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Afghanistan a source of worry
NATO soldier killed in Afghanistan
'US, Pakistan both failed to curb terrorism': Boucher holds high-level talks in Islamabad
Afghanistan: Local Taliban Defeat Raises Hopes For Dam Project
Al-Qaeda 'rebuilding' in Pakistan
Pakistan says it's not a terrorist haven;
Taleban in Pakistan commend dead
Attacks heat up Afghan-Pakistani border
Pakistan border crossing closed after Afghan protest
Suicide bomber targets foreigners in Logar
In Afghan Valley, a Peaceful War
Canada relying on Afghan police in Taliban offensive
Court rejects bail for British alleged military spy
Germany May Send Spy Planes to Southern Afghanistan
Afghan heroin flow to jump in Central Asia: Tajikistan
Japan to Boost Afghan Aid, Rules Out Troop Deployment
Detained 'spy' presented before journalists
Canada hopes U.S. won't shift troops from Afghanistan
Sistan-Baluchestan could export cement to Afghanistan, Pakistan: MP
Afghan women and children: the left's moral blind spot
Bank vehicle looted at gunpoint
Focusing on air pollution: Time to act
Taliban kill one hostage, others safe
HELL FOR AFGHAN HOUNDS
Afghanistan a source of worry
By Julian E. Barnes and Peter Spiegel Times Staff Writers January 13, 2007
WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates expressed deep concern Friday over the stability of Afghanistan, and a top U.S. military official said additional troops might be needed to strengthen the government in Kabul, which is under growing pressure from Taliban forces.
Gates plans to travel soon to the region to look for ways to aid the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Speaking to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gates appeared worried by the rising violence in Afghanistan, where military commanders have warned that the spring thaw may bring one of the most brutal fighting seasons since the 2001 U.S. invasion.
"We mustn't let this one slip out of our attention and, where we have had a victory, put it at risk," Gates told senators in describing his upcoming trip. "One of the things that I am focused on particularly is, what will it take to reverse the trend line in Afghanistan and to strengthen the Karzai government?"
Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, indicated that he was open to raising troop levels in Afghanistan as well as Iraq. Despite concerns that U.S. land forces are overstretched by their growing commitment in Iraq, the Pentagon could sustain an increase of forces in Afghanistan as well, he said.
About 22,000 U.S. military personnel are in Afghanistan; about half of them are fighting along with 32,000 other foreign troops under the command of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), who is to stop in Afghanistan during a trip to the Middle East starting this weekend, said she believed that President Bush's plan to increase troops in Iraq was misguided and that new troops instead should be sent to Afghanistan, where, she said, U.S. policy was on "autopilot."
"I wish we were discussing additional troops for Afghanistan," Clinton said, speaking in Washington. "We are hearing increasingly troubling reports out of Afghanistan, and we will be searching for accurate information about the true state of affairs both militarily and politically."
The comments by Gates and Pace came at a hearing on the Bush administration's revised Iraq policy.
The Armed Services panel includes several senators - Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) - who have been outspoken supporters of a troop buildup.
McCain said those who want to begin withdrawing troops "have a responsibility to tell us what they believe are the consequences of withdrawal in Iraq. If we walk away from Iraq, we'll be back, possibly in the context of a wider war in the world's most volatile region."
Still, Democrats voiced skepticism about the administration's new strategy. The new committee chairman, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), advocates a timetable for troop withdrawals and opposes the new plan.
"The reality behind the president's new rhetoric is that the open-ended commitment continues," Levin said.
Gates said he thought that Bush, who "has a longer view," at times had to make decisions that didn't "have broad support of the American people."
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NATO soldier killed in Afghanistan
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) - A NATO soldier was killed in a clash with insurgents in southern Afghanistan, the 37-nation NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said.
The soldier was the first foreign serviceman to die in Afghanistan this year after about 170 were killed in 2006.
Last year was the deadliest in a Taliban-led insurgency launched after the hardliners were booted from government in 2001.
The soldier was killed when insurgents engaged International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops. The troops called in air support and retaliated, ISAF said in a statement that gave no other details.
ISAF does not comment on the nationality of its casualties before their home nations have done so.
The force has also decided not to announce the province where casualties occur because this could suggest their nationality, a spokesman said.
Troops in southern Afghanistan include British soldiers in Helmand, Canadians in Kandahar and Dutch in Uruzgan. There are also deployments from Australia, Denmark and the United States, and other countries.
There are more than 33,000 ISAF soldiers in Afghanistan, about a third of them in the south, which is the heartland of the Islamist Taliban movement and sees most insurgency-linked violence.
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'US, Pakistan both failed to curb terrorism': Boucher holds high-level talks in Islamabad
Dawn (Pakistan)
ISLAMABAD, Jan 12: US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher said here on Friday that Pakistan and the United States had been unsuccessful in eliminating terrorists and both needed to do more.
"Pakistan has not succeeded despite signing an agreement with tribal people in North Wazirastan as terrorists are still going into Afghanistan. Likewise, the United States did not succeed in Afghanistan to curb violence and extremists, and they both need to harness more efforts to make the region peaceful and safe," he told a press conference after high-level talks in the capital.
Mr Boucher, who looks after South and Central Asia in the State Department, said he had extremely fruitful discussions with the president, prime minister, foreign minister, foreign secretary, interior minister and the National Security Council (NSC) secretary on forging more cooperation in political, defence and economic fields.
He said it would take time to succeed against Al Qaeda, the Taliban and extremist elements in a region which was inhospitable and required great improvement as regards the security situation.
Pakistan and Afghanistan, he said, were taking a lot of measures to deal with terrorists and extremists. He was of the view that leaders of the two countries had never been as close to each other to deal with the issue.
He disagreed that there were moderate Taliban in Afghanistan and the US government should talk to them to improve security situation in that country.
"They are huge problems for the local Afghan people and have to be dealt with effectively," he said, adding that the Afghan people had not forgotten what the Taliban had done to them. He said both Pakistan and Afghanistan were experiencing radical violence for which they should harness joint effort to achieve their objectives.
The US official said that his country was providing all necessary support to both President Musharraf and President Karzai to succeed against terrorists and extremists. Taliban, he said, were trying to kill the Pakistanis, the Afghans and the Americans and therefore, they could not be spared.
Responding to a question, he said that the situation in Afghanistan had been discussed by the military officials of the US, Pakistan and Afghanistan on Thursday.
"Their point of view is almost the same to deal with the threat of terrorism in the region and elsewhere," he said.
"There is a better chance of communication now than ever before between Pakistan and Afghanistan to resolve their issues, and the credit goes to their leadership," he said.
To a question, Mr Boucher said that the Taliban were a serious threat, and the Nato was making all efforts to restrict their activities in Afghanistan.
However, he recognised that narcotics was a very serious issue which needed to be resolved by the Afghan government. Pakistan and Turkey were successful examples in this regard and the Afghan government should follow them, he added.
Drug trafficking was posing a lot of problems and the money earned through it was being used by the Taliban and other anti-social elements against the Nato forces as well as the Pakistan and Afghan governments, he said.
He told a reporter that a negotiated settlement with extremists in North Waziristan could not halt the movement of Al Qaeda and the Taliban from Pakistani tribal areas into Afghanistan.
"Therefore, this cross-border activity needs to be restricted," he said.
However, he said that he could not say whether this activity had increased after the signing of the agreement in North Wazirastan.
"And that is why I say that both the United States and Pakistan have not succeeded and we have to act together and we will have to continue our efforts," he said.
When asked if he had discussed the opposition's apprehensions of rigging in the forthcoming elections with the Pakistani officials, the assistant secretary of state said: "We hope and believe that Pakistani people will be given a chance to take part in an election which is free and fair."
He said he would be meeting opposition's politicians tonight to discuss various issues including the forthcoming elections.
Asked to comment on the statement of US National Intelligence Director Negro Pointing that Pakistan had become a safe haven for Al Qaeda, he said since he did not go through the full text of his statement, he would not say anything.
However, he said the press had not picked up good things that were talked about by Mr Pointing, in his statement. For example, he had said that Pakistan had been extensively cooperating in arresting Al Qaeda operatives and that Islamabad was extending its full cooperation to deal with terrorism in the region.
In reply to a question, he said he had discussed various other options to deal with those infiltrating into Afghanistan from Pakistan.
However, he did not comment on whether his country supported Pakistan to fence the border and lay mines.
Asked why the United States was taking so much interest in the education sector of Pakistan, Mr Boucher said that without education no country could progress. "We are providing necessary funding and assistance to Pakistan so that there are improved health and other facilities for the people," he said.
The US, he said, wanted Pakistan to provide modern education to its people and President Musharraf had taken rights steps in this regard.
Asked about the uniform of President Musharraf, he said the United States' opinion had not changed about it. However, he did not elaborate.
He said there were issues relating to Pakistan which could only be resolved by the Pakistanis.
When asked to comment how President Musharraf fared during his eight years in power and whether the US wanted him to continue, Mr Boucher said since he was not a Pakistani voter, he could not settle the issue.
"I cannot take any position on Pakistani politics," he said.
To another question, he said Pakistan had taken a very strong position against the Al Qaeda, the Taliban and extremists, and the United States fully appreciated it.
Pakistan, he said, was a key ally in the war against terror, and the US government would continue cooperating with it in all fields.
"I do not question the commitment and the resolve that is being shown by Pakistan against terror," he said.
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Afghanistan: Local Taliban Defeat Raises Hopes For Dam Project
By Ron Synovitz
January 12, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- NATO forces in Afghanistan say the destruction of a Taliban camp in Helmand Province has cleared the way for repairs on a major hydroelectric dam. Work was halted in 2006 due to resurgent Taliban violence, but engineers from USAID now hope to upgrade the Kajaki Dam and its electrical transmission lines to provide a reliable source of power for nearly 2 million people in southern Afghanistan.
The British military operation targeting Taliban fighters in the northern part of Helmand Province began on January 1.
After about a week, NATO officials announced that they had killed a local commander of insurgents who have been stalling a multimillion-dollar repair project on Kajaki Dam's electricity-producing turbines, which lies near the source of the Helmand River.
Worker Safety
NATO-ISAF spokesman Dominic Whyte tells RFE/RL the alliance is confident that it can keep the area safe for construction workers and engineers who must live in a campsite near the dam.
"The Kajaki Dam is a critical part of the infrastructure necessary for the redevelopment of Afghanistan," Whyte says. "ISAF forces operating in the area are patrolling to ensure the security of the wider area itself so that the necessary reconstruction work can take place. We do have troop locations -- forward operating bases. We also employ mobile patrols."
James Franckiewicz, director of USAID's Office of Infrastructure, Engineering, and Energy in Afghanistan, tells RFE/RL that Taliban fighters managed to stop all work at the dam site for more than half a year.
"We've been on hold for about six or seven months right now," Franckiewicz says. "We had a subcontractor that was due to go into Kajaki at the site to start working in May [2006]; they were unable to get access. In fact, they demobilized everyone aside from the security people back in the summer of 2006."
Franckiewicz explains that the halt of reconstruction work was a direct result of resurgent Taliban violence in Helmand Province.
"The insurgency around the camp spiked last summer [2006] and got much worse," Franckiewicz says. "A lot of the workers deserted out of the site after the increased violence. They started receiving mortar rounds fairly regularly. And one of the conditions that USAID had put out is that the coalition had to stabilize the area -- a perimeter about three to five kilometers around our campsite -- in order to stop the incoming mortar rounds. The military has been focusing on this area for a while and those mortar rounds pretty much died away during the last couple of months."
There are three key parts to USAID's reconstruction project at Kajaki that Franckiewicz hopes will be completed by the summer of 2009 -- the upgrade of electricity-generating equipment, the installation of new power-transmission lines, and the construction of a road linking the Kajaki Dam site to Afghanistan's main ring road.
He says he expects workers back at the dam in February to start repairing damage to one of Kajaki's existing two turbines. The workers also plan to install a new, third turbine -- which already is being shipped to Afghanistan.
Obstacles To Delivery
When work on the turbines is finished, Kajaki's electricity-generating capacity will be more than double its current level. But servicing the infrastructure, and carrying all of that electricity to the nearby cities of Lashkar-Gah and Kandahar, is impossible on roads and transmission lines destroyed by decades of war.
"The existing transmission line is in poor shape -- and we're going to be rehabilitating the transmission line," Franckiewicz says. "There is about 190 kilometers of transmission line that we are going to build down there. And we're going to build about 90 kilometers of access road from the main regional ring road up to Kajaki Dam site. The upgrade of the hydro-electric plant and the transmission line will give a reliable electricity supply for both Lashkar-Gah and Kandahar and a few villages that will be services along the transmission line."
Franckiewicz says building the new transmission line will take longer than upgrading the dam's hydroelectric stations.
"We're assuming as long as the security situation stabilizing and that we get cooperation from the coalition forces, we're going to have the contractors mobilized in February and we're going to finish the hydroelectric in 2007 -- by the end of this year," Franckiewicz says. "I would guess [it will be] around the summer of 2009 before the transmission line and road construction is completed."
200,000 Households Await
If all goes according to plan, the project will affect the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in Afghanistan's volatile southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar.
"What we have as total beneficiaries in this area that will benefit from the Kajaki upgrade is 1.7 million inhabitants," Franckiewicz says. "And we figure, just on the basis of approximately eight people per household, that there [are] about 200,000 households. I would assume you're probably looking at somewhere from 30 to 50 percent of the people with their lightbulb power on in their residence. That's what is available now. And what we're looking at as possible, when we get this thing up and running, we assume that all of the households, businesses, and government are going to be able to have power for their basic needs."
NATO-ISAF spokesman Whyte admits that it will be more difficult for NATO forces to protect the power transmission lines from Taliban attacks than it is to project the dam site itself.
But Whyte says he hopes the benefits of an improved Kajaki Dam convince ordinary Afghans that it is in their best interest to cooperate with Afghan and NATO security forces who protect the system
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Al-Qaeda 'rebuilding' in Pakistan
Friday, 12 January 2007 BBC News
The head of US spying operations says the leaders of al-Qaeda have found a secure hideout in Pakistan from where they are rebuilding their strength.
National Intelligence Director John Negroponte said al-Qaeda was strengthening its ties across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.
Pakistan rejected the comments, which are the most specific on the issue yet.
This week, the US carried out air strikes in Somalia targeting what it believed to be members of al-Qaeda.
The BBC's James Westhead in Washington says that until now the US has not been so specific about where it believes al-Qaeda's leaders are hiding.
Such a claim will be embarrassing for Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who Mr Negroponte described as a key partner in America's war on terror, our correspondent says.
Afghanistan has welcomed the comments. President Hamid Karzai's chief-of-staff, Jawed Ludin, told the BBC that Afghanistan had long maintained that the Islamic militants operated from within Pakistan, and that Mr Negroponte's statement was refreshing in its honesty.
'Secure hide-out'
Mr Negroponte told a Senate committee that al-Qaeda was still the militant organisation that "poses the greatest threat to US interests".
"They are cultivating stronger operational connections and relationships that radiate outward from their leaders' secure hideout in Pakistan to affiliates throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Europe," he said.
"We have captured or killed numerous senior al-Qaeda operatives, but al-Qaeda's core elements are resilient. They continue to plot attacks against our homeland and other targets with the objective of inflicting mass casualties," Mr Negroponte added.
He did not say where in Pakistan the group's leadership was hiding, or refer to its chief, Osama Bin Laden, or his second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who are wanted for masterminding the 11 September attacks on Washington and New York.
New job
But the unusually forthright statement by Mr Negroponte appears to be the first time the US has publicly singled out Pakistan, one of its key allies, as the current home of al-Qaeda's high command.
Previously, officials had spoken more vaguely about the group having bases in the mountainous border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"Pakistan is our partner in the war on terror and has captured several al-Qaeda leaders. However, it is also a major source of Islamic extremism," Mr Negroponte said in written testimony submitted to the Senate committee.
Pakistani foreign office spokeswoman Tasneem Aslam rejected the comments.
"Pakistan does not provide a secure hideout to al-Qaeda or any terrorist group," she said. "In fact the only country that has been instrumental in breaking the back of al-Qaeda is Pakistan."
Pakistani Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao also played down Mr Negroponte's comments as "too general", saying that Pakistan responded to specific information about al-Qaeda members and claiming that the movement was totally marginalised.
Difficult border
The head of the US Defence Intelligence Agency, Lt-Gen Michael Maples, said Pakistan's border with Afghanistan remained a haven for al-Qaeda and other militants.
The tribal areas on the border are thought to be where al-Qaeda leader Bin Laden and his deputy Zawahiri could be hiding.
Pakistan and Afghanistan share a 1,400-mile (2,250km) mountainous border which is extremely difficult to patrol.
Taleban and al-Qaeda fighters are thought to be operating on both sides.
The two countries regularly exchange charge and counter-charge over who is to blame for the violence.
Recently, Pakistan reiterated its intention to fence and mine sections of the troubled border.
Kabul particularly opposes the idea of mining stretches of the frontier, saying it will endanger civilian lives.
An Islamist insurgency spearheaded by the resurgent Taleban militia is at its strongest in the southern Afghan provinces bordering Pakistan.
Mr Negroponte took charge of the 16 US intelligence agencies in April 2005, but is shortly due to move to the state department where he will become Condoleezza Rice's deputy.
President George W Bush last week named retired Navy Vice Admiral Michael McConnell as the new US national intelligence director.
Mr Negroponte made the claims about Pakistan in his annual assessment of worldwide threats against the US and its interests.
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Pakistan says it's not a terrorist haven;
asks U.S. for intelligence on al-Qaeda
January 12, 2007
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Pakistan on Friday rejected allegations by America's spy chief that it is a refuge for terrorist leaders and demanded that his intelligence networks share information on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and other top al-Qaeda figures.
The statements Thursday by U.S. National Intelligence Director John Negroponte that Pakistan is a haven for al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorists are "incorrect," Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said.
"In breaking the back of al-Qaeda, Pakistan has done more than any other country in the world," ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said. "The proper way to do this would be to share the intelligence with us."
Negroponte said that despite Pakistan's vital role in the war on terrorism, leaders of both al-Qaeda and Afghanistan's former ruling Taliban militia are sheltering in its lawless frontier areas, largely beyond reach of U.S. or Pakistani fighters.
NATO and the Afghan government also say Taliban and al-Qaeda guerrillas are launching attacks on their forces in Afghanistan from neighboring Pakistan. Violence rose sharply in Afghanistan in 2006, with fighting killing about 4,000 people in what was the deadliest year since the U.S.-led coalition swept the Taliban from power in 2001.
In his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Negroponte said that "eliminating the safe haven that the Taliban and other extremists have found in Pakistan's tribal areas is not sufficient to end the insurgency in Afghanistan, but it is necessary."
U.S. officials have previously said they believe bin Laden and other top terrorist commanders are taking refuge in the region, likely on the Pakistani side of the border. Pakistan has repeatedly rejected such claims.
Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao, the top civilian security official in Pakistan, told The Associated Press that the U.S. intelligence agencies had not shared any "specific intelligence with Pakistan on the whereabouts of al-Qaeda or the Taliban."
"We always act swiftly whenever any intelligence is shared with us. There are no al-Qaeda safe havens in Pakistan," he said.
But in a sign that insurgents are crossing from Pakistan to fight in Afghanistan, the bodies of 25 militants killed in a fierce battle with NATO were repatriated Friday to their tribal villages in Pakistan, where Taliban activists urged mass attendance at their funerals, residents said.
NATO on Thursday reported killing or wounding 130 suspected Taliban who had crossed from Pakistan to mount attacks in eastern Afghanistan. Pakistan's army also said it attacked militant supply trucks on its side of the border in Pakistan's tense North Waziristan region.
Aslam acknowledged that "there may be al-Qaeda elements" in Pakistan. But she said their presence was just like "in the Middle East or other world countries."
Visiting U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher paid tribute to Pakistan's counterterrorism efforts and said more action was needed on both sides of the border.
"There continues to be a high rate of cross-border activity," he told reporters after meeting with President Gen. Pervez Musharraf. "I'm not just saying Pakistan hasn't succeeded yet, but we have not succeeded yet ourselves in Afghanistan. There's more effort required of all of us."
Pakistan became a U.S. ally in the war against terrorism after it severed support for the Taliban militia in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
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Taleban in Pakistan commend dead
M Ilyas Khan BBC News, Karachi Friday, 12 January 2007
More than 170 Taleban fighters from Pakistan's South Waziristan district have been killed in Afghanistan since 2005, BBC News has learned.
Families of the dead fighters were recently awarded certificates of commendation by the Taleban.
The Pakistani army has signed deals with pro-Taleban leaders in this area aimed at stopping cross-border raids.
But critics say the deals have given the Taleban safe havens from which to launch attacks.
The ceremony of commendation was held on 28 December in the village of Spinki Raghzai, eyewitnesses said.
It was presided over by Baitullah Mahsud, a pro-Taleban commander who signed one of the peace deals with the Pakistani army.
The witnesses said the families of 175 militants killed in Afghanistan since February 2005 were handed certificates by Mr Mahsud.
Of these, 50 militants belonged to his own Mahsud tribe while the rest were Ahmedzai Wazir tribesmen from the Wana region of the district.
Official sanction?
Some members of Pakistan's parliament, who hail from South Waziristan, also attended the ceremony.
Maulana Abdul Malik, national assembly member from the Wana area, and Senator Maulvi Saleh Shah Qureshi confirmed to the BBC that they attended the ceremony.
However, they said that they were only guests and had no role in organising the event.
The Pakistan army lost hundreds of troops in battles with pro-Taleban militants in South Waziristan before signing peace deals with the militant leaders.
Since then, the local administration and the army have claimed that militancy has decreased and peace has returned to the region.
Many analysts, however, disagree and believe that the accords have given a free rein to the Taleban.
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Attacks heat up Afghan-Pakistani border
Coalition troops killed up to 150 Taliban fighters Thursday as they entered Afghanistan from Pakistan
By David Montero The Christian Science Monitor 12 Jan 2007
ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN - NATO-led forces Thursday killed up to 150 militants who were discovered infiltrating Afghanistan from Pakistan, providing what appears to be fresh proof that Taliban militants are staging their attacks from inside Pakistan's tribal zone.
The militants were seen gathering in Pakistan, and were subsequently tracked and targeted in the Margha Hills in Paktika, an Afghan province bordering Pakistan's restive tribal belt, according to NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
Thursday's attack is likely to bolster mounting international claims that Pakistan's tribal zone is a staging ground for attacks inside Afghanistan. Analysts in Pakistan cautioned against jumping to conclusions, saying the reports would have to be verified and the identities of the militants established. But, if true, they added, the attack offers singular proof of cross-border infiltration.
"If [Thursday's attacks are] true, Pakistan will have to take cognizance of it. Pakistan cannot just wash its hands of this," says Talat Masood, a retired Army general who is now a political analyst in Islamabad.
Those critiques have risen to a crescendo since September, when the Pakistan government signed a deal with Taliban militants in North Waziristan to return their weapons, vehicles, and fighters in return for guarantees of peace.
NATO and Afghan officials argue that the deal has failed, and has essentially carved out a sanctuary for militants inside Pakistan to plan and launch their attacks. The number of attacks inside Afghanistan, they point out, has spiked dramatically since the September truce, particularly in areas bordering the tribal zone.
Pakistan lends a hand
"As soon as [the militants killed Thursday] infiltrated Afghanistan from Pakistan, we engaged them," says Lt. Col. Angela Billings, a spokesperson for ISAF speaking by telephone from Kabul, Afghanistan. "They were tracked over a long enough period of time where we were certain of their status [as insurgents]," says Colonel Billings, adding that the size of the group coming from Pakistan was unusually large.
Billings would not divulge what area of Pakistan the militants were seen coming from, but added that Pakistani military liaison officers were continually informed of Thursday's operation. ISAF officials were also quick to point out that the Pakistani Army's cooperation was crucial to Thursday's attack.
"Insurgents are certainly coming across from Pakistan, but the Pakistan Army engaged with its colleagues across the border - ISAF and the Afghan Army - to do something about it," says Maj. Dominic Whyte, an ISAF spokesman speaking from Kabul.
Hours after the NATO strike, Pakistani helicopter gunships attacked supply trucks used by suspected insurgents for cross-border attacks in neighboring Afghanistan, a military spokesman said Thursday. The Pakistani Army attacked in North Waziristan Province, across the border from Thursday's NATO air assault.
The strike marks the Pakistani Army's first reported attack in the North Waziristan tribal region since a controversial September peace deal between the government and pro- Taliban militants that critics say has provided a sanctuary for insurgents.
The Army, acting on intelligence provided by the US-led coalition in Afghanistan, also used mortars and artillery in the attack Wednesday night in Gurvek, in North Waziristan, spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan told The Associated Press.
He said it was not clear if any militants were killed in the assault.
The Taliban rejected the NATO report as "baseless and false" and said that no fighters had been killed. "Only civilians were targeted," a Taliban spokesman, Mohammad Hanif, said by telephone. Human rights groups have heightened their criticism of NATO forces as civilian casualties have mounted over the past several months.
If confirmed, the death toll would be the highest since September, when NATO troops forced the Taliban out of a district near the southern city of Kandahar, killing at least 500 insurgents.
Thursday's attack comes only weeks after Pakistan announced it would begin fencing and mining its 1,500-mile border with Afghanistan. On Wednesday, Pakistan implemented the first of several checkpoints using computerized fingerprint checking and identification cards at Chaman, the main border crossing into Kandahar.
The plan is highly unpopular with Pashtun tribes, who straddle both sides of the border and who turned out by the thousands in Afghanistan to protest the new check posts. Pakistani officials insist that the fencing is a preplanned mechanism to control border traffic, but critics have dismissed it as an ill-advised attempt to stave off rising criticism that the Taliban are operating from its borders.
Cooperation without borders
Chris Alexander, deputy special representative of the secretary-general for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, was the latest voice to criticize Pakistan's deal-making with the Islamist militants inside its own borders. Referring to a UN sanctions list detailing 142 Taliban leaders, Mr. Alexander said in Kabul on Monday that some of those leaders "were in Pakistan for at least a part of 2006."
Pakistan immediately rejected his statement.
Thursday's attack puts in sharp relief that Pakistan's many proposed solutions - from stationing 80,000 troops on the border to cutting peace deals with militants - have so far failed, say analysts. Fencing is unlikely to prove any more effective, bitterly opposed as it is by tribal people and the Afghan government alike.
If there is a short-term solution, observers say, it lies in a smarter use of resources and greater interborder cooperation.
"It will take greater technology, and greater intelligence. Satellite imagery, drones, reconnaissance," says Mr. Masood, adding that cultivating the support of local tribes is the keystone to such an effort.
The urgency of better solutions seems to be growing. The scale of the attack in Paktika surprised some analysts, who say militants have rarely been seen infiltrating Afghanistan in such large numbers. The incident might point to a winter surge in preparation for attacks in spring, when snow in mountain passes will melt and heavy fighting is expected to resume.
"If true, it's significant. It shows that they are putting people in place now for the spring offensive. I didn't expect the Taliban to launch such attacks in the winter," says Ramiyullah Yusufzai, a journalist and political analyst in Peshawar, a provincial capital near the Afghan border.
In recent weeks, Paktika has emerged as a flashpoint of cross-border violence. On Dec. 31, militants based in Pakistan fired a succession of some 20 rockets into Paktika, although the ordinance caused no casualties, Pahjwok Afghan News reported. (Wire services were used in this report.)
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Pakistan border crossing closed after Afghan protest
Scotsman, UK 01/12/2007
Chaman - A main border crossing between Pakistan and Afghanistan was closed yesterday after protests by thousands of afghans against controls on cross-frontier movement, officials said.
Thousands of Afghan tribesmen gathered in Spin Boldak, close to the border in southern Afghanistan and opposite Pakistani town Chaman, and threw stones at the gates, forcing authorities to close the border, witnesses told news agencies.
"The border has been closed because of the security situation," commander of Pakistani border troops, Colonel Masood Anwar told news agencies.
The protest came a day after Pakistan started a new biometric computerised system to screen and document all travellers crossing the border, replacing the previous permit system.
The authorities now issue border passes to people after recording their fingerprints, retinas or facial patterns for identification.
"This is a step that we have taken to fight terrorism and stop any illegal movement across the border," national database and registration authority (ANDRA) official retired Brigadier Akhtar Shah said.
Afghan border commander Abdul Raziq Panjsheri told reporters the new system would hurt people-to-people contact and amounted to discrimination against Afghans and should have been consulted on.
Chaman is the second busiest overland crossing point after Torkham in North West Frontier Province. Thousands of people criss-cross these points for business and private visits daily.
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Suicide bomber targets foreigners in Logar
Zubair Babakarkhail
KABUL, Jan 12 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Only the bomber was killed and a foreign national wounded in a suicide attack in the Mohammad Agha district of the central Logar province Friday afternoon.
The attack was carried out at a civilian vehicle carrying foreigners in an area between the villages of Said Abad and Safaid Sang on the Kabul Logar Highway.
An official of the ISAF press office, who wished not to be named, told Pajhwok Afghan News target of the attack was a vehicle carrying US nationals. He said driver of the vehicle was wounded while the other three people remained unhurt.
Police chief of the province General Mustafa said the bomber struck his explosive-packed car against the vehicle carrying the foreigners. The officer added the four people were shifted to Kabul after the attack. However, he would not say about their health condition.
Contacted for comments, Interior Ministry spokesman Zmaray Bashari said two foreigners and a local resident were injured in the explosion. No one has so far claimed responsibility for the suicide blast, which was the third during the current year.
Meanwhile, Qari Hayatullah, calling himself a Taliban commander in Logar, told Pajhwok Afghan News over the telephone that 14 US soldiers had been killed and their three vehicles were destroyed in the attack.
He said the attack was carried out by a young man named Frouq, resident of the northern Takhar province. Claim of the purported commander could not be confirmed from any independent source.
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In Afghan Valley, a Peaceful War
Italians, Barred by Their Government From Combat, Stage a Day-Long Medical Clinic and Supply Depot, Part of a Larger Mission to Win a Region's Support
By Pamela Constable Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, January 13, 2007; A12
SURJAI, Afghanistan -- Inside a green tent pitched on an ice-crusted field and guarded by armed troops, a young boy winced in pain Wednesday as a military doctor slowly injected medicine into his nose and cheek, red and swollen from the parasitic disease leishmaniasis.
Nearby, soldiers tossed sacks of rice, beans, tea and sugar into wheelbarrows pushed by local villagers. At a third spot, cargo trucks piled with firewood and tin stoves were surrounded by excited, shoving crowds until a local mullah carrying a list of names restored order.
"Andiamo!" -- Let's go! -- called a rifleman near the food supplies, beckoning to the next family in line.
Col. Antonio Maggi, who commanded the day-long operation by Italian troops in the snow-coated Mushai Valley, strode watchfully among the tents and trucks. He often stopped to chat with local elders, an interpreter at his side.
To Maggi, who heads NATO's 2,000-member Italian military contingent in Afghanistan, the day's humanitarian mission was a small piece of a long-term, strategic plan to win the support and collaboration of the valley's 20,000 inhabitants for the Afghan central government and the international troops who support it.
Like most of the 26 foreign military contingents that comprise the 20,000 NATO troops stationed in Afghanistan, the Italians have been banned by their government from conducting combat missions, except for 72-hour emergency sorties to aid other NATO forces.
Only British, Canadian and Dutch combat troops operate in the four southern provinces where clashes with Taliban insurgents are constant and dozens of foreign soldiers have died. A separately commanded mission of about 20,000 U.S. troops is based in eastern Afghanistan, conducting combat and aid operations.
But officials say the work of troops from Italy, Turkey, France and other nations, which are bringing security, training, aid and development to impoverished and potentially hostile areas of central and northern Afghanistan, can be more effective than military raids, which can invade homes, create casualties and alienate communities.
"This valley is important because there have been problems with security in the past," Maggi said. "Now we are present, listening to the people's problems, meeting with the leaders, bringing assistance, doing joint patrols with the police. Our message to everyone is that there can be no reconstruction in the valley without security."
Lying about an hour's drive south of Kabul, the capital, the Mushai Valley has a history of strategic importance in Afghanistan's succession of conflicts. Militia commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who with U.S. backing fought Soviet troops during the 1980s, maintained his stronghold near here. Later, he turned against the Western powers and is today a renegade insurgent leader.
During the years of Taliban rule, from 1996 to 2001, some foreign Arab militia groups lived in compounds nearby.
The largely unprotected valley is just across a low ridge of mountains from the border with Pakistan. NATO and Afghan officials say insurgent fighters from the revived Taliban militia receive training and weapons there and then infiltrate Afghanistan to launch attacks.
One of Maggi's principal roles, since the Mushai operation began in October, has been to help recruit, equip and train local police. The Italians have provided them with pickup trucks, radios, boots and wool winter uniforms. They are also building a brick police and administrative headquarters to replace the rudimentary hillside compound that is now the government's only structure in the district.
"Things have changed a lot since the colonel came," said the Mushai police chief, Commander Arif. "We are in an open area where people can come across from Pakistan, and we had no checkpoints before. Now we have three new checkpoints, joint patrols and 112 police officers getting trained. The people are collaborating 100 percent, so the insurgents cannot do their work."
The skill level of the police is still low, and Wednesday's giveaway program was briefly marred when an argument broke out around a truck laden with firewood. One inexperienced policeman hit a man with his rifle, bloodying his nose and angering the crowd.
But in general, the welcome received here by Maggi's forces, who attend regular meetings with local leaders, has stood in sharp contrast to the angry resentment aroused last fall when U.S. combat forces staged a raid looking for Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents. Residents said the troops entered houses at night, herded women and children outside in the rain and shot one civilian dead.
"They did many wrong things, and the people were unhappy," said Maulvi Shirin Agha, a senior cleric in the valley, who helped organize the aid distribution this week. "They were looking for al-Qaeda, but there has been no al-Qaeda here for the last five years. The Italians behave very well with the people, and everyone likes them," he said. "The Taliban can only dream of coming back."
Aside from the improved security, leaders in the Mushai Valley said they were most grateful to the Italians for providing free medical aid. The area has no clinics, and families said that when they take sick children to hospitals in Kabul, they are turned away or given inadequate treatment.
On Wednesday, parents lined up all day outside the tent clinic where Lidia Sarntaro, a doctor and Italian army lieutenant, treated their children for coughs, headaches, rashes and more serious ailments. Twice she administered a local anesthetic and removed shrapnel fragments from a child's arm, bending over a metal cot with a scalpel and gauze to stanch the bleeding.
Lala Gul brought in his son Akmal, 7, who was left with a fragment in his arm last year when a shell he and another boy were handling exploded.
Gul worriedly watched the boy's frightened face while Sarntaro stitched up his arm. The second boy waited outside.
"I took them to the city, but nobody helped us. All the doctors asked us for too much money," said Gul, a farm laborer with eight children. He said he was taking home a bundle of food supplies, though he did not fully understand who had donated them. "The elders told us to come here today to get help," he said. "It is free, so I am happy."
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Canada relying on Afghan police in Taliban offensive
Richard Foot, with a file from Sheldon Alberts CanWest News Service www.canadan.com Saturday, January 13, 2007
HALIFAX -- As the Canadian army girds itself for another Taliban offensive expected this spring, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor is putting his faith in the much-maligned Afghan national police.
O'Connor told reporters in Halifax on Friday that Canadian forces have helped establish a string of new police detachments in villages across the district of Panjwaii, the hotly contested township on the outskirts of Kandahar, where Canadian troops fought hard last year to rid the area of insurgents. He said the new police posts are a key part of NATO's security plan for the coming months -- an early warning system against fresh Taliban forces infiltrating the area around Kandahar.
"I gotta tell you, things are looking a lot better in Kandahar province than they were six or seven months ago," O'Connor said. "The prospects for the future are much better."
Asked to explain the reason for his confidence, O'Connor said: "As we clear village after village, we're putting police detachments in those villages, so there are Afghan police being placed through the whole zone. We're also moving the Afghan army into strongpoints, so this whole area is going to be dominated by the Afghan police and the Afghan army.
"If there is a return in the spring of more Taliban into that area, we will know about them almost instantly, because we will have police and army in that area, and the Taliban will find it a lot more difficult penetrating that area than they did in the past."
O'Connor's confidence in the reliability of the Afghan police is not shared by many western observers. While the fledgling Afghan army has proved to be a brave and disciplined partner of coalition forces in the past year, the loyalty and ability of the Afghan police is far less certain.
A motley crew that includes many one-time militants loyal to various warlords, the poorly armed and equipped police are described in the January edition of the respected Foreign Affairs magazine as "corrupt," "incompetent," and heavily involved in the illicit opium trade that helps fund the insurgency.
O'Connor acknowledged the success of the overall mission would require far more than a military solution.
"It will take a long time to eliminate the Taliban," he said. "In fact, that will have to be done through negotiations with the government. But our job as NATO is to try and get the insurgency down to a level where development proceeds."
He also admitted Taliban command centres and sanctuaries in neighbouring Pakistan pose a serious threat, and said NATO would have to do a better job monitoring the traffic that passes across the Afghan/Pakistan border.
"As times goes on, NATO is going to have to provide more surveillance in the south of Afghanistan," he said. "We're going to have to ensure that we know what traffic is going back and forth across the border, and that's probably what NATO will do."
O'Connor declined to answer whether he believed the Pakistan government was a reliable ally in the war on terror, working with or against NATO forces in pursuit of the Taliban.
The minister also said he was hopeful the U.S. would not withdraw troops from Afghanistan to bolster its forces in Iraq. This week U.S. President George W. Bush announced plans to raise American troop levels in war-torn Iraq by more than 20,000.
However, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Senate committee the addition of 21,500 new American troops in Iraq will have no impact on U.S. military commitments in Afghanistan.
"We have about 22,500 in Afghanistan right now. We'll be able to maintain that," he said on Friday.
O'Connor's trip to Halifax was part of a renewed effort by the federal government and the military to sell the Afghan mission to Canadians. In a speech to the Halifax Chamber of Commerce, he stressed the development work of Canadians in Kandahar.
"We are helping fulfil the basic needs of the Afghan people, by providing food and drinking water, health care, education, infrastructure and support for economic development."
He also offered a tongue-tied analysis of his belief that Canada was not officially "at war."
"We are not at war. Canada has never declared war. We are involved in an internal war in Afghanistan," O'Connor said. "But sometimes we have to get involved in combat operations and at that stage, technically, you're at war -- or, sorry, you're in a war."
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Court rejects bail for British alleged military spy
Fri Jan 12, 2:01 PM ET
LONDON (AFP) - A court rejected bail for an aide to the British commander of NATO troops in Afghanistan who is accused of passing secrets to the enemy, reportedly Iran.
During his appearance at the Old Bailey in London on a prison video-link, Corporal Daniel James, an interpreter to Lieutenant General David Richards, was remanded in custody until a plea and case management hearing on June 15.
The judge rejected a request for bail from James after accepting prosecution objections concerns that he might abscond and allegedly commit other offenses.
He has been charged under the Official Secrets Act with "prejudicing the safety of the state" but has proclaimed his innocence.
Defending James, 44, lawyer Paul Raudnitz told the judge that his decision to join the army had been "a deliberate act of patriotic duty toward the country that had taken him in."
"He is a patriot. He has in no remote sense any competing interest or commitment to any other country or party," he said.
He was taken into custody last month on a charge alleging that on November 2 last year, he "communicated to another person information calculated to be, or that might be, or intended to be directly or indirectly useful to the enemy."
James' boss Richards is head of NATO's more than 30,000-strong International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.
James, who lives in the southern English resort town of Brighton, is of Iranian descent and speaks fluent Pashtun, one of the main languages in Afghanistan, according to media reports.
The court case comes as British-led forces struggle against fiercer than expected Taliban insurgents in the south of Afghanistan, invaded by US-led forces following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the United States.
The charges also come amid heightening tension between the West and Iran over the Islamic republic's nuclear plans.
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Germany May Send Spy Planes to Southern Afghanistan
Deutsche Welle - Fri, Jan 12, 2007
Germany said it would decide soon whether to send Tornado jets for reconnaissance duties to violence-wracked southern Afghanistan in order to bolster NATO forces.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Friday denied earlier remarks by a top German official that Germany had already decided to send Tornado spy jets to Afghanistan.
"We shall study this request and take a decision in good time," Steinmeier told reporters in Brussels, adding that he would discuss a NATO request made in December for reconnaissance planes at an alliance meeting on Jan. 26.
Top official says deployment done deal
Earlier, Germany's former defense minister, the Social Democrats' parliamentary group leader Peter Struck, told reporters in Brussels that Germany would deploy the six aircraft requested by NATO.
Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: German peacekeepers have so far largely been based in Kabul
Struck said the fighter-bombers would be based in the capital Kabul but used in the south of the country, a bastion of Taliban insurgents who surprised NATO last year with fiercer than expected resistance.
NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said he would welcome such a move.
"If the German government would announce, or has announced, the deployment of Tornado aircraft in a reconnaissance role to Afghanistan, I would highly welcome such a decision," he told reporters.
Struck said it might be possible to send the fighter-bombers for two or three months but that a deployment of seven months, for example, "would surely not be covered by the current mandate."
Politicians want Parliament to approve
Struck's comments, however, have sparked anger among some members of Germany's ruling coalition of Christian Democrats (CDU) and Social Democrats (SPD) as well as in the opposition.
Some have raised doubts about whether the sending of military aircraft is possible without an additional parliamentary mandate than the one that presently covers the deployment of some 3,000 German peacekeepers in the calmer north of the country.
Volker Kauder, CDU parliamentary chief, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper the issue could only be solved once the government bared all the facts.
"One thing is clear: there's no sneaking past the parliament," Kauder said.
But Germany's opposition reacted with anger to news of a possible imminent deployment of the reconnaissance planes.
Hans-Christian Ströbele, deputy head of the Green party said he would consider lodging a complaint with Germany's Federal Constitutional Court if the government went ahead with the deployment without parliamentary approval.
Germany under pressure
At the same time, if Germany were to go ahead with the deployment of the reconnaissance planes, it could deflect criticism that the country has ignored calls to help provide reinforcements to fight Taliban-led insurgents in the south and preferred to keep its troops in the relatively calm north.
Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: The rugged terrain of southern Afghanistan remains the heartland of the Taliban
NATO leaders agreed in November to move troops around inside Afghanistan in emergency cases, as commanders demanded more flexibility to fight the insurgents.
The insurgency claimed the lives of around 3,700 people last year -- four times more than in 2005, according to official figures. Around 120 foreign soldiers were killed.
Britain, Canada and the Netherlands led the NATO push south in mid-2006 and have borne the brunt of causalities in the fight between the 32,000-strong NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the Taliban.
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Afghan heroin flow to jump in Central Asia: Tajikistan
By Roman Kozhevnikov Fri Jan 12, 7:54 AM ET
DUSHANBE (Reuters) - Heroin smuggling through Central Asia is likely to jump this year after a record opium harvest in Afghanistan, the head of Tajikistan's drug control agency and United Nations officials said on Friday.
Afghanistan is the source of 90 percent of the world's opiates and about one fifth of the illegal drugs are smuggled to Europe, Russia and the United States via the so-called "northern route" through Central Asia.
The illegal drugs trade in Afghanistan has flourished in the chaos caused by a more than a quarter of a century of war and instability.
Opium production soared to a record last year, five years after U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban's strict Islamist government. The Taliban stamped out poppy cultivation during the last year of their rule, but now share drug profits.
"After the record opium harvest, which reached 200,000 tons last year, we are expecting an increase in narcotics flows from Afghanistan," Rustam Nasarov, the head of Tajikistan's agency for narcotics control, told reporters.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Tajikistan, which borders Afghanistan, said underground heroin factories could produce 800 tons of the drug in 2007, increasing the flow of illegal drugs.
The drugs are spirited across the Tajik-Afghan border, often by poorly paid couriers, and then taken across the former silk routes of Central Asia to Russia, Turkey and the West.
The Tajik narcotics control agency says a kilogram of heroin sells for about $800 on the black market in Afghanistan while the price is $50,000 in Russia and as much as $300,000 in western Europe.
The narcotics trade, which accounts for about a third of Afghanistan's economy, is funding increasingly powerful drug lords and a resurgent Taliban militia.
"Underground laboratories for heroin manufacture will be able to produce no less than 800 tons of heroin in 2007," said Christer Brannerud, project coordinator the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Tajikistan.
"That is 30 percent more than the needs of the European market," he said. "It will lead to an increase in the drug-traffic from Afghanistan through northern and eastern routes."
Russian anti-drugs officials say heroin flows have increased since Russian troops in 2005 stopped patrolling the 1,340 km (835 mile) border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan. The Tajik government asked Russia in 2004 to pull out its troops.
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Japan to Boost Afghan Aid, Rules Out Troop Deployment
By James G. Neuger and Takashi Hirokawa
Jan. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Japan promised to boost humanitarian aid for Afghanistan, while ruling out the deployment of troops to back NATO's battle against the resurgent Taliban.
Japan, which pulled its support troops from Iraq last year, is providing money and relief workers to rebuild Afghanistan and isn't part of the 33,000-man military force led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
``The way Japan participates is of course up to the Japanese government,'' NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told reporters in Brussels today after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe became the first Japanese leader to visit the alliance's headquarters.
Abe's pursuit of ties with NATO is part of a bid to move past Japan's post-World War II pacifism and bulk up Japanese defenses against a fast-growing China and potentially nuclear- armed North Korea.
Abe, in office since September, has upgraded the Defense Ministry's powers and pledged to revise the post-1945 constitution, which renounces war and militarism. Japan needs a ``more assertive foreign policy,'' he said on the eve of his European visit.
Japan and NATO are ``strategic partners that share objectives and responsibilities,'' Abe said today. The two sides agreed to hold regular Cabinet-level meetings and De Hoop Scheffer said he will visit Japan.
Noncombat Troops
Japan kept 600 noncombat troops in southern Iraq from 2003 to 2006, the first overseas mission to a war zone since World War II. Domestic critics said the deployment by Abe's predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, violated the constitution.
Japan won't hesitate to dispatch its Self-Defense Forces for international reconstruction and disaster relief, Abe told representatives of NATO's 26 nations, according to a Foreign Ministry summary.
NATO in Afghanistan is fighting to shore up the government of President Hamid Karzai against a resurgence of the Taliban regime that was toppled by the U.S. in 2001. Alliance forces yesterday said they killed as many as 150 insurgents in the most intense fighting since September.
Japan last year pledged $450 million to rebuild Afghanistan, on top of $1 billion over the previous four years. Japan also provides aid in disbanding armed militias. Abe today offered further humanitarian assistance and health and education support without giving details.
Japan's Role
``Nobody can underestimate the very important role Japan has been playing and is playing there,'' De Hoop Scheffer said.
Stressing that security threats are global and no longer regional, De Hoop Scheffer said the trans-Atlantic alliance is concerned about instability in east Asia and assailed North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons.
North Korea's test of a nuclear device in October ``is not only a threat to Japan and to northeast Asia, it is a threat to the NATO allies as well,'' De Hoop Scheffer said. He added that NATO won't play a direct role in the North Korean standoff.
The U.S.-led alliance's condemnation ``should translate into major pressure on North Korea,'' Abe said. North Korea walked out of six-nation disarmament talks last month to protest U.S. financial sanctions.
On another Pacific rim security issue, Abe won assurances this week that the European Union isn't on the verge of lifting an arms embargo against China imposed after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
Lifting the embargo isn't on the EU's agenda for the time being, Abe was told by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Jose Barroso.
A campaign by French President Jacques Chirac to end the ban fizzled in 2005 when the U.S. objected that it would destabilize east Asia. Abe flies to Paris later today to meet Chirac, whose second term ends in May.
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Detained 'spy' presented before journalists
KABUL, Jan 11 (Pajhwok Afghan News): A man detained for spying for Pakistan's intelligence agency ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) said dozens of Pakistani spies were operating in Afghanistan.
The young man detained by police on Wednesday was presented before journalists during a press conference on Thursday. Speaking in Urdu language, the detainee admitted he was working with the Joint Technical Intelligence branch of the ISI.
He said 85 more agents of the Pakistani secret services were operating in the country. However, he did not give more details about them.
He alleged the Pakistani government was paying from $50,000 to $60,000 to families of the suicide bombers as compensation for carrying out suicide attacks. He added family of the bomber, who failed to assassinate member of parliament Pacha Khan Zadran, was given $120,000 by the ISI.
Contradictions were visible in statement of the young man, who was brought before journalists by crime branch chief General Alishah Paktiawal. At one point, the accused said he had come to Kabul to seek asylum here.
Speaking on the occasion, Paktiawal said the detainee was a key member of ISI. He said investigations had revealed that some Afghans were also cooperating with the Pakistani spy agency.
Contacted for comments, press attach at the embassy of Pakistan Naeem Khan said such acts and statements were against the etiquettes of international diplomacy. He said the Afghan authorities should have informed the Pakistani embassy before raising the issue in media
Habib Rahman Ibrahimi
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Canada hopes U.S. won't shift troops from Afghanistan
Canadian Press
Halifax - Canada's defence minister is hoping the United States won't shift combat troops from Afghanistan to boost its war in Iraq, although America's top military official says it has no intention of doing so.
Gordon O'Connor said Friday that the possibility of fewer troops in Afghanistan was the main question he had regarding U.S. president George W. Bush's plan to boost forces in Iraq by 21,500 troops.
"I don't know if there will be any impact," he said after a speech to the Halifax Chamber of Commerce.
"My hope is they won't draw any troops away from Afghanistan to reinforce Iraq.... That's the only thing I'd think about."
However, the chair of the U.S. joint chiefs of staff said Friday there's no plan to reduce its military presence in Afghanistan.
U.S. General Peter Pace, speaking at the Senate armed services committee, said the units going into Iraq "were already in the pipeline and they will be moved forward in the pipeline in a couple of months."
He said there are about 22,500 troops in Afghanistan right now and that won't change, adding: "We will be able to maintain that."
Gen. Pace also testified that if it's necessary, the U.S. military could draw from the National Guard and reserves to send more troops to Afghanistan.
Steven Staples, a defence analyst with the Rideau Institute in Ottawa, said he thinks Mr. O'Connor has cause to be concerned about the American focus on battling the insurgency in Iraq.
He noted that since the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, the U.S. administration has shifted focus away from Afghanistan, where it orchestrated the overthrow of the Taliban government in 2001.
"That shift in focus is precisely why the insurgency was able to regain a foothold in the country, and that's why Canada was encouraged to send a much more robust troop presence to southern Afghanistan," Mr. Staples said in an interview.
"Already he (O'Connor) can't convince NATO to send more troops to southern Afghanistan and here's the U.S. shifting focus, potentially leaving Canada holding the bag."
In the U.S., there's been no indicator from the defence secretary or the president that troop commitments in Afghanistan would be affected by boosting the Iraq deployment.
However, a number of politicians have said they're concerned that the U.S. isn't sending more troops to combat an expected increased in the Taliban insurgency this spring.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and two other U.S. legislators head to Iraq this weekend as Congress debates Bush's plan.
Ms. Clinton, a Democrat from New York who is considering a run for president, told the Associated Press that she wants to see more troops in Afghanistan, where U.S. forces "seem to be on autopilot."
"I wish we were discussing additional troops for Afghanistan. We are hearing increasingly troubled reports out of Afghanistan and we will be searching for accurate information about the true state of affairs," she said.
The Baltimore Sun reported this week that Taliban forces are poised for a major offensive against U.S. troops and undermanned NATO forces.
The newspaper said this has prompted U.S. commanders to issue an urgent appeal for a new Marine Corps battalion to reinforce the American positions.
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Sistan-Baluchestan could export cement to Afghanistan, Pakistan: MP
Tehran Times 12 January 2007
ZAHEDAN - Sistan Cement Plant would soon export part of its production to the neighboring countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan, a member of the parliament said.
Putting the factory's annual cement production at 1.2 million tons, Mokhtari stated that the project has so far created 1,700 jobs. Construction of industrial plants is the key to reduce high unemployment rate in this deprived province. However, the government has done very little to date to resolve the numerous socioeconomic problems of the people of Sistan-Baluchestan.
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Afghan women and children: the left's moral blind spot
J. L. GRANATSTEIN - Globe and Mail 1.11.07
No one doubts that the Taliban in Afghanistan were and are Islamic fundamentalists. To the mullahs who control the movement, the duty of women is to serve their husbands and fathers, to be covered at all times except in the home, and not to hold a job outside the family's confines. Violators can be punished severely, even killed. Similar Draconian rules apply to female children who are best left uneducated. Their schools, their teachers, and occasionally the girls themselves, can be destroyed or executed for violating such rules.
This is monstrous policy by any standard, utter medieval lunacy in the guise of religious faith. It offends Western values deeply, and it has much to do with the reasons that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has troops in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban and trying to bolster the more moderate Karzai government in Kabul.
But to judge by the silence of Canada's left and its feminists, there are worse sins occurring out there than the repression of Afghan women and children. What could be worse? The whole "War on Terror," the American and NATO interventions in Afghanistan, and Canadian complicity in Washington's many and varied sins. In other words, the silence of the Canadian feminist lambs suggests strongly that this is a classic case in which anti-Americanism and anti-Bush sentiment, combined with anger at Stephen Harper's Conservative government and its policies, easily outweigh the harm done to Afghan females by a fundamentalist cabal.
Not that the feminists and the left have been completely silent on Muslim outrages against women. Consider the case of Darfur, where NDP Leader Jack Layton, his female colleagues in his caucus and many Canadian feminists have been demanding that Canada act to stop the killings and rapes by Muslim militias, aided by the Sudanese government. The brutality in Darfur is horrid, no doubt of this, and the world community has been slow to act, not least because Khartoum has until recently refused to permit the intervention of United Nations forces within Sudan's borders.
But why is a Darfur intervention a good and necessary response while the war in Afghanistan is not? There are a variety of pathologies at work here. One is that Darfur is now to be a UN peace-enforcement mission, and the United Nations and peacekeeping of any variety are, by definition, good. Afghanistan, by contrast, is seen on the left as a U.S. war, aided and abetted by NATO. It doesn't appear to matter that after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 the UN Security Council passed resolutions authorizing intervention in Afghanistan. For the feminists and the left, if the Americans are involved, at root it must be about oil, about President George Bush's failed policies, or about American obsession with the war on terror.
Another factor is that in Darfur, the U.S., along with Canada and most Western nations, was loath to intervene. It was not so much that the democracies condoned the brutality of the militias; they didn't. It was that the Darfur deserts were inhospitable, to say the least, that the logistics involved in supporting Western forces there were a nightmare, and that troops were in short supply. Moreover, the presence of white, largely Christian soldiers would not necessarily have a calming effect when the Muslim government in Khartoum was pledging a jihad if infidels dared to intervene in their affairs. In other words, until the Sudanese government accepted UN intervention, any Western help in Darfur could only be offered after an invasion. To the West and its governments, it seemed better, safer and smarter to try to bolster the Organization of African Unity's small peacekeeping forces in Darfur.
But to the feminists and the left, it was easy to portray these sensible and practical concerns as if Washington and its friends were deliberately shirking their responsibilities to the women of Darfur. American intervention in Afghanistan was a bad thing by definition; America's refusal to intervene in Darfur was an evil, a deliberate abandonment of Sudanese women and children to the brutal militias who were raping and killing wantonly. The United States, in other words, was damned if it did and condemned if it didn't act.
Those who believe that the rights of women and children in Afghanistan matter enough to deserve protection need to play on this ideological confusion on the left. Mr. Layton and his feminist friends want Canada's troops out of Afghanistan and into Darfur. But how abandoning the women of Kandahar province to the not-so-tender mercies of the mullahs will help bring peace and justice there is very hard to comprehend. Yes, the West should help in Darfur; of course, it should. But unless and until someone can produce a compelling case that the women and children of Afghanistan are any less worth saving from barbarism than those in Darfur, there is a huge logical and moral blind spot in the feminists' and the left's position.
Historian J. L. Granatstein writes on behalf of the Council for Canadian Security in the 21st Century.
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Bank vehicle looted at gunpoint
KABUL, Jan 11 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Armed men looted a bank vehicle at gunpoint and decamped with millions of cash in the high security zone of this central capital on Thursday.
The vehicle of the Standard Chartered Bank was waylaid by six armed robbers in Shah Mahmood Ghazi Wat locality and looted the cash at gunpoint.
Joseph Silvanus, Country Chief Executive Officer of the bank, told Pajhwok Afghan News the two bank workers travelling in the van were stopped by the armed men and forced them to handover the money. He did not give further information about the amount.
Some four months back, gunmen looted cash from a bank van in Shar-i-Naw locality close to the Interior Ministry.
Mustafa Basharat
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Focusing on air pollution: Time to act
KABUL, Jan 11 (Pajhwok Afghan News): One a windy summer day last year, President Hamid Karzai called up a deputy at the National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA) with a very unusual complaint.
According to Dost Mohammad Amin, the then deputy director of NEPA, the president told him: "I can't breathe as soon as I step out of the presidential palace," and asked him what his agency was doing to change it.
This triggered a flurry of activities after which the NEPA prepared a 35-point plan in consultation with the Ministry of Urban Development, the Kabul Municipality and Kabul University and sent it to the president's office. In March, the cabinet approved the plan and sent for implementation to the concerned ministries.
But little has changed. It is unlikely that one will stand at Jada-i-Maiwand, Deh Afghanan or Pul-i-Bagh-i-Umomi in Kabul on any sunny day and breathe normally. The situation is not much different in other parts of the capital - only the severity of the pollution varies.
"What to do, if I cover my mouth and nose I can't breathe and if I don't cover, I feel that I'm filling up with dust," said Ahmad Jawed, a 43-year-old resident of Bibi Mahro locality. Dust from the streets also finds way into Jawad's kitchen, living and drawing rooms and there is very little he can do about it.
"I don't want to talk about dust anymore, I live in the second storey and it is everywhere inside," said Mir Mohammad Samay, the 20-year-old who lives in Qala-i-Mikhcha of Shashdarak.
"Where should I start?" asked Mohammad Hakim, resident of Dashte Barchi in the western parts of Kabul. "The streets are polluted, the drains are polluted and even water that comes from the homes is polluted and it mixes with everything in the streets."
The same story is repeated across all the 22 municipal districts that make up the capital city of over three million people. Kabul has strong winds from March to May, which is when the particulate pollutants reach the most discomforting levels.
The wind blows fine particles of dust - mainly from the northwest - which when mixed with vehicular emissions, dust from unpaved streets, smoke from diesel generators, bath-houses, bakeries, kabab-makers and brick kilns turns the air into a potent mixture that is simply un-breathable.
In winter, a thick blanket of dust and pollutants cover Kabul at night and in the mornings. Under a phenomenon, which scientists call "severe atmospheric inversion", the hot air containing pollutants rises during the day but comes down to blanket the city when the temperature falls at night trapping all the pollutants over the city.
The level of pollutants is highest during the spring and summer months when the air is dry and dusty. This is when the number of asthma attacks increase and patients with respiratory diseases crowd the hospitals.
Dr Mohammad Naeem Hamdard, general physician at Ibn-i-Sina Emergency Hospital, said many people come there with complaints of respiratory problems even in the winter months. He said about 60 per cent of the patients suffer from diseases caused by air pollution.
The hospital treated about 27,700 patients between March and November last year. Dr Hamdard said the number of patients is lower compared to the previous years, but this could be because the people were seeking treatment at private hospitals and clinics.
The list containing sources of air pollution is long. According to the February 2006 ADB/NEPA report, it includes 109 hammams or wash rooms, 635 bakeries, over 300,000 vehicles (some of which are about 60 years old), 43 small bakeries, 385 traditional brick factories (of which 225 horizontal kilns were active in Kabul), 135 battis (Indian style brick factory) and one Chinese brick factory, about 85 light industries, one thermal power plant and 171,795 portable power generators, mostly diesel-powered.
The low quality of fuel is one factor that adds to pollution. Another major source of pollution is the burning of fuels for heating homes and offices during winter (November to March).
The hammams, bakeries and brick factories (except the Chinese-style factory) use firewood, old tyres, used motor oils and anything that burns as fuel. The resulting exhaust is a poisonous mix whose composition remains to be studied.
There are about 300,000 motor vehicles in Kabul, which move slowly because of the congestion on streets that were designed to accommodate 25-35,000 vehicles. They not only kick-off dust but also produce exhaust laden with harmful gases. Many of these vehicles are old and were imported illegally after 1998. According to a 2004 estimate, most of these vehicles run on diesel.
Afghanistan has only one laboratory for testing fuel oil quality but, according to the ADB/NEPA report, no data on oil quality is available. Similarly, it adds that the gasoline imported into the country is adulterated and the only gasoline testing lab does not have institutional capacity for carrying out tests.
Six years after the end of fighting in Afghanistan, electricity supply in most of Kabul and other provinces remains to be fully restored. One thermal power plant run by the government generates about 45 megawatts (MW) of power using 9,000 liters of diesel or fuel oils. Besides, there are another 171,795 private power generators.
Kabul is located at 1,790 meters above sea level and has very cold winters, when households burn different fuels for heating. The use of diesel is high in government institutions, international agencies and private businesses. Poor households mainly use firewood and other materials, including plastics.
According to ADB/NEPA report, the average daily use of diesel is highest in hotels and restaurants (12 liters), followed by government and other institutions (4-4.5 liters) and households (6 liters).
The other major pollutants are the asphalt factories. The number has now grown from one to several hundreds. Besides the exhaust used to melt asphalt, these plants are also said to produce emissions that contain high levels of cancer-causing organic compounds.
The ADB and NEPA have set up several monitoring stations to determine the levels particulate matter, Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) and Nitrogen oxides (NO3) in the air. The plan is to monitor air quality and establish a baseline for air quality to determine the severity of air pollution and develop a management strategy.
"Poor air quality, especially pollutants in exhaust of vehicles and diesel generators can even cause many blood-related diseases and even cancer," said Dr Mohammad Azhar Khalid, an ENT (ear, nose & throat) specialist, who runs a clinic at Charahi Qambar.
The concern about air quality is genuine but so is the need for reconstruction and economic growth. The brick factories are needed for the construction taking place in the city but they are also major polluters.
Abdul Samad Maroof runs two brick kilns at Dehkhudidad (17th district). One have the capacity to produce 10,000 and another 15,000 bricks at one firing. Together all the 225 traditional factories consume about 5,710 kg of firewood every 24 hours and release the smoke in the air.
Maroof said he uses thorns, wood, tyres and rubber scrap for firing the bricks. He was unaware of the long-term health problems caused by the smoke produced but said that burning rubber did produce fumes that were "suffocating."
"Our kilns may be polluting the air, those who know how it can be reduced should come and help us to find less harmful alternatives," he said, when told about the pollution the kilns were causing. "I have a family to feed and can't just stop what I'm doing," he added.
"The smoke I produce disappears in the air, I take the ash and throw it where the municipality requires me to," said Ali Karbalaye, who has been making Nans at Ansary for the last 23 years. He said he used 540 kilograms of wood a day.
Kabul Municipality officials said they had plans to move the kilns and other polluting establishments outside the city. The deputy Mayor Mohammad Faqir Bahram said the municipality was also considering looking for fuels that are less polluting. The shift to gas is one alternative but enforcing it needs strong political will, because it could create a major uproar among those who can't afford it.
Dr Amanullah Hossiany, director of the Environment Pollution Department at the Ministry of Health, says 80 per cent of diseases in Afghanistan are caused by the poor environmental conditions. "There has been no proper survey yet but majority of the patients suffer from lung-related diseases," added Dr Abdullah Farim, an advisor at the Ministry of Heath.
Mostafa Zahir, the head of NEPA, said his department now has a new strategy for tackling environmental pollution. This was a follow up to a draft of an environmental law that was approved by the president in November 2005. The law has 27 paragraphs describing many actions that need to be taken to clean up the environment. Zahir added implementing the plan would cost many times more than its annual budget of 32 million Afs or 620,000 US dollars.
One possibility that the agency will get the money is the high priority the president has attached to cleaning up the environment and strengthening the NEPA. The official presidential website (http://www.president.gov.af/english/np/environment.mspx) says: "Afghanistan's urban environment has also deteriorated badly and solid waste, air pollution, and other hazards threaten the health and productivity of the urban population."
It is now time for everyone down from the president to the common citizen to act to make the city habitable for eternity.
By CIJ workshop trainees
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Taliban kill one hostage, others safe
GHAZNI CITY, Jan 11 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Captors of the five abducted engineers Thursday said they had killed one of them after getting no response from the government regarding their demand.
Nasir Kakar, introducing himself as deputy commander of the militants in the southern Ghazni province, told Pajhwok Afghan News over the telephone, one of the engineers was killed last night.
Body of the slain had been dumped on the outskirts of the Andar district, he informed. The commander threatened to kill the remaining four engineers if the government failed to release their five members, jailed in Kabul.
The purported commander said they had talked to the government and relatives of the kidnapped engineers but did not get positive response about their demand.
Meanwhile, police officials in Ghazni said they did not know about the killing of the engineer. Provincial police chief Abdul Ghaffar Safi as well as police chief of Andar district Abdul Malik said they had received no information about the killing.
They said operation was on in Andar, the restive district where the engineers were kidnapped, and hoped they would soon recover the hostages and bring the culprits to book for their crime.
Contacted for comments about the demand made by the captors and the government response, Interior Ministry's spokesman Zmaray Bashari said they would never struck an underhand deal with the 'criminals'.
The five engineers were kidnapped in Andar district of Ghazni about a month back. They were on way from the southeastern Paktika province to Kabul. The hostages are employees of the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development (MRRD).
Two days back, Taliban spokesman Qari Yousaf Ahmadi had told this news agency that their leaders so far did not decide the fate of the kidnapped men.
Sher Ahmad Haidar/Hamim
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HELL FOR AFGHAN HOUNDS
SPECIAL ARMY DOGS SUFFER SHELL-SHOCK AT HANDS OF TALIBAN
By James Lyons In Afghanistan dailyrecord.co.uk 13 January 2007
TWO Army sniffer dogs have fallen victim to the Taliban and are shell-shocked.
Golden labrador Max was on patrol with his handler in the Afghan capital Kabul when a suicide bomber struck.
Luckily, the soldiers escaped serious injury, although the bomber was so close they were blown off their feet by the blast.
But Max has been suffering shellshock ever since.
The four-year-old dog is happy around British troops at the sprawling Camp Bastion desert base he currently calls home.
But he is now too frightened to work around local Afghans in traditional dress.
Handlers at the Muttley Lines kennels in Bastion have spent five months trying to rehabilitate him.
However, they are reluctantly pensioning off Max just halfway through his working life.
Sergeant Martin Evans, 39, who cares for dogs at Bastion, said potential owners had a lot to live up to as Max is being "spoilt rotten" by troops at the base.
He added: "Max is a big softy. He is good with children, he is very bouncy, friendly, gets on with other dogs and loves people."
Max is not the only canine casualty recovering at Bastion after serving on the frontline.
Blue, a German shepherd, is also suffering from shell-shock after being mortared while on patrol in the north of Helmand province.
All dogs serving in Afghanistan are taken out on practice ranges to get them used to being under fire.
But Blue had only experienced gunfire and small explosions.
One mortar landed just 30ft away while bullets hit the ground inches from his feet.
He curled into a ball, refusing to move, and troops had to help his handler carry him to safety.
Back at Bastion, Blue seemed his usual self until mortars were used on the range next to his kennel.
He immediately hid at the back of his cage and curled back up into a ball, cowering and shaking.
As a guard dog, trained to attack on command, he cannot be given a new home. So Blue will be sent home to guard bases in the UK.
Sgt Evans added: "He is suffering from what in the old days would have been called shell-shock.
"But Blue will still be able to work on a British base - where you are going to be very unlucky to be mortared."
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