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Karzai offers talks with Taliban to end bloodshed
Afghanistan's Karzai increasingly beset by problems
Heightened security in Afghanistan ahead of Ashura holy day
Insurgents killed in Afghanistan clashes
Former Afghan president's son-in-law shot dead; 5 Taliban killed in the south
Pakistan hands over 131 Afghanis to Afghan authorities
Afghanistan Workers Union demands insurance
‘Nothing more can be done for Afghanistan’
Pakistan faces a less-friendly US Congress
Taliban recruiters look to Pakistan
UN denounces Afghan MP assassination
Afghan elders speak of war, not peace
Circus comes to Afghan schoolchildren
Denmark announces $10m aid for Afghanistan
Afghan war takes a toll on Canada
Inside Afghanistan: The battle for Kajaki
Washington sending mobile taskforce for Afghanistan
Afghanistan's judge of last resort
Canadian troops ready for Taliban spring offensive, says defence minister
One year on, Helmand is a bloody failure
Afghan Embassy Opens Library
Putting a human face on Afghanistan fighting
Ariana hires new Boeing aircraft
Two high schools opened in Takhar
Elders attend pre-Peace Jirga gathering in Kandahar
More confessions from Dr Hanif
Suspect detained in MP's murder case
US praises Karzai's leadership
Afghanistan: NATO begins fund for civilian war victims
Karzai offers talks with Taliban to end bloodshed
By Sayed Salahuddin
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Monday offered peace talks with a resurgent Taliban after the bloodiest year since the hardline Islamists were ousted in 2001 and amid warnings of a violent spring offensive.
More than 4,000 people, including about 170 foreign soldiers, died in fighting last year, a year that saw a dramatic jump in suicide bombings as the Taliban and other militants copy tactics from insurgents in Iraq.
Karzai made the offer while speaking at a religious gathering in Kabul on one of the holiest days of the Shia Islamic calendar, but he did not specifically name the Taliban.
"While we are fighting for our honor, we still open the door for talks and negotiations with our enemy who is after our annihilation and is shedding our blood," he told the crowd at the main Shia religious compound in the capital.
Karzai also said he prayed for the "guidance" of those who plotted against Afghanistan, referring to neighboring Pakistan where the Taliban and their Islamic allies have sanctuaries.
Karzai two years ago offered amnesty to those Taliban he and others regard as moderate, but on Monday made no such distinction.
No senior Taliban commander or leader has surrendered or joined the government as part of past efforts to bring them into the mainstream and senior rebel leaders have ridiculed such calls as a sign of weakness.
The Taliban have vowed to drive out foreign troops and overthrow Karzai and his government.
The insurgents and their Islamic allies are mostly active in the southern and eastern areas bordering Pakistan. The Taliban, NATO and U.S. commanders say there will be bloody violence within months with the approach of spring as the snows thaw.
The U.S. government has pledged to pour in billions of extra dollars and more troops this year to crush the insurgency.
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Afghanistan's Karzai increasingly beset by problems
By Sayed Salahuddin
KABUL (Reuters) - Few people would envy Hamid Karzai. The Afghan president finds himself grappling with maintaining stability in the capital while fighting grows ever bloodier in the south. He must also satisfy the conflicting demands of his countrymen and his foreign allies.
At the same time, the beleaguered leader must deal with powerful neighbor Pakistan, with whom relations are often testy.
Asked recently if he would like Karzai's job, one key ally in Kabul replied bluntly: "No."
The reluctance stems not so much from loyalty as the slippery complexities of Afghan politics and the increasingly tough job confronting the head of one of the world's most dangerous states.
Five years after U.S.-led forces ousted the hardline Taliban government, Afghans complain Karzai and the West have failed to deliver on their promises of a better life, the Taliban are at their strongest and the fighting is at its worst.
More than 4,000 people -- a quarter of them civilians -- were killed last year and suicide bombings, once almost unheard of, have skyrocketed as insurgents copy tactics from Iraq.
Both the Taliban and the United States say the coming spring after the traditional winter lull in fighting will be bloody.
Karzai's Western allies want him to establish a moderate Islamic state and put in place Western-style democracy and freedom, but such efforts draw criticism from many at home.
TOO SOFT?
Critics say he is too soft and an appeaser but according to Habibullat Rafi, a writer and academic, Karzai cannot afford to upset either side.
"He has dealt with the problems too much through convenience and that is why he gets all the blame for whatever has gone wrong," says Rafi.
Many dismiss Karzai as "the mayor of Kabul" because his writ largely does not extend beyond the limits of the capital or the main cities.
Even in Kabul the president, who became a father for the first time at 49 this month, rarely moves outside the heavily fortified marbled palace.
Some also see a man who has spent most of his life outside Afghanistan as a sellout to his Pashtun tribe, the dominant ethnic group and the core of Taliban support in Afghanistan and among Pashtuns across the border in Pakistan.
Leaders from other ethnic groups who helped U.S.-led forces overthrow the Taliban often hold high positions in Karzai's government.
"Look at the government set-up -- all the key positions are run by non-Pashtuns," says 40-year-old hawker Raaz Mohammad.
But after decades of foreign intervention and civil war, Karzai must tread carefully to stop the country sliding back into ethnic confrontation, says Abdul Hamid Mubariz, a former deputy information minister and now an analyst.
Karzai's supporters point out he has little control over the more than 40,000 foreign soldiers and the way promised -- but poorly delivered -- aid and development money is spent.
Washington chose Karzai, the son of a powerful Pashtun clan chief, as interim leader after it ousted the Taliban in 2001 for failing to surrender Osama bin Laden over the September 11 attacks.
A soft-spoken man with a salt-and-pepper beard, he was confirmed as president in an open election in 2004, the first direct and democratic poll in Afghanistan's turbulent history.
A critical issue is closing the porous border with Pakistan, where the mainly Pashtun Taliban enjoy much local support. Karzai wants his allies to put more pressure on Islamabad to stop the Taliban and other militants operating on both sides of the border.
DRUGS BOOM
Pakistan says it already does as much as it can and rejects accusations from Kabul that it still supports the Taliban.
The president's efforts to coax Taliban leaders into talks and to disarm a myriad of tribal, political and other groups with the help of the United Nations have also sparked opposition from powerful warlords.
Efforts by Karzai, the United States and allies to combat the illegal opium trade have failed to stop production rocketing in the world's major producer -- up 60 percent last year.
Part of that money is fuelling the mounting insurgency, government ministers and foreign diplomats say.
Karzai is also under fire at home and abroad for not doing enough to tackle rampant graft.
But Afghan ministers are also bitterly critical of the failure of foreign countries to deliver promised aid, and of the sums of money that get lost along the way.
Karzai wept recently as he spoke of how much his people had suffered during almost three decades of fighting. But the Taliban accused him of shedding "crocodile tears," saying he could do more if he wanted to and urging him to eject foreign troops. "
"I know everybody blames him, but there are others to take responsibility too," Mubariz said.
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Heightened security in Afghanistan ahead of Ashura holy day
Mon Jan 29, 1:57 AM ET
HERAT, Afghanistan (AFP) - Security was tight in Afghanistan's cities, particularly in Herat, ahead of the Islamic sacred day of Ashura to prevent a repeat of clashes between Sunnis and Shiites that left six dead last year.
The capital Kabul also had extra police and soldiers on the streets on Sunday, on top of the already heavy security in place to prevent attacks by militants linked to the insurgent Islamic Taliban movement, police said.
In Herat, in the west of the country, patrols were stepped up, about 500 extra policemen were ready for deployment Monday and religious leaders were asked to control their followers, authorities said.
Banners that might inflame tensions had been pulled down after similar ones sparked last year's street battles, and public gatherings had been banned, they said.
Afghanistan was shocked last year when Herat's Shiites and Sunnis attacked each other with sticks and knives. Mosques were torched, shops gutted and vehicles set alight in the usually calm ancient city, the country's cultural beacon.
Unlike in neighbouring Pakistan and in Iraq, Afghanistan's Sunni majority and its Shiites -- about 15 percent of the population -- live in relative peace.
Tensions have been rising in Herat amid charges of a bias towards Shiites due in part to the city's proximity to Shiite Iran, which has a strong presence.
A committee of religious and security leaders has worked on easing sectarian tensions ahead of Ashura, Herat province police chief Mohammad Shafiq Fazli told AFP.
"The security alert will be on the highest level. No one will have the permission to make gatherings on the main roads and in crowded places," he said.
"Five hundred reserve police in Herat will be deployed," said the national interior ministry, which handles police matters.
Shiite men had been asked to perform the traditional and often bloody self-flagellation rites in closed environments, like mosques, said provincial governor Sayed Hussain Anwari.
Ashura, a public holiday in Afghanistan, is the final day of 10 days of mourning for the killing of the grandson of Prophet Mohammad in the year 680.
Sunnis mark it quietly but Shiites hold public displays of grief, including flaying their backs with whips and chains which sometimes have small blades attached to their ends.
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Insurgents killed in Afghanistan clashes
Mon Jan 29, 1:20 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - US-led and Afghan troops battled insurgents in three separate clashes in southern Afghanistan at the weekend, killing several of the rebels, the coalition said.
An Afghan soldier also died from injuries suffered during the fighting on Saturday in the southern province of Uruzgan, the US-led coalition said in a statement on Sunday.
In one clash, coalition and Afghan soldiers called in air support after being attacked near the town of Char Chino.
"The engagement resulted in the death of some insurgents and the capture of three others," the coalition said.
Coalition special operation forces clashed with insurgents in two separate engagements and again called for close air support.
"These engagements lasted more than six hours and resulted in more insurgent deaths," the statement said, without estimating how many of the fighters had been killed.
Near the eastern city of Khost meanwhile, Afghan and coalition troops arrested five people early Sunday "in connection with a known terrorist sub-commander and weapons transporter," a separate statement said.
Khost, near the Pakistan border, has in recent weeks seen a spike in suicide and other attacks blamed on Taliban militants. Some captured attackers have confessed to being recruited by religious figures in Pakistan.
There has been a winter lull in insurgency-linked violence, but US officials have warned they expected a strong Taliban push in the next few months, the so-called "spring offensive."
The coalition led the invasion that toppled the extremist Taliban from government in late 2001 and has been in the war-damaged country since then to hunt down Taliban fighters and their Al-Qaeda allies.
Its troop numbers have been whittled down to about 12,000 as it has handed over to a separate NATO-led International Security Assistance Force that has grown to number about 33,000 soldiers from 37 countries.
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Former Afghan president's son-in-law shot dead; 5 Taliban killed in the south
Sun Jan 28, 11:44 AM
KABUL (AP) - The son-in-law of a former Afghan president was shot dead in his home in the capital, officials said Sunday.
Gunmen broke into the Kabul home of a son-in-law of Burhnuddin Rabbani, Afghanistan's president in the 1990s, late Saturday, said Zemeri Bashary, the Interior Ministry's spokesman.
Wahidullah, who like many Afghans goes only by one name, was killed and one of his two wives wounded. The wounded wife was not Rabbani's daughter, Bashary said.
One suspect has been arrested, but a motive has not yet been established, he said.
In southern Uruzgan province, Afghan and coalition troops were involved in three separate battles with suspected Taliban, leaving an unspecified number of insurgents and one Afghan soldier dead, NATO's International Security Assistance Force said.
Regional Afghan army commander Gen. Rahmetullah Raufi, put the figure at five suspected Taliban fighters killed in Saturday's clashes.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said some of the suspected fighters were killed by air strikes and that no civilians were wounded or killed.
Meanwhile, coalition and Afghan forces arrested five people early Sunday near the eastern city of Khost "in connection with a known terrorist sub-commander and weapons transporter."
No shots were fired during the operation, officials said and no further details were available.
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Pakistan hands over 131 Afghanis to Afghan authorities
People's Daily - Jan 28 5:15 PM
Pakistan's law enforcement agencies on Sunday released 131 Afghanis and handed them over to Afghan government at Chaman point on Pakistani-Afghan border, the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) reported.
They were arrested from different areas of southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan, said the report, quoting a law enforcement official.
Cases had been registered against the Afghanis under Foreign Act and they have been released on completion of their sentences, the official said.
Pakistani authorities handed over 119 Afghan nationals to Afghan authorities on Jan. 16 and 93 Afghanis on Jan. 20 who had been arrested from various parts of Baluchistan for entering Pakistan without any legal travel documents, according to APP.
Source: Xinhua
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Afghanistan Workers Union demands insurance
People's Daily - Jan 28 4:44 PM
Afghanistan Workers Union on Sunday called upon government and parliament to ensure their rights in the country's constitution.
"We want to have enough salary, health insurance, life insurance, good pension and anything envisaged in the International Labor Law," Mohammad Qasim Ahsas said at a gathering attended by more than 100 worker representatives.
Objecting the current law on work and workers, Ahsas said that the current rule on working class is biased and prepared in the absence of labors representatives.
He also called on the Wolesi Jirga or the Lower House of Afghanistan parliament not to pass the bill without consulting the workers.
Ahsas put the number of his union's members at more than 200, 000 across the war-ravaged country saying representatives of three syndicates were attending today's gathering.
"With 200,000 members, the National Union of Afghanistan Workers is the biggest labors syndicate in Afghanistan," he told Xinhua.
Three more workers unions are also active in the country, he added but declined to give their names.
Afghanistan's constitution allows social and political groups to have activities in the post-Taliban nation.
Speaking at the conference, a former Planning Minister and lawmaker Mohammad Ramazan Bashardost backed the workers demand and urged them to stage peaceful procession until the government meets their demand.
Source: Xinhua
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‘Nothing more can be done for Afghanistan’
By Muhammad Asghar Dawn (Pakistan)
LAHORE, Jan 28: Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri has said that Pakistan cannot do more than what it is already doing to stop alleged infiltration of terrorists into Afghanistan.
“Pakistan is making all possible efforts for checking the entry of unauthorised persons into Afghanistan. It cannot do more than what it is doing right now," he said in reply to a question from the audience at a seminar here on Sunday.
The seminar on ‘Pakistan's Relations with the United States and India' was organised by the Pakistan Thinkers’ Forum.
In his address at the seminar, Mr Kasuri said the government did not have the mandate to agree to a solution to the Kashmir issue against the consent of the people of Pakistan and the Kashmiris.
He said that drafts of proposals on Kashmir were being exchanged between India and Pakistan. The proposals were so far known to only five or six people in Pakistan, he said, adding that the opposition would be the first to be informed whenever an agreement was reached.
He said the Kashmir issue would be resolved with consensus and no decision would be taken against national interests. The proposed agreement would be first discussed in the cabinet and then taken to parliament for a debate, he added.
The foreign minister said that the settlement of the Kashmir dispute was in the interest of both India and Pakistan. Talks on the issue would not have been held over the past three years if it had not been in the interest of both the countries, he added.
He said that Pakistan and India were not doing a favour to anyone by holding negotiations on Kashmir. They had fought three wars and kept their armies deployed on the Line of Control for 30 years, he said, adding that they had now reached a conclusion that talks were the only way to resolve the issue.
He said that the progress made in the talks in the recent past had not been achieved during the past 60 years.
Mr Kasuri said that Pakistan and the US formulated their policies according to their own interests. Pakistan was making maximum efforts to check unauthorised entry of people into Afghanistan, but the US was saying that it was not doing enough.
He said Pakistan took decisions in its own interests and not in accordance with the US viewpoint. It had opposed military action against Iran and Iraq and called for a negotiated settlement of the Palestine issue.
When asked if Pakistan could accept the US demand to hand over Dr AQ Khan, he said that no decision would be taken on the issue against national honour.
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Pakistan faces a less-friendly US Congress
A new bill underscores lawmakers' displeasure with a country that is a key Bush ally in the war on terrorism.
By David Montero Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN
Two deadly attacks and a high-profile visit from a US congresswoman over the weekend have drawn further attention to Pakistan's precarious position as both a steward of the US-led war on terrorism and host to a restive population of Islamic extremists.
Pakistan's delicate balancing act has also added to the widening gulf between a skeptical Democratic Congress and a White House that has relied on Pakistani government cooperation since 9/11.
On Friday, in a rare attack in the capital, a suicide bomber killed himself and one other person at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad. A day later, another suicide bomber killed 13 and wounded 60 in a suspected attack against Shiites in Peshawar, the provincial capital of the North West Frontier Province.
In response to Pakistan's mounting instability, the White House announced Saturday that it would seek an additional $10.6 billion in aid for Afghanistan over the next two years – a dramatic increase from the $14.2 billion given since 2001.
Meanwhile, new US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Islamabad Saturday. She signaled in her meetings that a change in tone toward Pakistan – from quiet disagreement to blunt accusation – is sweeping the Democratic-led Congress, analysts say. That is suggestive of an emerging rift over how the US should deal with one of its most trusted allies in the war on terror.
Washington's policy has become increasingly clouded even as violence in Islamabad's backyard has reached unprecedented levels. US officials say nearly 140 suicide attacks occurred Afghanistan in 2006, as compared with 27 in 2005, and blame the uptick in part on a controversial deal Islamabad signed with Taliban militants inside Pakistan.
Ms. Pelosi's trip – her first abroad as speaker of the House, with stops in Iraq and Afghanistan – comes just weeks after Congress passed one of its first and most controversial pieces of legislation: a bill stipulating sanctions on military aid if Pakistan cannot control militants in its borders.
Attacks like this past weekend's confirm those concerns expressed in Congress's new bill. In language unusual in its specificity and bluntness – and echoing the international community's – the legislation calls for President Bush to certify that "the Government of Pakistan is making all possible efforts to prevent the Taliban from operating in areas under its sovereign control, including in the cities of Quetta and Chaman and in the North West Frontier Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas."
The Bush administration said Friday it would oppose the bill before it becomes law, and reiterated its satisfaction with Islamabad's efforts. "The challenges of the last several months have demonstrated that we want to and we should redouble our efforts," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters while flying to Brussels for NATO sessions.
January's bill, officially called "Implementing the 9/11 Commission Recommendations Act of 2007" still has to pass the Senate. And Mr. Bush has ultimate authority to waive the provision on sanctions. But the bill's critique is one of the strongest in a growing cacophony linking Pakistan to Afghanistan's growing violence.
"The signal is a very strong one being sent by Congress, and the [US] president has to act," says Samina Ahmed, South Asia Project Director of the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank.
If enacted, the bill threatens to alter a relationship, which, although flagging on its rhetorical surface, has been well fortified by cash. Since 9/11, Pakistan has received $1.5 billion in direct security-related assistance, in addition to billions for counterterrorism efforts – about $66 million per month. All told, Pakistan received the lion's share of $6.65 billion appropriated to the Defense Department for coalition support payments to "Pakistan, Jordan, and other key cooperating nations" between 2002 and 2007, according to Congressional reports.
That funding is not likely to be cut, most observers agree. The stakes are too high, and the Bush administration, they add, is unwaveringly wedded to Pervez Musharraf's regime as the most effective ally in stopping terrorism in the region.
"The ultimate loser would be the United States if that money is withdrawn," says Ayesha Siddiqa, an expert on Pakistan's military in Islamabad.
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Taliban recruiters look to Pakistan
By RIAZ KHAN; and MATTHEW PENNINGTON
The Associated Press Monday, January 29, 2007 via The Seattle Times
Residents gather recently in a market in Shabqadar, Pakistan. After losing nearly 100 local Pakistanis to the conflict in Afghanistan, many are resisting Taliban recruiters in the area.
SHABQADAR, Pakistan -- Near Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, pride mixes with grief and anger over dozens of young men lost to a stepped-up recruiting drive for the Taliban.
Like the anti-Soviet rebels of the 1980s and the pre-Sept. 11 Taliban, the recruiters of today have turned to this cluster of about 25 ethnic Pashtun villages in search of volunteers.
The father of one dead enlistee says he feels honored, but with many of Shabqadar's young men dead or feared missing on the battlefield, mujahedeen recruiters are no longer welcome here.
A shopkeeper says 100 or more young men have gone missing, including his cousin, a 10th-grade student, who mysteriously left home during the summer vacation and is believed to have gone to fight.
People here are religious, and recruiters play on that sentiment, "recruiting the youth with raw minds," he said.
The shopkeeper, like many others interviewed, requested anonymity for his own safety.
Pressure from residents and the shooting and wounding of a local newspaperman who reported about the "martyrs" of Shabqadar compelled authorities in November to shut a local office of Harkat-ul-Mujahedeen, an outlawed Pakistani militant group. It had circulated jihadist literature and CDs and recruited mostly jobless young men to go to Afghanistan -- like their fathers who fought the Soviet occupation of that country two decades ago.
Taliban upsurge
Following the closure, recruiting has dried up, according to one former recruiter. But Samina Ahmed, an expert with the International Crisis Group think tank, warns that the upsurge in Taliban attacks on NATO forces is boosting the morale of sympathizers in Pakistani border areas and attracting recruits who are susceptible to militant propaganda and believe the Taliban can regain power.
About 4,000 people, mostly militants, have died in insurgency-related violence in Afghanistan over the past year, according to figures compiled by The Associated Press from Afghan, NATO and U.S. officials. Worse violence is expected this spring, and Pakistan, a key U.S. ally, is under international pressure to crack down on militants' sanctuaries here.
While most Taliban fighters are thought to be Pashtuns living in Afghanistan, the flow of volunteers from just one corner of Pakistan's own sprawling Pashtun heartland -- much of it ungoverned and under the sway of pro-Taliban tribesmen -- lends weight to Afghanistan's claim that many militants hail from across the border.
At least three young men from these villages became suicide bombers for Taliban-led insurgents last summer and fall, family and neighbors say in this rural community, about 20 miles from the frontier.
One was a religion student, another a jobless man, but a third, Aminullah, was a paramilitary policeman previously assigned to guard foreign embassies in Islamabad.
A green flag commemorating a "martyr" hangs over the brick house where Aminullah grew up. The pious 22-year-old abruptly gave up his job in the Frontier Constabulary last summer. It was only when a stranger handed his father a suicide note as he left his mosque that the family learned he had gone to fight jihad, or holy war.
"Infidels have invaded the Muslim country of Afghanistan, and it is our religious duty to support our mujahedeen brothers," his father, Janat Khan, recounted the note saying. Written in blue ink in Aminullah's handwriting, it said: "Do not mourn my death. It is my will to my brothers, cousins and other relatives to adopt the holy and best way of jihad."
Militants later told Khan that Aminullah blew himself up in a car-bomb attack on NATO forces in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan, in late July.
Khan, 62, a retired junior officer in the paramilitary police, says he has earned the respect of his fellow villagers and would be proud if his other three sons volunteered for jihad.
In Shabqadar, the former recruiter for Harkat-ul-Mujahedeen -- better known for sending Islamic militants to fight against Indian rule in divided Kashmir -- said his group would send jihad veterans to villages to raise money and recruit volunteers for the Afghanistan war.
The recruiter, a 25-year-old with a long beard and long curly black hair, said he once fought for the Taliban under the name Abu Hamza. He said recruits bound for Afghanistan trained about 200 miles southwest of Shabqadar in Waziristan, a Pakistani tribal region where pro-Taliban and al-Qaida militants are active.
He said they were promised a place in paradise if they died for the cause, but the stream of recruits from Shabqadar had dried up since the closure of the Harkat-ul-Mujahedeen office in November and the death of many senior Harkat members in the fighting. Abu Hamza now works in a local grocery.
A local officer, Zafar Khan, confirmed that police had shut down the office -- a two-room, single-story building near the main bazaar -- after residents alerted authorities to its presence. No one had been inside at the time, so no arrests were made, he said.
Still, youngsters interviewed in Shabqadar -- some from Afghan families exiled during the Soviet occupation -- said they were eager to fight.
"I will go for sure"
"The Americans are cruel to Muslims," said Fatullah, 17, a seminary student with a wispy beard and a white prayer cap. "If God gives me the chance, I will go for sure."
Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, a top Pakistani counterterrorism official, acknowledged that some Taliban militants were active on Pakistan's side of the border, but said it would be wrong to assume they were all going to Afghanistan. "Who knows where these people are going to strike?" he said, noting that Pakistan also suffers from suicide bombings.
Yet over the past year there have been increasing reports of funerals in Pakistani border villages of militants killed in fighting in Afghanistan, then repatriated for burial -- another sign of the flow of recruits across the border.
According to Shabqadar residents, dozens of fighters came to offer prayers for Bahar Ali, 25, an unemployed man who had vanished seven months before mounting a suicide bombing in southern Afghanistan in mid-October.
"Most of the people of the village feel honored with the act of Bahar Ali as one of bravery and a service to Islam," said neighbor Arshad Khan. "Others are worried about the future of their young and jobless sons."
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UN denounces Afghan MP assassination
www.chinaview.cn 2007-01-29 18:56:01
KABUL, Jan. 29 (Xinhua) -- The deputy of the special envoy of UN Secretary General to Afghanistan Chris Alexander has described the assassination of Afghan parliamentarian Mohammad Islam Mohammadi as an assault on democracy and denounced it, a statement released here Monday by UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said.
Mohammadi was gunned down on Friday near his house in Kabul while his guard was injured.
"The assassination of Mohammad Islam Mohammadi is a great loss for Afghanistan. It represents an assault on the democratic will of the people who voted in their millions for peace, stability and progress," the statement quoted Alexander as saying.
This attack, the statement said, underlines the risks faced by parliamentarians as they work to forge a new future for the people of Afghanistan.
In the statement, the UN official called on Afghan government to bring the perpetrators to justice while stressed for ensuring security of the legislators.
No group or individuals have claimed responsibility for Mohammadi's killing while police have taken one person on charge of involvement in the incidents so far.
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Afghan elders speak of war, not peace
Rhetoric reveals tough nature of mending fences with Pakistan, GRAEME SMITH reports
GRAEME SMITH Globe and Mail, Canada
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- Hundreds of tribal elders gathered in Kandahar on the weekend, summoned to a cavernous hall with flickering electricity for what the government hoped would be a major step toward peace in this volatile region.
The idea sounded simple enough when described by Afghan President Hamid Karzai five months ago as he dined with his Pakistani counterpart, General Pervez Musharraf. They invoked the traditional concept of a peace jirga -- a tribal assembly of elders that takes decisions by consensus -- suggesting a group of respected people from both sides of the border should sit down to discuss ways of ending Taliban attacks.
At the Kandahar peace jirga Saturday, in preparation for the larger cross-border assembly to come, shouting, fist-waving and bitter words revealed the huge difficulties theprocess faces.
Almost every public figure in Afghanistan believes Pakistan is fomenting the insurgency in their country. Despite the government staffers handing out glossy posters featuring white doves and symbols of cross-border friendship, the Kandahar peace jirga sounded, at times, like a council of war.
"If this peace jirga fails, all tribes must sit together, gather their soldiers and take an oath to fight against Pakistan," said Haji Fida Mohammed, an Achakzai tribal elder from the district of Spin Boldak near the border.
"We are the grandchildren of Ahmed Shah and Mirwais Khan," he continued, referring to two Afghan leaders who conquered neighbouring lands in the 1700s.
"We will fight with them. We never went anywhere to interfere with our neighbours' internal affairs -- but they interfere with us."
Mr. Mohammed's speech was met with thunderous applause.
The crowd, sitting on plush chairs and carpets, included nearly every important figure in Kandahar: The governor, the mayor, the police chief, religious leaders, provincial councillors, army officers, wealthy merchants, drug barons, and two brothers of President Karzai.
The elder brother, Qayum Karzai, tried to steer the meeting away from warmongering.
"We want to talk about peace, not to talk about the location of the Durand Line or other political discussions like this," Mr. Karzai said, referring to Afghanistan's border, drawn by the British more than a century ago, which has never been recognized by Kabul as the permanent eastern limit of the country.
"It's just about peace and solidarity," Mr. Karzai said. "Now the fighting has spread to many villages, and we are brothers killing brothers. With the help of this peace jirga, we can finish our problems."
The President's brother also drew applause, revealing a divide in the room: Government officials and the most senior tribal elders in the front rows showed less enthusiasm for the angry rhetoric, perhaps understanding the futility of it. Afghanistan has a fledgling army, equipped mostly with pickup trucks and Kalashnikov rifles; Pakistan is a nuclear power with F-16 fighter jets.
Afghanistan also depends heavily on foreign assistance, and the major donors -- notably the United States -- have been steering the country toward warmer relations with Pakistan, funding programs of military co-operation and intelligence sharing.
This weekend's meeting was one in a series held across the country by eight teams dispatched from Kabul. Besides informing elders about the jirga, the organizers are also launching a selection process in which each province will nominate 10 tribal elders to visit the capital and meet with their Pakistani counterparts. There, they will be joined by politicians, businessmen, teachers, workers with non-governmental organizations, religious leaders, human rights workers and others picked by the jirga organizers.
The procedure hasn't been finalized, officials say, because they don't know how many participants will be needed to match the size of the Pakistani delegation; the Afghans complain that Pakistan is moving too slowly.
"The peace jirga was requested, by our President, to open dialogue with the Pakistan side," Kandahar Governor Asadullah Khalid said. "But the Pakistan side still hasn't given us any good results."
He continued: "Pakistan wants to put land mines and razor wire on the border. But this won't stop terrorism or solve our problems. The Pakistan side wants to send terrorism to Afghanistan."
Qazi Zar Shah Momand, an adviser to the minister for parliamentary affairs, led the delegation of organizers from Kabul and vocally defended the process in front of the gathering of elders.
Afterward, however, he expressed cynicism about whether a dialogue will help. "Pakistan doesn't really want peace," he said. "But we're trying. If Pakistan doesn't want it, if they give us a cold welcome, then maybe the international community will help us. Maybe they will see that Pakistan does not want peace."
Some of the opinions aired at the meeting didn't help, Mr. Momand said, because the comments didn't give the impression the Afghans support the peace process any more than the Pakistanis.
One of those who spoke most passionately was Malim Akbar, the brother of slain Kandahar police chief Zabit Akrem Khakrezwal, who died in a bombing in 2005.
The idea of a peace jirga comes from the villagers' method of solving disputes, in which the guilty party sends a delegation to make amends, Mr. Akbar said. The tradition isn't being applied properly in this case, he said, because the Afghan elders have no quarrel with the tribal elders of Pakistan.
"But we do have a problem with the Pakistan government and the ISI," he said, referring to the Pakistani intelligence agency.
"So we should send our peace jirga people to the Pakistan government and the ISI, and ask why they are killing our brothers, and why they are sending terrorists to our country."
Developments
The son-in-law of a former Afghan leader Burhanuddin Rabbani, Afghanistan's president in the 1990s, was shot dead in his home in the capital, officials said yesterday. Wahidullah, who like many Afghans goes only by one name, was killed and one of his two wives wounded. The wounded wife was not Mr. Rabbani's daughter. One suspect has been arrested, but a motive has not yet been established.
In southern Uruzgan province, Afghan and coalition troops were involved in three separate battles with suspected Taliban, leaving an unspecified number of insurgents and one Afghan soldier dead. The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said some of the suspected fighters were killed by air strikes and that no civilians were wounded or killed.
U.S. House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi led a delegation of six other congressional Democrats to Afghanistan on the weekend, and heard from Afghan President Hamid Karzai that his security forces need to be stronger as the two discussed possible American troop increases. Mr. Karzai stressed his desire for increased training and equipment for Afghanistan's fledgling army and police forces. The two also discussed plans announced last week by the Bush administration to extend the tour of 3,200 soldiers and ask Congress for $10.6-billion (U.S.) for Afghanistan, a major increase aimed at rebuilding the country and strengthening government security forces still fighting the Taliban five years after the U.S.-led invasion.
ASSOCIATED PRESS, REUTERS
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Circus comes to Afghan schoolchildren
January 28, 2007
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- In a fantastical little school in Kabul, girls and boys leave behind their impoverished, war-torn world and enter a utopia where they laugh and sing, and learn how to juggle and ride unicycles.
More than 100 children mix regular schooling with art and acrobatics at the Mobile Mini Circus for Children, set up by a Danish performance artist to bring fun and color to the lives of youngsters more used to poverty and violence.
"Nothing negative should come here. We try to cut off the misery," said David Mason, 42, who moved to Kabul and founded the school in June 2002, just months after the fall of the Taliban. "The circus makes children enjoy life. It shocks them, moves them and makes them see how life can be."
The school's bright-colored buildings are a contrast to the drab, brown mudbrick of the Afghan capital, where menacing armored convoys travel the streets, and women and children often beg to survive.
Visitors with guns -- including foreign soldiers and Afghans with armed bodyguards -- are strictly forbidden, as are their donations. The circus school, which provides free classes, survives on money raised from its performances and donations from 15 countries.
Seventeen Afghan teachers give instruction in subjects like math, English and religion as well as theater, painting and circus tricks. There are about 120 permanent students, ages 4 to 13, but the number swells to 350 when state schools close for winter holiday.
One schoolroom -- a circular glass greenhouse -- is filled with a gaggle of girls, juggling tennis balls and bowling pins. In another room, boys stand on their hands and do acrobatic flips. Children sing to the accompaniment of teachers playing the harmonium and tabla drums.
Habeda, an 11-year-old girl, walks 3 miles from her home to attend the school with one of her three brothers. Although adult female performers still cause something of a stir in this conservative Islamic nation, she dreams of becoming a singer one day.
"I am learning music. I went to Germany, Denmark and Japan. I sang Afghan and Japanese songs there and everybody was clapping for me. I was very happy," she said. "I want to show to the world the real face of Afghanistan. We have songs, we have theater, we have circus and we have Afghan national dance."
Guest circus performers from France, Japan, Germany and the United States have held special workshops, and about 10 of the most talented students join the school's circus, which has performed for tens of thousands of people during two-month tours of Japan and Europe.
"When a 7-year-old boy is on stage, and 2,000 people are clapping for him, it gives him what war and misery cannot take away from him," Mason said.
In 2005, the school sent troupes of about a dozen boys and girls to spend two months in Germany and two months in Denmark, performing acrobatics, theater, music and Afghan national dance for children in schools and at cultural shows. Last year, a troupe toured Japan.
"I went to Japan and I performed acrobatics and theater for children," said Mohammed Ansar, 8. "There were 5,000 children looking at me. I was surprised and happy. I want to go to as many countries as I can and show them what I have learned."
Mohammed is learning acrobatics, acting and drawing.
"My father always tells me to learn more and more and be a good student of your school," he said. "I want to participate in circus and make other children happy by doing acrobatic activities and showing them good theater."
The school's teachers and children also put on circus shows and do educational theater around Afghanistan, teaching other kids about land-mine awareness, malaria prevention and even the importance of brushing their teeth.
Afghanistan has a long tradition of theatrical storytelling, but the circus is an imported art form, previously seen only in visiting troupes from Russia and Tajikistan.
The fun side of learning also is new for most children in Afghanistan, where schooling is often by rote and more than half the country's 12 million youngsters still don't attend school, according to the aid group Oxfam.
That's still a lot better than Taliban times when girls were forbidden from going to school at all, and children were banned from playing with marbles and kites. Even music was off limits.
Before coming to Kabul, Mason was traveling the world, teaching salsa and tango. After the Sept. 11 attacks led to a U.S. offensive against the Taliban for harboring Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida camps, he changed his mission to help the underprivileged children of Afghanistan.
"For us, medicine is jumping and laughter, and education is balancing and juggling," Mason said, smiling in his warm sunlit, bright yellow office.
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Denmark announces $10m aid for Afghanistan
Source: Frontier Post 28 Jan 2007
KABUL (PAN): The government of Denmark has announced an additional $10 million assistance to support the reconstruction and humanitarian relief activities in Afghanistan. A statement released from Danish embassy in Kabul on Saturday said the announcement was made by Danish Minister for Development Cooperation Ulla Toernaes during meeting of the NATO ministers in Brussels today. Quoting the Danish minister, the embassy statement said: "It is not sufficient to send more soldiers. We need to accelerate the development process or Afghanistan will never achieve stability." Denmark would assist the Afghan government in showing that democracy was better than Taliban, said the minister. The statement said Denmark assistance to Afghanistan was already amount to $29 million in 2007. It is mainly supporting the education sector, development in rural areas, human rights and public sector reforms. Besides the direct assistance, the statement said, Denmark was also supporting a number of Danish and local NGOs in their work in Afghanistan. Among other activities, the additional Danish aid would aim at strengthening Afghan children's access to education through building of more schools, training of teachers and printing of schoolbooks, said the statement.
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Afghan war takes a toll on Canada
By Laura King and Maggie Farley, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers January 29, 2007
MASUMGHAR, AFGHANISTAN — In the wind-scoured high desert that was once the heartland of the Taliban movement, the will and determination of a little-heralded American ally have been undergoing a harsh test.
For the last six months, the task of confronting insurgents in volatile Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan has largely fallen to Canada, whose troops have participated in myriad peacekeeping missions in recent years but had not seen high-intensity combat since the Korean War.
Although its nearly 3,000 troops account for less than 10% of the allied forces in Afghanistan, Canada absorbed nearly 20% of the coalition's combat deaths last year, losing 36 soldiers.
A Canadian diplomat also was killed, by a suicide bomber.
The disproportionate casualty count in a region that Taliban commanders have pledged to seize this spring has triggered debate at home about whether Canada is finding itself in a quagmire of American making.
The deployment is a strain for military families. Moreover, the Canadian mission points up the stresses and strains caused by unequal burden-sharing within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Already, alliance unity has been frayed by what commanders describe as an insufficient overall troop commitment and rules that sharply limit the combat capabilities of some participants.
"Would I be happy if there were more nations in the south? Yes," said Lt. Gen. Michel Gauthier, commander of Canada's expeditionary forces, who toured Canadian outposts in Afghanistan in mid-January.
"Would I be happy if there were fewer caveats?" he added, referring to rules that limited the combat missions of many NATO troops to emergency sorties to aid other alliance forces. "Yes."
A NATO meeting in Brussels on Friday brought a pledge from the U.S. for more troops and an additional $10 billion over two years, but only vague promises from other alliance members.
Canadian military officers in Afghanistan sidestep questions about the safer tasks given to French troops in the capital, Kabul, or to the German deployment in the relatively calm north.
They point instead to others in the line of fire: American troops' front-line engagement with insurgents in the east, the battles that British forces have waged to the west in Helmand province, or other contingents serving alongside Canadians in Kandahar, including Dutch troops.
Even so, Canadian forces who arrived in August were stunned by their initial encounter, a full-blown battle with thousands of insurgents.
Canadian troops took the lead in NATO's Operation Medusa, a September confrontation with Taliban fighters who had entrenched themselves in and around the Panjwayi district, southwest of the city of Kandahar.
"Everyone here has seen someone die," said Cpl. Luke Winnicki, a 26-year-old combat engineer in the Royal Canadian Regiment, gesturing toward dozens of troops in a drafty tent at Masumghar, a hillside outpost about 15 miles southwest of Kandahar.
All eyes on Afghanistan
In the U.S., the Afghan conflict receives far less attention than the larger war in Iraq. But in Canada, it gets top billing daily in newspapers and on TV.
And unlike in the U.S., the public is allowed to see soldiers' bodies returning home in flag-draped caskets.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, at the head of a coalition government, is vulnerable to political attack because of the Afghan mission.
Public support for it dropped to 35% at the end of 2006, one poll said.
In response, popular Foreign Minister Peter MacKay visited Afghanistan this month to reframe the government's message. He said Canada's mission was reconstruction, but it could not be completed without security.
After MacKay's visit, another poll said public support had rebounded to 58%.
One of the country's smaller opposition parties, the New Democratic Party, argues that Canada should focus on diplomacy and reconstruction, and it paints the Afghanistan mission as an attempt to curry favor in Washington.
"Mr. Harper, just like George Bush on Iraq, keeps saying that this war can be won, and that it is going well. It is not going well," party leader Jack Layton said in a speech at the University of Quebec last week. "The violence is escalating, opium production has skyrocketed. Most of our 25 NATO allies are refusing to send soldiers to join in the counterinsurgency mission in southern Afghanistan. And yet, Mr. Harper refuses to see what is happening."
Harper has maintained the backing of his party's main challenger, the Liberal Party, which started the Afghanistan mission in 2001.
"People see the necessity of the war but are not persuaded about the effectiveness," said Paul Heinbecker, a former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations who is director of the Center for Global Relations at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada.
He said there was a strong desire to see NATO allies share more of the perilous duty.
"We have stepped up and taken part in action while some of our NATO allies have been polishing their fingernails up in Kabul," Heinbecker said.
In a speech this month to troops preparing to deploy to Afghanistan, Defense Minister Gordon O'Connor pledged that Canada would commit more artillery and aircraft in 2007 but not more troops.
"We will support this mission until progress in Afghanistan becomes irreversible," O'Connor said.
The toll on military families
Military leaders are mindful that Canada's combat losses, though small compared with U.S. deaths in Iraq, loom large in a country with a population of 33 million.
That is particularly true in close-knit military communities such as those surrounding Canadian Forces Base Trenton, midway between Toronto and Ottawa.
Deborah Goulden, 38, whose husband is a military pilot who shuttles troops and supplies to and from Kandahar, knows little about what's going on in Afghanistan. She is on maternity leave with her 2-month-old baby, and also has a toddler. She said she couldn't bear to watch the news.
She doesn't know exactly what her husband, Mark, does or when he is coming home. In a videophone call this month, she was surprised to see him wearing a gun.
Goulden, a 16-year veteran, has been on peacekeeping missions in East Timor, the former Yugoslavia, Haiti and Somalia.
"I am respectful of what he does, and I don't think military people get enough recognition for what they do," Deborah Goulden said at a family center at the Trenton base. "He is there supporting Canadian society and building a very positive environment for a country that needs support. I'm proud that he is a part of that."
Mark Goulden, 38, interviewed at an airfield in Kandahar, described near-daily missions flying C-130 cargo planes to what he characterized as "austere locations."
"You get runways that look like roadways, gravel airstrips in the middle of nowhere, always the potential for enemy fire and mechanical failures," he said.
When he talks to his wife, he said, he tries to "edit it a little. You try not to be dramatic."
He insisted that his wife's task was harder.
Patti Leighton, 41, knows all too well what her husband, Rick, is doing in Kandahar as an engineer helping design schools and police stations.
She doesn't want to hear about the near-misses and gunfights. She already knows the dangers.
She is a military air traffic controller, and time after time this year she has helped guide the planes carrying soldiers' coffins to the Trenton base.
"There was one woman who was deployed over there at the same time as her husband. She had to come back on the plane with the body. She got off the plane and saw their kids waiting for both of them on the tarmac. That was the last one I watched," she said.
Leighton's 17-year-old daughter is tired of her father's absence; her 13-year-old son wants to be a soldier. She has been in the military for 22 years, but this year has been different.
She described standing at attention at a parade and her eyes welling up when she heard the national anthem.
"This year was the proudest year I've ever stood there, because we're over there. When I heard the music, I felt a moment of pure pride. When I heard it, I thought, 'Wow, that's for me. That's for us.' "
Rick Leighton, interviewed at his headquarters in Kandahar, said the hardest part was missing the day-to-day family events like his son's hockey games or the "butting heads" between his wife and daughter over schoolwork and curfews.
Leighton said with the reconstruction team based in the city of Kandahar, several miles from the main military base, he and his colleagues were closer to the bombings aimed at convoys.
He speaks to his family every morning, he said, but never tells them whether he will be traveling outside the headquarters, a journey that always takes place in a convoy of at least three armored vehicles with everyone in combat gear.
"Every time you hear the boom, it shakes you," he said. When the Internet and cellphones go dead moments afterward, "you know there's a communications blackout because someone's been killed."
At the sprawling Kandahar airfield, the Canadian military has managed to evoke some comforts of home. There's an open-air hockey rink and a Tim Hortons coffee and doughnut shop, something of a Canadian institution.
But the near-constant roar of aircraft and the occasional boom of rocket fire leaves little doubt this is a war zone.
On a bare hillside in Masumghar, troops settled in for another wind-lashed night. Powdery dust leaked in through tiny rips in the barracks tent.
"The thing is, you know that your family is in this fight too, and your country," said Winnicki, the combat engineer. "So you're not alone. But you feel responsible for them too."
laura.king@latimes.com
maggie.farley@latimes.com
King reported from Masumghar and Farley from Ottawa and Trenton, Canada.
*
(INFOBOX BELOW)
Canada's cost
More than four times as many Canadians were killed in Afghanistan last year as in the four previous years combined. Canadians, who make up less than 10% of the total forces, suffered about one-fifth of the deaths. Canada's troop toll in Afghanistan:
2002: 4
2003: 2
2004: 1
2005: 1
2006: 36
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Forces and casualties
How 2006 casualties compare in relation to force sizes for the nations with the most troops in Afghanistan:
| % of total | % of total | ||||
| Country | Force | force | Deaths | deaths | |
| United States | 11,800 | 35% | 98 | 51% | |
| Britain | 5,200 | 16 | 39 | 20 | |
| Germany | 3,000 | 9 | 0 | 0 | |
| Canada | 2,700 | 8 | 36 | 19 | |
| Netherlands | 2,200 | 7 | 4 | 2 |
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Note: Force numbers are broad contributions and do not reflect exact numbers on the ground at any time.
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Sources: North Atlantic Treaty Organization, icasualties.com
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Inside Afghanistan: The battle for Kajaki
The war in the open spaces of Afghanistan is very different from the one being waged by the Americans in the streets of Baghdad. But for British Royal Marines engaged in daily firefights with the Taliban, it is no less dangerous
By Kim Sengupta in Kajaki, Afghanistan The Independent (UK) 28 January 2007
Royal Marine Andy Mason, on Sparrow Hawk ridge, sighted his heat-seeking Javelin anti-tank missile and squeezed the trigger. Eight seconds later it smashed into the target, a large house from which Taliban insurgents were firing at British forces.
Half a dozen insurgent fighters jumped off the first-storey balcony just before it disintegrated. Others in the compound were trying to flee when air strikes were called in. A Tornado GR7 dropped a 1,000lb bomb, leaving the building a pile of rubble and billowing smoke.
This encounter took place on Friday night in Kajaki, one of the most ruggedly beautiful parts of Afghanistan, but also the most dangerous, with daily fighting between Royal Marines and insurgents. Just before our helicopter landed from Camp Bastion, the main British base in southern Afghanistan's troubled Helmand province, the Taliban had begun shooting at the British position, starting a firefight that went on into the night.
While violence has ebbed away at other flashpoints in northern Helmand such as Sangin and Now Zad, and a truce of sorts holds at Musa Qala, it has escalated at Kajaki. Flanked by mountains and a deep-water lake, the area has become a symbolic and logistical prize for both sides. At its heart is the Kajaki dam, the biggest United States aid project in Afghanistan, which, when fully operational, will supply power to the provinces of Helmand and Kandahar.
The US construction company Lewis Berger has refused to begin work until a 6km safety zone has been established around the dam. That is what the Marines of 42 Commando are creating, in attritional warfare across some of the country's most inhospitable terrain.
In one week, starting on New Year's Day, British forces said they had killed more than 120 Taliban. One Marine and one member of the Parachute Regiment have been killed, and around half a dozen injured.
"I could see the guys on the balcony in my sight when I fired the Javelin", said 27-year-old Marine Mason, from Harlow, Essex. "They had received fire from us and would have known what to expect. All they would have seen was a flash. They jumped off the balcony and the Javelin followed them down. These are awesome weapons, but it's a sobering thought that each time you fire them it is costing £65,000. We come in constant contact with them, but we have firepower they can't match."
From three vantage points - Sparrow Hawk, Athens and Normandy - the Marines attempt to control and then expand into the valleys. They live and fight from old Soviet positions where one still comes across the debris of a lost war - twisted artillery wreckage, spent shells and also personal items like spectacles and books, abandoned when Soviet forces left in a hurry. Down below, groups of men, suspected insurgents, can be seen moving along the narrow tracks and a deep wadi between walled compounds. British convoys leaving Kajaki come under frequent Taliban fire.
Resting on sandbags next to his heavy machinegun, Corporal Steve Machin, a 34-year-old from Rotherham with 15 years' service, said: "I have seen a bit of action. I took part in the Iraq war, and I have been back there. I have also spent a lot of time in Northern Ireland. But this is the scariest place I have been to. I have never had so many bullets whizzing past at such a rate. And this is constant. One of our busiest days was at Christmas - for some reason they opened up and just kept going."
Captain Anthony Forshaw, acting commander of M Company, 42 Commando, said: "We can track their communications, and we can also track down where they are by their firing positions. That is how we got the men in the balcony building. They have been well trained in military fashion - I don't really want to speculate by which country. We have watched them carry out patrols, and it is pretty professional. We have identified some of their commanders, and we know the ones we have killed."
It was not an easy mission, said the officer, but he was firm on one point: "I think we are winning."
As the British troops and Taliban fight it out, it is the Afghan civilians who are caught in the middle. Swathes of farmland around Kajaki are uncultivated because of the conflict.
Visiting the market at Lashkar Gah, farmer Shah Mohammed said: "We have gained nothing from this. The British bombed the place because the Taliban were there, and the Taliban drive us out of our homes. It is the poor who suffer.
"I have had friends killed and neighbours killed, and they are leaving behind their families. All we want is peace."
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Washington sending mobile taskforce for Afghanistan
* Force to arrive as NATO commander ends tenure
Daily Times Monitor Monday, January 29, 2007
LAHORE: The US is sending to Afghanistan a mobile taskforce that the outgoing British commander of Nato forces, General David Richards, has been pleading for throughout his nine-month tenure, writes Christina Lamb.
According to The Sunday Times newspaper, the so-called theatre taskforce, which arrives as Richards ends his command next Sunday, will be based partly at Kandahar airport and partly in the east as a rapid reaction unit that can mobilise when troops are in difficulties.
“It’s bittersweet,” said a senior British officer. “We’d been pleading for one all year and now an American general is taking command, they send one.”
Last week has seen a flurry of activity from Washington, which has decided to focus its energies on what is being referred to as a “winnable war” in contrast to Iraq.
Aside from the theatre taskforce, the newspaper reports, the Pentagon has instructed a brigade of 3,200 men from the 10th Mountain Division to stay on in Afghanistan. Their tour of duty was due to end next month.
AFP adds: US-led and Afghan troops battled insurgents in three separate clashes in southern Afghanistan at the weekend, killing several of the rebels, the coalition said Sunday.
An Afghan soldier also died from injuries suffered during the fighting on Saturday in the southern province of Uruzgan, the US-led coalition said in a statement. In one clash, coalition and Afghan soldiers called in air support after being attacked near the town of Char Chino.
“The engagement resulted in the death of some insurgents and the capture of three others,” the coalition said. Coalition special operation forces clashed with insurgents in two separate engagements and again called for close air support.
“These engagements lasted more than six hours and resulted in more insurgent deaths,” the statement said, without estimating how many of the fighters had been killed.
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Afghanistan's judge of last resort
By Kim Barker Chicago Tribune January 28, 2007 – 6:30 PM KABUL, AFGHANISTAN
The men had no lawyers and old, ripped legal documents. But they hoped that the new chief justice of Afghanistan's Supreme Court, Abdul Salam Azimi, could somehow help them against more influential opponents.
"Are they powerful? And are they related to you?" Azimi asked one man, who was fighting to hold onto the land he inherited from his father.
Azimi, 70, now heads the court of last resort in a country where the justice system has long been broken. He listens to cases patiently, occasionally telling a more talkative judge to be quiet. He sends every petitioner away with some advice.
In a war-torn country where hope has almost disappeared, Azimi has emerged as an unlikely and reluctant hero. Mild-mannered and publicity-shy, Azimi does not have the powers enjoyed by U.S. Supreme Court justices. But more than anyone in Afghanistan, he can set the tone for the entire legal system and how average Afghans view it.
The problems are huge: The corrupt system relies on Islamic clerics instead of legal scholars, and fewer than half of the country's 1,500 judges graduated from college. Some are illiterate.
But since being sworn into office in August, Azimi has launched a quiet revolution, firing or jailing eight corrupt judges and four court clerks so far.
He also set up a system of standards and accountability. Provincial judges are now required monthly to submit reports on their cases. Supreme Court justices travel to the provinces to review cases. Azimi has led the review of 6,000 cases that had been left to rot. He has tried to help reform the law schools and set up a one-year program to teach recent graduates about becoming judges.
"He's the only hope I have in the system," said Saad Mohseni, who runs the country's most popular TV station, which ran afoul of the previous chief justice. "Azimi has vision. He knows what he wants for Afghanistan. He understands that things cannot remain the same."
A former university professor educated in the United States, Azimi once advised Afghan President Hamid Karzai on legal issues and helped write the constitution, which established Islamic law as the country's ultimate legal principle.
Azimi is a contrast from his predecessor, Fazil Hadi Shinwari, an Islamic cleric with no higher education who ran the Supreme Court for four years. He once told National Public Radio that those who did not obey Islamic law should be beheaded. He told the Christian Science Monitor that women could not be Supreme Court judges because they menstruate.
In May, Karzai renominated Shinwari, but the parliament rejected him. Karzai then nominated Azimi, who won confirmation easily.
"There is no doubt there is a difference between Azimi and Shinwari," said Judge Atiqullah Raoufi, chief secretary of the Supreme Court. "Now every petitioner is allowed to speak. In the past, two or three words would come out of a person's mouth, and he was stopped and told, 'OK, we get it.' "
The inept judiciary has long been considered a major hurdle to progress in Afghanistan. In a report last year, the International Crisis Group, a conflict-resolution think tank, called the lack of judicial reform one of the major failures since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001.
Corruption has wormed its way into almost every facet of life, and the court system -- with small salaries for judges -- has been one of the worst offenders.
"It's a tragedy," Azimi said.
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Canadian troops ready for Taliban spring offensive, says defence minister
The Canadian Press Sunday, January 28, 2007
OTTAWA -- As more Canadian soldiers prepare to leave for Afghanistan, Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor says the forces are ready for any new offensive launched by the Taliban.
“Traditionally the Taliban who are based in Pakistan come over the mountains in the spring and do their various insurgency activities,” O’Connor said Sunday on CTV’s Question Period.
“We can’t predict whether it’s going to be a large offensive or a small offensive this year (but) we’re well prepared to receive them.”
O’Connor welcomed news that at least one of a potential three extra battalions the United States plans to deploy to Afghanistan will be baased in Kandahar, a move that will likely take some pressure off Canadian troops in the region.
The minister said he discussed the Afghan situation last week at a meeting in Washington with Robert Gates, the new U.S. defence secretary.
They also talked about issues related to NORAD, the joint North American air defence command, but O’Connor offered no details.
“It was just an initial meeting, just to say hello to him,” he said.
About 120 more soldiers from CFB Gagetown in New Brunswick are to leave for Afghanistan on Monday, following a similar number of colleagues who departed Friday night.
Close to 1,200 soldiers from Gagetown will be part of the 2,500-strong current Canadian troop rotation.
Their tour of duty is expected to last six months.
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One year on, Helmand is a bloody failure
By Kim Sengupta in Lashkar Gar, Helmand The Independent (UK) 27 January 2007
The explosion tore the suicide bomber apart and set alight parked cars. The guard who had shot him was seriously injured as were some Afghans on their way to the mosque for Friday prayers. Terrified women clutching their children fled as ambulances and police cars arrived.
The attack was in the centre of Lashkar Gar, near the office of the governor, which we had passed in a convoy with British diplomats just minutes previously. The target this time, however, was neither government officials nor foreigners, but the offices of an aid agency.
The attack is ominous for British policy in Helmand. A year ago this month John Reid, then the defence secretary, announced the deployment of 5,000 British troops to Helmand. The three-year mission would hopefully end, he said, without a shot being fired in anger.
Now, after more than half a million rounds fired and dozens killed in some of the fiercest fighting that British forces have engaged in since Korea in 1950-53, intense efforts are under way to kick start reconstruction, which had been badly hampered because aid agencies had deemed Helmand too dangerous to operate in.
There are fears that the attempted bombing of one of the few agencies which had returned to the province would again keep humanitarian organisations away from Helmand and set back the process of winning loyalty and support, which British officials acknowledge is imperative, after months of fighting the Taliban. Although hundreds of insurgents were killed, there were also civilian casualties.
The British mission, the "Third Afghan War" according to many, is entering its most critical phase. A winter lull has followed a summer and autumn of conflict. But no one doubts that the Taliban will launch an offensive once the snow on the mountain passes melts. To add to the problems, Mohammed Daoud, Helmand's governor and Britain's main ally there, was sacked by the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, at the end of last year.
Instead of drawing down the numbers in Afghanistan, UK forces here are likely to be reinforced. At the same time there is a growing possibility that the US "surge" in Baghdad will make it impractical to go through with the envisaged British withdrawal of 3,000 troops from Iraq.
But there appears to be hope for Afghanistan among the British military and diplomats. With that, however, is an acknowledgement that mistakes had been made in the past.
Yesterday was Nick Kay's last day as the UK regional co-ordinator for Helmand, a job encompassing reconstruction, as well dealing with the problem of opium production. He said: "It has been a lot more intense and more challenging than anything that can have been captured in the planning process.But ... we know we have to win over the Afghan population." He added that, despite the violence in Helmand, the security situation in Lashkar Gar was not as bad as that in Iraq.
But Amir Mohammed, 65, a farmer, said: "We have had nothing but fighting since the British came. A lot of people have been killed by them. The Taliban are back all over Helmand. They are in Musa Qala, Nawzad, Sangin and Garamsir. There is no security. At least there was security under the Taliban. Also they are now talking about destroying our poppy fields. How will we eat?"
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Afghan Embassy Opens Library
By Yoon Won-sup Korea Times (South Korea) January 28, 2007
The Afghanistan Embassy in Seoul established a library at its building last Monday with the help of two Korean construction companies.
Construction companies, Samwhan and Krima, supported the establishment of the library. They are working on the construction of public roads in Afghanistan.
The library, which is open to the public for free, offers over 100 books mainly on Afghanistan politics, economics, society and culture.
``Our goal of opening this library is to inform and even to send books about Afghanistan to Korean departments, cultural centers and universities as well as send books about Korea to Afghanistan libraries and universities to enrich their knowledge about both our friendly nations,’’ said Naqibullah Hafizi, charge d’affaires of the embassy.
On hand at the opening were Sohrab Ali Saffari, Afghanistan’s minister of public works, Huh Kyu-chil, president of Krima; Hur Jung, president of Samwhan and the embassy officials.
The minister joined the opening as he was on a five-day visit to South Korea. The Korean Ministry of Transportation and Construction invited him.
During his stay Saffari visited the Korea Highway Corporation, the Transportation Information Center, and the Korea Transport Institute. He showed great interest in getting more of Korea’s help for the reconstruction of his country.
The minister also went to a construction site on the Pusan-Ulsan highway, which is being built by Samwhan. He left Korea last Thursday.
``Samwhan is busy with road construction to finish a ring-road in the northern part of our country and Kirma has begun with its projects in Tarin Khowat, Shahidan and Mazar-e-Sharif,’’ Hafizi said. ``We are confident and our minister has surely witnessed that results of their projects are satisfactory.’’
Afghan diplomats said Korea’s participation in Afghanistan’s reconstruction will pave the way for better relations between the two countries. Korea, which successfully overcame war devastation from the 1950-53 Korean War, could give lots of help to the war-torn Afghanistan, they added.
``As we know, there are many companies in Korea, which specialize in roads, tunnels, bridges and railway construction,’’ Hafizi continued. ``Additionally the Korean companies, with the same experience of war and destruction, can actively participate in rebuilding our economy.’’
The Korea Foundation also contributed to the establishment of the library by sending books about Korean politics, culture and economics.
For more information about the library, call the embassy at (02) 793-3535.
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Putting a human face on Afghanistan fighting
By PAT MUIR YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC
The National Guard sent Ken Zontek to Afghanistan to "win hearts and minds" of Afghans, but somewhere in the process a group of Afghan women won his.
Serving as a liaison between U.S. and NATO headquarters in Kabul, the Yakima Valley Community College history professor's job was to coordinate information between the two commands. Another part of the job, the "hearts and minds" part, had him distributing supplies to schools and clinics.
But the part he talks about most, the part that's stayed with him since his year-long mission ended in April, is the work he ended up doing at a shelter for women who fled brutal family violence.
"A lot of them were wanted, like, hunted," Zontek said. "A lot of them had prices on their heads."
At the shelter, the name of which he insisted not be published for security reasons, the women found hope. And in their stories he found a way -- a tangible, measurable way -- to help people.
Zontek will talk about his experiences at the shelter and about his thoughts on Afghanistan on Tuesday in Grandview. His presentation, "Beyond Bombs and Burqas: Insights from a Year in Kabul, Afghanistan," will feature pictures as well as stories from his time there.
The shelter, which served about 30 women at a time with an eye toward finding them stable homes to move into, had its share of failures along with its successes.
"I remember these two girls I call the Taliban Girls," Zontek said. "They had been practically enslaved by (people affiliated with) the Taliban for seven years."
The Taliban Girls were raped and abused by the men they lived with after their half-brother sold them into servitude, he said. They escaped to the shelter with help from Afghanistan's relatively new Ministry of Women's Affairs. They were 13 and 15 years old when Zontek met them at the shelter.
"They were very nice kids, but by a freak accident their family found out that the Ministry of Women's Affairs knew where they were," he said.
Confronted by their father and knowing they couldn't stay at the shelter forever, the girls returned to their previous lives, he said.
"They were not a success story," Zontek said.
But 8-year-old Khalida is another matter. Through her "phenomenal resilience," she has used the shelter to earn a scholarship for private school for the next 10 years, he said.
Khalida may be a candidate to come to the United States to study under a program Zontek plans to start that would provide such opportunities for Afghan students. That program is only one way he has continued to work for the shelter since his return, he said.
Zontek brought Afghan scarves back with him and has sold them at his lectures, sending the proceeds back to the shelter.
"But I'm almost out of scarves," he said.
He knows, viewed from a global perspective, such an effort is just a drop in the bucket. He knows he isn't going to end war in the Middle East or "save the world."
"But this is something I saw," he said. "And I can make a measurable difference."
* Pat Muir can be reached at 837-6111 or pmuir@yakimaherald.com.
If you go ...
WHAT: Ken Zontek's lecture, "Beyond Bombs and Burqas: Insights from a Year in Kabul, Afghanistan"
WHEN: 6 p.m. Tuesday
WHERE: Grandview Senior Center, 402 Second St.
ADMISSION: free
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Ariana hires new Boeing aircraft
KABUL, Jan 27 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The state-owned Afghan Ariana Airlines added a new aircraft to its existing fleet to provide better traveling facilities to passengers.
The new 757 Boeing aircraft was hired by the company for two years, said engineer Abdul Ahad Mansoori, head of the state-owned company on Saturday.
Speaking at a news conference, Mansoori said the new aircraft would carry passengers to European countries and Saudi Arabia.
Mansoori said the newly hired aircraft would start flights to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Saturday afternoon and to Frankfurt, Germany, in the coming two days.
The new aircraft was hired three months after the European countries and Saudi Arabia disallowed Ariana from their airports. Mansoori hoped those countries would remove the ban after the inclusion of the new aircraft in Ariana fleet.
In the next three months, Ariana would be able to resume flights to France, London and other European countries, said Mansoori, who added only Germany was willing to allow Ariana to land on its airports at the moment.
Mustafa Basharat
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Two high schools opened in Takhar
TALUQAN, Jan 27 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Two high schools were formally inaugurated in the Farkhar district of the northern Takhar province on Saturday.
The schools, one each for girls and boys, have been completed at the cost of $310,000 provided by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Mir Abdul Rahman, director of the education department, told Pajhwok Afghan News each school had 12 classrooms. The construction work was completed in two years, he added. Only 10 of the 23 schools in Farkhar district have buildings.
Mir Abdul Rahman said the students, in area where the two schools were built, were studying under trees or in tents so far.
Eighteen-year-old Abdul Wadood, student of 11th class at the newly-constructed Samim Shaheed Boys School said: "We used to study in the open in scorching heat and chilly weather." He said he was happy to study under a roof and sit on benches.
Situated in the northern zone of the country, there are 300 schools in Takhar for about 320,000 (male and female) students.
Abdul Matin Sarfaraz
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Elders attend pre-Peace Jirga gathering in Kandahar
KANDAHAR CITY, Jan 27 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Hundreds of people in this southern city attended a gathering organised to inform and create awareness among them about the upcoming Joint Peace Jirga.
The meeting, held in the Mandigak Palace on Saturday, was attended by government officials, tribal elders and members of the delegation from the central capital Kabul.
Speaking on the occasion, head of the delegation Hazrat Shah Momand highlighted the importance of Jirga in the social life of Afghans.
He said they wanted to solve the problems faced by the country for the previous three decades by holding the Peace Jirga.
Representing the people of Kandahar, Abdul Qayum Karzai said that the Jirga would only focus on peace in the region and would not discuss the Durand Line. He also recalled the killing of people and burning of schools and said the Jirga would search a solution to those problems.
Addressing the gathering, Kandahar Governor Asadullah Khalid said the government of Pakistan was not sincere in organising the Jirga. "Pakistan believes the holding of the Jirga will harm it," said the governor.
The central government has started sending delegations into eight zones across the country to create awareness among the people. The programme was started on Thursday and meetings had been held in Herat, Kunduz, Paktia and Nangarhar provinces so far.
Saeed Zabuli
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More confessions from Dr Hanif
KABUL, Jan 27 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Former Taliban spokesman Dr Mohammad Hanif has confessed that son of former Jihadi leader Maulvi Khalis was involved in most of terrorist activities.
According to national security authority, Dr Hanif has admitted that Anwarul Haq, son of Maulvi Khalis, former leader of Hezb-i-Islami was even involved in blast in his father mourning procession in Haddi Sahib Mosque. Press officer at the intelligence department quoted Dr Hanif as saying Anwarul Haq was involved in suicide attacks on Jalalabad Torkham Highway, blast in Khogiani district which killed district police chief. However, Dr Hanif would not disclose where Anwarul Haq was hiding at the moment. Dr Hanif, whose real name is Abdul Haq Haqiq, former Taliban spokesman was arrested by security forces in Hisar Shahi district of the eastern Nangarhar province on January 7 when he was crossing from Pakistan into Afghanistan.
Ahmad Khalid Moahid
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Suspect detained in MP's murder case
KABUL, Jan 27 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Police said they had arrested a man allegedly involved in the killing of Maulvi Mohammad Islam Mohammadi, member of the Wolesi Jirga or lower house of parliament from the northern province of Samangan.
Mohammdi was shot dead by unidentified criminals Friday afternoon in the Kart-i-Parawan area of this capital city. He was on way to a nearby mosque for Friday congregational prayer when attacked.
General Alishah Paktiawal, crime branch chief of the Kabul police headquarters, told Pajhwok Afghan News police arrested a suspect with two Kalashnikovs the same day. Without disclosing identity of the detainee, Paktiawal said they were interrogating him for any links with MPs' killing.
Interior Ministry spokesman Zmaray Bashari told this news agency the MP was gunned down by a man disguised as mason. Mohammadi and his colleague wounded and were rushed to hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries. The 60-year-old MP will be laid to rest in the Qishqa area of his native district of Roi-do-Aab today (Saturday).
President Hamid Karzai, the Wolesi Jirga, MPs from Samangan and governor of Samangan province condemned Mohammadi's assassination and termed his death a great loss for the country.
President Hamid Karzai expressed grief over the cowardly act and directed the law-enforcement agencies to bring the culprits to book. The Wolesi Jirga, in its statement, paid tribute to the deceased and said he had devoted his life to the service of the people and the country.
Maulvi Mohammad Islam Mohammadi was the provincial chief of the Harakat-i-Islami party of late Maulvi Mohammad Nabi Mohammadi. He had joined Taliban during their regime and served as governor of the central Bamyan province.
Mohammad Barat/Lailuma Sadid
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US praises Karzai's leadership
NEW YORK, Jan 27 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Praising President Hamid Karzai for successfully handling 'one of the most difficult jobs in the world', a top Bush administration official said he was a symbol of Afghan national unity.
"He's been a symbol and a figure of real unity for the country and so we work with him in a very - we respect him and work with him in a productive way," said US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns.
Speaking at a news conference in Washington on Friday, Burns said: "We're not disappointed with President Karzai. He is a friend, he is a partner, we have great admiration for him."
Mr Burn was responding to a query about the decision of Karzai government not to go in for aerial spraying of poppy cultivated areas in Afghanistan.
As a sovereign government, Burns said, President Karzai and his ministers would make the decisions as to how these counter-narcotics programs were to be carried out.
"And one of the issues of course, is whether or not the Afghan authorities and their international counterparts will engage in ground-based spraying or aerial eradication of the poppy and that is we're having an ongoing discussion with the Afghan government on that issue," he said.
Burns said the US government had a great deal of trust in President Karzai and in his ministers. "Like any government, they have growing pains. But look, they've come from really a very, very difficult start in 2001 and 2002. They've gone through elections. They have slowly expanded the control of the central government into the major provincial cities. And so we can see progress, but there's a lot more that needs to be done," Burns said.
Lalith K. Jha
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Afghanistan: NATO begins fund for civilian war victims
By Ron Synovitz
January 26, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Millions of dollars in cash and relief aid have been given by the U.S. government in recent years as compensation to relatives of civilians accidentally killed by U.S. military strikes in Iraq and Afghanistan. But since NATO took command of operations in Afghanistan last October, far less compensation has been given for innocent civilians killed in combat-weary provinces like Helmand and Kandahar.
British forces recently called for air strikes at a village in the Garmser district of Afghanistan's Helmand's Province when they discovered Taliban fighters were sheltering there.
An RFE/RL correspondent who visited the village in mid-January found a man in shock after the battle.
Field research in Afghanistan's more isolated battlefields is essential to ensure that compensation schemes are not delayed by disagreement over whether those killed were Taliban fighters or unarmed civilians.
Collateral Damage
"We lost six people in my family," he said. "They killed three cows, destroyed two houses and my car. This is a village and they are bombing the village -- even mosques and people's houses."
Other villagers in the district say they have yet to see compensation or promised reconstruction aid. Their complaints are taking on a political tone, with residents openly wondering whether life was better for them under the Taliban.
"I lost eight members of my family," said another. "[NATO forces] didn't come for reconstruction. If [Hamid] Karzai is president, how can we be in this miserable situation?"
Brigadier Richard Nugee, NATO's chief spokesman in Afghanistan, admits that the death of innocent civilians is hurting efforts by the alliance to win the support of the local population in provinces like Helmand and Kandahar.
"I believe the single thing that [NATO's ISAF has] done wrong [in 2006] -- and we are striving extremely hard to improve on next year -- is [accidentally] killing innocent civilians," he said.
Those remarks have been welcomed by nongovernmental organizations like Human Rights Watch and the U.S.-based Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC).
Mechanism Needed
But CIVIC Executive Director Sarah Holewinski says NATO needs to create a simple compensation process for civilians in Afghanistan.
"In Iraq and in Afghanistan millions of dollars are given [by the U.S. government] to help rebuild communities," he said. "And the U.S. military has a compensation mechanism -- which means as soon as your house is bombed or you lose a family member, you can file a claim with the U.S. military. And that gets you a symbolic gesture of dignifying that loss. Now that NATO has taken over in Afghanistan, NATO doesn't have these mechanisms."
Major Dominic Whyte, a spokesman for the NATO-led ISAF, tells RFE/RL that the alliance is trying to change that. Though Whyte admits that compensation paid out so far through a new NATO scheme has been a pittance compared to the millions of dollars disbursed by Washington.
"NATO has moved forward on this issue of providing relief to those caught up in NATO operations," he said. "And indeed, before Christmas, NATO established a humanitarian relief fund which has already had different NATO members contributing money. Upwards of $65,000 was paid out to help relief efforts. It is also a national responsibility -- and individual nations within the NATO mission have different procedures and different approaches."
But Holewinski says a patchwork of different compensation schemes run by individual NATO countries is a mistake.
"What we don't want to see is each country taking it upon themselves to compensate and aid civilians," he said. "[If that happened] you're going to have it done differently all across the country. Some families [would] get more than others. Some families [would not] get anything at all, depending on where they are located. What we need is one unified program. That means collective funding and uniform guidelines to make sure that everyone who is harmed gets the help that they need. What we're asking for is a NATO trust fund. Each country can put in something like [$500,000 or $1 million]. And that is going to go a long way toward making sure that people who are harmed get the help they need."
New Process Starting?
To be sure, Major Whyte notes that compensation and reconstruction aid has been flowing more quickly into Kandahar's Panjwai district -- the scene of intense combat and repeated NATO air strikes during 2006 -- than funds for neighboring Helmand Province.
"More recently, $1 million of aid has actually been injected into the Panjwai district as ISAF forces have moved through there as part of Operation Falcon Summit," he said. "An important part of the operation was to ensure that as the ISAF troops moved through, that reconstruction, redevelopment, and humanitarian assistance materials were part and parcel of the whole operation itself."
That has allowed Kandahar Province Governor Assadullah Khaled to promise reconstruction funds to hundreds of displaced Afghans who have been returning to what is left of their homes in the Panjwai district in recent weeks.
"The farms which were destroyed by bombardment or by ground forces will be compensated," he said. "We will also pay compensation for trees that have been destroyed and other things."
The disbursement of funds to the Panjwai district has been quicker than in other parts of southern Afghanistan because of an Afghan government investigation into fighting there. NATO says it killed at least 500 suspected Taliban fighters there during last year's Operation Medusa. But the Kabul investigators reported that dozens of the dead were innocent civilians.
Such field research in Afghanistan's more isolated battlefields is essential to ensure that compensation schemes are not delayed by disagreement over whether those killed were Taliban fighters or unarmed civilians.
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