale industry and training, among others. There is every need to push on with the task. Bad relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan may gratify some diehards in New Delhi but they really do not serve any Indian purpose today. The only beneficiaries are the Taliban and their associates. India would be better served by a calm and peaceful regional situation, for which bridging of the current gap between Afghanistan and Pakistan is necessary. A regional effort in this direction could be helpful, and in this there may be a role for Saarc. True, Saarc is much reviled and has precious little to its credit, yet it could be a handy instrument here. It is a regional body free of external influences. It can promote development schemes where they are needed and, most crucially, try to build confidence between member countries that are currently estranged. Cooperative activity between them is essential for the larger purpose of restraining terrorism in South Asia.
(The writer is a former foreign secretary of India)
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East Bay man runs psychology clinic in Afghanistan
By Randy Myers CONTRA COSTA TIMES (USA) December 31, 2006
Whenever the young man heard a plane screeching by overhead, he would scream so uncontrollably that everyone in his Afghanistan village grew to despise him.
His hysterical outbursts -- fallout from growing up in a homeland where bombs and bullets had been raining from the sky for decades -- embarrassed his parents so much they dumped him on the streets of nearby Jalalabad. There, in Afghanistan's most eastern city, the disgraced 21-year-old became a scavenger, eating rotten fruit to survive.
One day, a fruit seller took pity on him and brought him to a psychological clinic in the city. After a physical, he received counseling and then medication to steady his runaway emotions. Six months later, he opened his own fruit stand in Jalalabad.
The person instrumental in starting that life-changing clinic lives and works in the East Bay. Kahlil Rahmany, a clinical psychologist with offices in Concord and Newark, opened the clinic in 2003, after the Taliban government was thrown out.
"The purpose was to reach out to the war-stricken, primarily women and children," said the former freedom fighter who immigrated to the United States in 1982. Rahmany, who mostly counsels Afghan immigrants, estimates about 100,000 live in the East Bay.
After witnessing and hearing about the shattered lives in Afghanistan, Rahmany decided he must do something to help. So far, the clinic has treated nearly 1,000.
"People have not only lost their lives and loved ones and parts of their bodies, they've lost all they've owned," Rahmany said.
The clinic steers clear of religion, politics or cultural issues, concentrating exclusively on psychological matters, he said.
The fruit seller's story, like others told to Rahmany by members of the seven-person clinic, touched him personally. But the people there need more than healing emotional wounds. To turn around lives, more jobs and schools must be created, along with the rebuilding of roads and homes, he said.
The resiliency of the long-suffering Afghanistan people continues to inspire him, he said. These people not only weathered the Taliban, but were battered by wars and watched as their homes and homeland were desecrated. The clinic, he said, could use added funding to help more people.
Rahmany travels every two years to visit his mother in Pakistan, and hears more harrowing stories. One he can readily recall concerns a young woman who begged for sleeping pills from the clinic so she could end her life of abuse. That type of desperation is common, he said. Fortunately, the woman now sees a better future, he said.
Of great concern is the younger generation, especially males brought up to believe violence solves every problem.
"There's a lot of mistrust in the current generation," he said. "They don't trust each other. Or anyone else."
Young men often live and die by the rule that "if you disagree with me, then you are my enemy." Years of living in a volatile region where war and violence were the norms shaped that attitude.
"War took away their education," he said. Many of the young men only know about war and how to kill.
Randy Myers is a Times staff writer. Reach him at rmyers@cctimes.com or 925-977-8419.
How to help
Readers interested in helping the work of the Jalalabad mental health clinic may call Kahlil Rahmany at 925-858-5421.
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