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Two Afghan children, two women killed in blast
Canadian FM assures Afghan president of support
MacKay visits Kabul, Kandahar; sees progress in mission to rebuild Afghanistan
Trouble means you can make lots of money, fast
Taliban Resume Their Attacks in Afghanistan
Militants gun down school administrator in Afghanistan
Why troops face tough battle to beat the Afghan drug trade
'Evil mix' of Taliban, drug lords funding Afghan insurgency: Canadian officer
22 to a cell - life in a notorious Afghan prison
Pakistan has gone the 'extra mile' in Afghanistan
Afghanistan: Border Dispute Takes Toll On Security
UK troops 'destroy' Taleban camp
Starving Afghans sell girls of eight as brides
Pakistan temporarily shelves border fencing plan: Report
Rickshaws drivers observe strike in Herat
Weapons cache recovered in Baghlan
Former police chief observes hunger strike
Truck set on fire after accident
Kabul parks to be reconstructed
Taliban leader's powerful vanishing act
Two Afghan children, two women killed in blast
Sun Jan 7, 3:24 AM ET
KHOST, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A remote-control roadside bomb killed two Afghan children and two women traveling in a vehicle near the border with Pakistan on Sunday, police said.
Police blamed militants fighting the government for the attack on the family in the eastern province of Khost.
"This was the work of Taliban and al Qaeda. They're trying to destabilize the security situation," said police officer Wazir Mohammad.
Two men in the vehicle were wounded, he said.
Last year was the bloodiest the country has seen since the Taliban were ousted in 2001. Violence has eased in recent weeks because of winter but intermittent attacks still occur in the south and east.
A NATO soldier was wounded in a blast in the southern province of Kandahar on Saturday. The previous day, five NATO soldiers were wounded in a suicide car-bomb attack on a NATO outpost in the southeastern province of Paktika, the force said.
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Canadian FM assures Afghan president of support
Sun Jan 7, 2:35 PM E
KABUL (AFP) - Canada's foreign minister met President Hamid Karzai on a short visit to pledge support for insurgency-battered Afghanistan, where 2,500 Canadian troops are helping to fight the Taliban.
Foreign Minister Peter MacKay said before the meeting he would also raise Pakistan's plans to mine and fence part of its border with Afghanistan to block routes used by militants operating across the frontier.
Karzai and the United Nations have spoken out strongly against the plan, but Pakistan has not stepped down.
MacKay was due Monday to meet Canadian troops serving with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in the southern province of Kandahar -- the birthplace of the Taliban -- before returning home.
Forty-four Canadian soldiers have lost their lives in Afghanistan since 2002, the year after the Taliban were driven from power.
Around 190 foreign soldiers involved in the Afghanistan operation were killed last year, the bloodiest in the Taliban insurgency.
Around 4,000 lives were lost over the year, with rebels accounting for most of the dead, according to official figures.
The Canadian mission in the most volatile area of the country has come in for criticism from opposition parties in Ottawa and is among issues that threaten the position of the conservative minority government this year.
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MacKay visits Kabul, Kandahar; sees progress in mission to rebuild Afghanistan
Sun Jan 7, 1:50 PM By Bill Graveland
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (CP) - Afghanistan is not sliding back into chaos despite an ongoing insurgency and escalating drug trade, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay said Sunday at the start of his two-day visit to the war-torn country.
"We're here to talk about a lot of the good work that's being done," MacKay said after arriving at Kandahar Airfield, home to most of the 2,500 Canadian troops in Afghanistan, after a brief visit to Kabul.
"We're going out to the provincial reconstruction team (Monday) and see some of the work that they're going."
"We're looking at a whole government approach and all of the government that's underway now."
While in Kabul, MacKay met with President Hamid Karzai to discuss, among other things, the contentious Pakistani border security issue as well the training of the Afghan army and police.
"We did have discussions on the necessity to continue this work," he said. "We're working with all the NATO allies to profile the importance of helping the Afghan people build this country."
Earlier in the day, MacKay spoke with reporters via a teleconference hookup, in which he disputed claims that the West's mission in Afghanistan is failing.
One recent critique appears in the widely read U.S. journal Foreign Affairs, which suggests Afghanistan is sliding into chaos, with rebel attacks increasing and the opium trade exploding. The journal is published by the non-profit Council on Foreign Relations, which includes nearly all past and current U.S. presidents, secretaries of state, defence and treasury, and other top U.S. officials.
MacKay said that while he respected the opinion of critics, "I don't see a factual basis for a commentary suggesting that this country is sliding into chaos."
"Quite the contrary. In fact, I think we're seeing more and more evidence of capacity-building starting to take hold, the efforts of the Afghan government in particular to build a more functioning and more dedicated police force," he said.
MacKay said there was a lot of "tangible proof" of improvements that have been made in Afghanistan, citing new schools, hospitals and roads along with vocational training and microcredit programs to help develop the Afghan economy.
"All of this shows that the Afghan people and the government have moved ahead considerably," he said. "And the pace, in my opinion, is only going to increase as we're able to bring about greater stability - particularly in the southern region."
After Afghanistan, MacKay is travelling to Pakistan where he will use "blunt talk" to press President Pervez Musharraf to take stronger measures to stop Taliban fighters from crossing the border into Afghanistan, while also offering Canadian assistance in managing the border.
He underscored the need for Pakistan "to do a better job of stopping the movement of Taliban," who have been able to mount attacks on Canadian and other NATO forces in the south, often by moving combatants and supplies unchallenged across the Pakistani border.
Asked how he could bring more pressure on Pakistan to tighten border security, MacKay replied:
"Well, I think repetition here and blunt talk. I suspect strongly that you're going to see this coming from all countries. . . . Everyone says that the border issue has to be dealt with in a more comprehensive way - whether it's . . . aerial surveillance, fencing, border guards," he said.
"Canada has a particular interest, of course, because of the impact it's having on our military. But we also have some expertise in the area. We have a large border that we share with the United States. Some of our techniques and our technology that we're using there may be of assistance."
Meanwhile, MacKay said Karzai was effusive with his praise for Canada during their hour-long meeting.
"He basically has been telling his fellow countrymen: 'Canadians are protecting us with their lives. . . . They're coming here all the way from Canada with goodwill in their heart, with investments in our business, in our future, in our people.' "
MacKay was accompanied to Kandahar by his Afghan counterpart, Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta, who said he wanted to thank Canada "for their peace building in Afghanistan and . . . building of our common goals against terrorist activities."
MacKay sidestepped a question about whether the Canadian government had put too much emphasis on the fight against the Taliban.
"We're here to talk about the work that's being done on the ground, the construction work, the reconstruction work," said MacKay who told reporters he would make announcements Monday regarding the Canada's provincial reconstruction team or PRT.
"They will be in keeping with the effort to further the progress that's being made and we're going to have a chance to go out in the field," he said.
MacKay was also expected to meet with Maj.-Gen. Ton Van Loon, head of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan, to get an update on Operation Baaz Tsuka, the offensive against Taliban insurgents launched in December.
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Trouble means you can make lots of money, fast
Sydney Morning Herald January 8, 2007
If you've a sense of adventure, Eric Ellis reckons he might know of a job for you.
RESOLVED to make big quick money in 2007 at the frontier of commerce?
Sure, YouTube marketing and the would-be carbon trading exchange are out there at the exciting end of the market but Terminal Two at Dubai Airport is the real "new frontier" of international business.
On any given morning - and we mean 6am - suits mingle with khakis for flights to places like Kabul, Mogadishu and Baghdad where billions in aid - your taxes mostly - slosh around waiting to be plundered by fearless bleary-eyed road warriors who dare to venture to such hotspots to open markets, open because no regulator will fear to tread.
Regular users of Terminal Two Dubai joke they are flying "Axis of Evil Airlines" to get to their quarry, the challenges of their markets best evidenced by the corkscrew landings of the one or two flights in, lest the plane be taken out by a rogue SAM.
But "business hotspots" is a relative term. There's China and India, or the EU's Baltic and Balkan newbies, their roaring economies unshackled after years of socialism.
But for really big fast money, you'll always come back to places just a short flight from Dubai, where you can make more money than Croesus in a dollar-drenched "post-conflict situation", and risk decapitation while you're doing it. But survive, and you'll be mortgage-free with some good stories to tell.
Afghanistan
Some have called it the biggest fixed interest investment in the world's biggest tax haven. What that means is the West has committed to pour about $4 billion a year until 2010, and probably years beyond.
The country's tax regime is more than relaxed: the biggest mobile phone company picks up more revenue than the Afghan taxman. A lot of people are making fast money and if you work for a multilateral agency like the UN or World Bank, or the hundreds of NGOs, you can count your cash with your conscience comfortable that you're saving the world too, while sending riveting emails back home, not mentioning the sumptuous Friday brunch at Kabul's five-star Serena Hotel, with its guerilla chic clientele.
Set up a business, any business except perhaps narcotics (that already booming market has been cornered by some people who are actually in the government), and the international taxpayer's largesse flows to you - anything to keep Afghans away from the Taliban.
It's the same for a great many unqualified foreigners fresh from college who simply knit an earnest brow, set up a post-conflict-land-rights-for-gay-whales NGO and sit back as the six figures flow. Easy.
True, Kabul life can sometimes be tricky, what with suicide bombs and all that, but Dubai is just 90 minutes away. The Ikea there has never had it so good.
Baghdad
Wanna be a millionaire? Get yourself buffed in the gym, take a quick scan through Soldier of Fortune and sketch up a phony CV describing your time at Hereford or Swanbourne, the hometown insiderspeak for the British and Australian SAS. Then make your way to Baghdad's Green Zone, the US's 51st state, and watch the job offers come.
Faster than you can say "improvised explosive device", chances are you'll be signed up for a stretch in a PMC, a private military company.
Your colleagues might be former Russian or Ukrainian mafia hitmen, apartheid-era white South African hardmen who actually liked killing their black compatriots, or the occasional Gurkha or Filipino. The sports bar-like mess room makes for lively gossip as you load your clip over burgers and Bud.
Your boss will be a nicely squared away hyphenated Pom of military bearing or a slightly deranged Timothy McVeigh lookalike good ole boy from the Texas Panhandle, all expenses paid. Iraqi PMCs have squillions of US dollars worth of contracts protecting diplomats and assorted VIPs with militia crosshairs trained on them - and you.
If you survive two years of this at near seven-figure money you'll be able to buy that Thai bar/wife you've always wanted, and have change for a private arsenal.
Dubai, Qatar, anywhere in the Gulf, even Iran
Every newspaper and magazine has it on a savestring: "China, the world's fastest-growing economy." Looks great, except it's wrong. China's 9 per cent GDP growth last year looks positively recessionary alongside the Middle-East's oil and gas-soaked dishdasha belt.
Try Oman - its economy was 24 per cent bigger in 2005. Or the UAE - 14 per cent GDP growth last year. In Qatar, everyone is a multi-millionaire after dividing its 900,000 population with their gas reserves, as oil prices soar.
Services, construction, design, leisure, if you've got a skill, or even if you just say you have, a wealthy man in a keffiyeh will want to hire you. And costs are low in the Gulf: oil junkies don't do much actual work, they import cheap sub-continentals to do it. And you can too.
Even neighbouring Iran is roaring. Its president, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, is no dill. He knows that every time he gets off his conference call with Chavez of Venezuela and Castro of Cuba to send George Bush's blood pressure soaring, he sends oil prices the same way, handy given that Iran controls 10 per cent of the world's black gold.
Pragmatic plunderers find that all that cash compensates for some of the world's most oppressive climates, not to mention political regimes and tasteless architecture (I'm thinking Dubai's ski resort here, and the bad-trip interiors).
Somalia
ASIC getting you and your monopoly down? One too many tax audits? Too many bureaucrats, too little business? Move to Mogadishu, where the chances of encountering a regulator are remote in the extreme.
That because Somalia hasn't had a formal government since 1991, the closest nabob being a country away in Kenya and Addis Ababa where much of the bureaucracy-in-exile were encamped in UN-funded splendour, too scared to return, too comfortable to want to. Somalia's got less official corruption than Norway, because there's no government official to actually bribe.
Sure, we all struggle with authority at some point but isn't there something slightly reassuring about taxes, or air traffic control? Combine this anarchy with the Somalis' Africa-wide reputation for business savvy and you've got one wacky market that could teach the WTO a few things about free trade. The economy grew 25 per cent last year.
Eric Ellis is the South-East Asia Correspondent for Fortune.
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Taliban Resume Their Attacks in Afghanistan
By ABDUL WAHEED WAFA January 8, 2007 The New York Times
KABUL, Afghanistan, Jan. 7 - The Taliban appeared to be resuming their campaign of violence after a week of quiet over the Islamic festival of Id al-Adha.
Go to Complete Coverage » Two newborn babies, their mother and a grandmother were killed in a roadside bombing in eastern Afghanistan as they were returning home from the hospital on Sunday, said the provincial police chief of Khost, Muhammad Ayub, who called the attack "inhuman." Three others in the car, a woman and two men, were wounded, he said.
In a separate attack, gunmen on a motorcycle killed a high school headmaster in the southern province of Helmand as he was walking home from morning prayers at his local mosque, according to an Interior Ministry spokesman.
American soldiers thwarted a suicide car-bomb attack on their outpost in the eastern province of Paktika on Saturday. The troops began shooting at the advancing vehicle, and it crashed into an outside barrier and exploded, according to a NATO statement. Five soldiers were wounded, and the bomber was killed.
A NATO soldier was also wounded in a roadside explosion in Kandahar Province on Saturday, a NATO spokesman said.
More than 600 civilians have been killed in the past three years, including those killed as a result of operations by NATO, American and Afghan troops as well as attacks by the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission reported Sunday. The commission appealed for the military to take more care to avoid civilian casualties and called for compensation to be given to the victims' families.
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Militants gun down school administrator in Afghanistan
Monday January 08, 2007 (0951 PST) PakTribune.com, Pakistan
KABUL: Militants gunned down the administrator of a school in the troubled Helmand province on Sunday, a local official said.
"Armed insurgents shot dead the administrator of a Lycee in NadAli district at 6:00 a.m. this morning when he was going from mosque to his house," Saiful Malook, director of the education department in Helmand told Xinhua.
He blamed the shooting on the enemies of Afghanistan, referring to Taliban militants.
Over a dozen teachers, students and school staff were killed by militants in 2006.
Militants also set on fire a school in the eastern Kunar province on Thursday, destroying two class rooms and textbooks.
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Why troops face tough battle to beat the Afghan drug trade
The Herald (UK) DAVID LEASK in Afghanistan January 08 2007
THEY look like cabbages from the air, little patches of green in the dusty brown landscape.
The first poppy plants are appearing along the banks of the River Helmand in southern Afghanistan. Within weeks, right under the flightpaths of the helicopters carrying British troops, farmers will start to harvest their opium, the raw ingredient of heroin.
They are going to have a bumper crop. Last year's was up 162%. Britain is eager to stop that happening on its watch - the UK took over Helmand from the Americans in April. But, according to at least one informed official, they are going to have a very hard time.
"Things are going to be at least as bad as last year," one British expert said. "They have planted more this year. At least in the central areas, we don't know what is happening elsewhere."
"Elsewhere" are the districts far from Helmand's capital, Lashkar Gah, and Britain's new fortress in the desert, Camp Bastion.
The capital itself - its name translates as City of Soldiers - is already awash with armed men, from patrolling Royal Marine Commandos, to the new Afghan National Army and the much-hated and largely corrupt police.
Helmand province, if it was independent, would be the world's biggest single producer of heroin. Right now it supplies 40% of the international market in opiates. Afghanistan has 85%. Nine out of 10 kilos of heroin in Scotland comes from Afghanistan, much from Helmand.
The Talibs, Muslim extremists who once cracked down on the poppy growers, are now thought to impose their own taxes on farmers, effectively financing their ongoing war with international forces. Another British diplomatic source said: "The reason we are concerned about opium is not just because of the heroin on the streets of Glasgow or Aberdeen. It is because it acts as a swamp of instability.
"There are 69,000 hectares under cultivation in Helmand, that is, say, 37 kilos per hectare. You've got some of it going for $90 (£47) a kilo and someone from the Taliban taking a 20% tithe for it to pass through their borders.
"That's enough to put 26,000 soldiers in the field."
Many farmers plant more of the crop when times are bad. They can make as much money from other crops but they can't get those to market before they rot and there isn't even a bank in Helmand where they can put savings.
Opium, however, will always raise cash when they are desperate. Harvesting opium hurts; many farmers themselves become addicted. "They have found opium in the breast milk of Afghan mothers," the diplomatic source said.
The UK Task Force in Helmand is currently led by 3 Commando Brigade, who have been pushing into outlying areas, often in fierce fighting with Taliban fighters. A victory revealed today at the Kajaki dam could lead to huge economic development, as the crippled power station reopens, and help offer alternatives to drugs.
British forces, however, have also effectively withdrawn from at least one area, Musa Qaleh in the north, in a deal brokered with tribal elders. Drug traffickers are said to thrive there.
Many locals feel let down. Others understand the difficulties the British are facing. Corruption is endemic. Several key political and police leaders in Helmand have been major drug producers and traffickers.
The province's governor and a British protege, engineer Mohammad Daoud, was sacked by Afghan President Hamid Karzai last month. Governor Daoud's deputy, Amir Muhammad Akhundzada, was a member of the notorious Akhundzada family from the northern part of the province and is being suspected of having close links to the drugs trade. The former chief of police, Abdul Rahman Jan, also lives under the shadow of suspicion.
There are, however, some courageous people fighting the warlords and the Taliban fighters who profit from them. The Afghan army later this month will begin its poppy eradication project, backed by British and American governments.
The diplomat said: "One of our biggest allies is Afghanistan's Attorney General, Abdul Sabit. He is on a Jihad against corruption. With people like him it makes it a lot easier."
In Lashkar Gah a tiny band of counter-narcotics police are doing their best - with the help of a Scottish policeman. Skye-born Aleck Morrison, a former drugs squad and anti-terrorist officer from the Metropolitan Police, is full of praise for them. He said: "The Counter Narcotics Police in Helmand province has 38 officers. There would be 38 in one police station at home. They've got three vehicles and three motorcycles. They are very brave. Some of them are not even armed."
There are around 6000 Britons serving in Afghanistan, around one third of them at the "sharp end".
The British expert who warned of the bumper opium crop said that needs to treble if the Taliban and the drug dealers are to be beaten. Only then can alternative development kick off.
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'Evil mix' of Taliban, drug lords funding Afghan insurgency: Canadian officer
Sun Jan 7, 11:53 AM By Bill Graveland
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (CP) - An "awful, evil mix" of Taliban hardliners, drug lords, black marketers and corrupt officials are funding the insurgency that Canadian troops are battling in the Panjwaii and Zhari districts of southern Afghanistan, a senior Canadian officer said Sunday.
"I call them the predators," Col. Fred Lewis, deputy commander of the task force in southern Afghanistan, told The Canadian Press in an interview in which he discussed efforts to uproot the insurgency in the Arghandab River Valley area.
Despite years of drought, the region remains one of the country's bread baskets, with plentiful grape orchards - along with huge marijuana and poppy fields that have developed into a major cash crop for farmers.
As Canadian troops continue to push ahead with Operation Baaz Tsuka in this former Taliban heartland, there seems to be a never ending supply of money to fund the hiring of more rebel fighters or for training suicide bombers brought in from Pakistan.
"I think more people are more and more convinced there's a pretty close connection (between the Taliban and the drug lords), which is pretty ironic because in 1996 when the Taliban took over the country one of their platforms was 'we're not doing drugs anymore,' " Lewis said.
"Why would the Taliban fight so hard for this Arghandab Valley triangle area that we're all so familiar with now? The fact is that valley has water and it's green," he said.
Lewis said probably a third of the marijuana and opium crops under cultivation in the Arghandab Valley are drug-related.
"So why do you fight for that? Lewis said. "Well if you're a drug lord who is making millions and millions and millions of dollars, is it worth paying guys $200 to fight so that the coalition doesn't come into your valley?"
The Taliban pay their fighters about US$200 a month.
"Yeah, I think there's a pretty close connection between the Taliban and drug lords. Is it about financing? Maybe. It's just putting two and two together and it's not based on any secret intelligence reports or anything," he added.
Lewis said using the term Taliban to describe all the forces fighting Canadian troops is probably inaccurate. A number of groups: religious, political and criminal have a stake in the ongoing instability.
For the drug lords, it comes down to making sure farmers in the area plant marijuana or opium poppies, Lewis said, claiming that ordinary farmers were being coerced into the drug trade.
"An Afghan farmer gets $200 a month for farming opium but my understanding is when he farms grapes he gets $500 a month. The ones making all the money are the drug lords," he said.
"When you're making in the millions, are you willing to have a gang along who shows up at two in the morning who says to Farmer Smith: 'You're growing opium next year, right?' "
Operation Baaz Tsuka, with the goal of helping Afghans defend themselves, is the only one that will eventually allow Afghanistan to emerge from the quagmire, said Lewis, who conceded that the Taliban are not going to go away.
There are probably about 500 Taliban hardliners in the province right now and likely still will be 10 years from now, he said.
"They may continue to exist for decades, but they (the Afghan people) can get to the level where they can deal with the situation," he said, noting that the overall population of the province is about two million.
Lewis said Canadians need to know that the war against the Taliban and their associates is winnable and a "noble cause" and it would be wrong to leave the Afghan people at their mercy.
"They are the drug lords, they are the black marketeers, they are probably certain corrupt leaders. You add that to the Taliban leadership and it is just an awful, evil mix," Lewis said.
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22 to a cell - life in a notorious Afghan prison
Brinley Bruton in Kabul Monday January 8, 2007 The Guardian
Shaima left her violent husband and married a man she loved. They lived happily, but after a few years the police came after her - adultery is illegal in Afghanistan - demanding 4,000 afghanis (£42) in exchange for her freedom.
The family did not have the money, and now Shaima, whose expressionless face is adorned with delicate tattoos, is in Afghanistan's high-security Policharki prison with two children by her second relationship.
"I thought my [new] father-in-law was solving the case," she says several times in a low voice. Shaima, 30, stares at Fariba, her five-day-old daughter who sleeps in tightly wrapped swaddling clothes on her lap.
She shares a bunk-lined room with 11 other women and 10 children. Close to 80 adults live in the women's wing of Policharki, which houses about 1,300 in total. The women's few possessions hang above each bed - a child's knitted hat, a pair of socks, a small velvet bag. They eat their meals squatting on the floor next to the heater in each room. Clothes hung up to dry line the halls.
Afghanistan's biggest prison, just east of Kabul, was renowned for the torture and killing of thousands during the communist era. More recently, it has been the scene of deadly riots and prison escapes.
In contrast to Shaima's apparent meekness, fury hides beneath the sweet, smiling face of another inmate, Shafika. "I will kill my husband as soon as I get out of here," she says, her two-year-old son Wahidullah snuggled close. Shafika (not pictured) is serving time for murder, a crime she says was pinned on her by her husband.
"I would die here before going back to my in-laws, she says. "Those people have no shame." Shafika, who does not know her age, but looks to be in her early 20s, flashes henna-covered hands as she talks.
She says her first husband died about six years ago and she was then forced to marry her brother-in-law, a common practice in Afghanistan. Her new husband was a jealous man, Shafika says, and, about three years ago, he killed a man he claimed was having an affair with her. The police arrested her without even questioning her, she says.
Other women cannot or will not leave their children with relatives, so the prison runs a school for them.
Aziza, 11, is in Policharki with her mother and sister. She likes the prison school well enough, especially its handicrafts class, where she makes cigarette holders out of colourful beads, she says.
"If we were at home, we would study, sleep and eat too," she says, looking into her lap and running her fingers along her red dress. "But I do miss my home sometimes, especially our cat."
Shafika tries not to think about home. When asked what she misses most about her village in Wardak, a mountainous province in the centre of the country, she shakes her head and says: "And what would I do with all those memories?"
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Pakistan has gone the 'extra mile' in Afghanistan
By Khalid Hasan Daily Times, Pakistan
WASHINGTON: "We have been the target of a whisper campaign that we are not doing enough, but no one has yet defined what enough is," Tariq Azim Khan, Pakistan's minister of state for information, told the Washington Post, when questioned about the border infiltration dispute with Afghanistan.
"We have gone the extra mile, and we have lost many troops. This is a joint fight and a joint struggle, but we can only look after our side of the border. The Afghans have to look after their side, too," he told Pamela Constable of the Post in Islamabad.
Asked about Pakistan's latest proposal to lay mines and string barbed wire along parts of the 1,500-mile border with Afghanistan, which some observers see as either cynical or far-fetched, Azim said, "If people take the legal routes, there will be no problem. They will be clearly marked. Our intention is to go after those who want to move illegally." He compared Pakistan's plan to the strenuous efforts made by US authorities to stop illegal immigrants crossing from Mexico. The minister noted that in addition to insurgent fighters, drug traffickers use hidden routes to bring opium out of Afghanistan, which produces 90 percent of the world's heroin supply. He suggested that drug-related groups, who are powerful in southern Afghanistan, could be using their influence against the border-sealing plan.
The Post report published on Sunday said that the "contretemps" is the latest sour note in a deteriorating relationship between two staunch US allies that are linked by the common threat of terrorism but divided by bitter cross-charges of failing to curb a growing Islamic insurgency that operates on both sides of the border. Karzai has said that the plan "will not prevent terrorism, but it will divide the two nations." The tension has persisted despite a series of high-level meetings between Karzai and senior Pakistani officials, including the two-day visit by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz to the Afghan capital this week and a private session with President Bush at the White House in September that brought Karzai together with Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf.
The Post quoted the head of South Asia at the State Department, Richard Boucher, who said two weeks ago during a visit to Canada, "The Taliban have been able to use those areas for sanctuary and for command and control and for regrouping and supply." At the same time, he noted that Pakistani authorities had historically not "held sway" in the tribal regions. The report said Pakistani officials maintain that they have tried every possible means of reining in the fighters, first sending about 80,000 army troops to the restive border areas and then negotiating agreements with tribal leaders who pledged to control or eject armed Islamic groups. Both efforts have met with major problems.
According to Constable, "The information minister and other Pakistani officials insist that it is very much in Pakistan's interest to have Afghanistan become stable and peaceful, in part because Pakistan is tired of hosting several million refugees from years of Afghan conflict and is worried that renewed turmoil could send a new flood of people fleeing across the border."
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Afghanistan: Border Dispute Takes Toll On Security
Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz paid a visit to Kabul on January 4 to discuss Islamabad's decision to fence and mine parts of their mutual border, among other issues. His host, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, restated his country's "very clear" opposition to such a move, saying it "will not prevent terrorist activities, but will divide peoples and tribes."
WASHINGTON, January 8, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- A Pakistani military spokesman more than three years ago that his country was installing border reinforcements at strategic points to prevent remnants of Al-Qaeda and Taliban forces from crossing into Afghanistan.
Told of Afghan media reports suggesting the fence would go ahead without so much as informing Kabul, the spokesman responded bluntly that "Pakistan does not need the permission from any other country to take security measures on [its] border specifically aimed at countering the scourge of terror."
Demarcate First, Plan Later
At a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice two years later, Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf divulged a plan to construct the border fence. Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri said at the time that Islamabad's plan was aimed at undermining claims that Pakistan was not doing enough to curb cross-border terrorism. An Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman responded to Musharraf's plan by saying that Kabul and Islamabad needed to demarcate the border under international law before there could be any discussion of a barrier.
When Islamabad recently announced its intention to implement the plan to partially fence and mine the border, Afghan reaction was negative based on three factors.
The first was Afghanistan's legacy as one of the most mined countries on the globe, noting that new mines would inevitably kill and maim innocent people. The second was the assertion that fences and mines would separate Pashtun tribes living astride the border.
The third was the argument that the problem of terrorism lies not simply along the border area, but rather with those who finance, equip, and train the terrorists -- and in Kabul's eyes, Pakistan has proved to be a primary source of support for those seeking to destabilize Afghanistan.
While the official Pakistani response to Kabul's objections has been diplomatic, Pakistani commentators have been less subtle. In an editorial on 28 December, the Islamabad-based daily "The News" wrote that "if anything, Pakistan's plan to mine and fence the frontier is a response to the shrill propaganda from Kabul that Islamabad is 'not doing enough' to stop the entry of terrorists across the border into Afghanistan."
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UK troops 'destroy' Taleban camp
Sunday, 7 January 2007 BBC News
British troops have destroyed a Taleban training camp in southern Afghanistan, killing dozens of insurgents, according to the military.
About 110 Royal Marines carried out the operation in northern Helmand, which it is hoped will pave the way for repairs on a hydroelectric dam in the province.
It is hoped nearly two million people will now get access to electricity.
Operation Clay was launched on New Year's Day. Plymouth-based 42 Commando were engaged in four days of fighting.
Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai has thanked Operation Clay's commanders.
Mr Karzai, who is championing the scheme to fix the Kajaki Dam, sent a personal message.
A senior Taleban commander and "tens" of his henchman are said to have been killed during the operation.
Only one marine was hurt during the battles. The soldier was shot through the hand.
'Running firefights'
Insurgents had been stalling repairs on faulty turbines at the dam, which is situated at the source of the Helmand River.
Repair work on the facility, which was built in 1953, will now commence next month.
It is estimated it will bring electricity to about 1.8 million people and treble the area of irrigated farmland in the fertile province.
Military spokesman Major Oliver Lee said: "We needed to sort out the insurgency that there has been in the environs of Kajaki.
"And we very successfully did that over this past week or so with some very focused targeted military operations, which included killing the key insurgency commander at that location."
He said there had been "running firefights" for up to four days against "fairly coherent sustained attacks of small arms, rockets and indirect fire".
Maj Lee said he believed the operation, which had the support of the Afghan National Police, could also boost their campaign against the Taleban fighters in the province.
He said: "I would suggest that we have significantly seized the initiative from the irreconcilables in that area."
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Starving Afghans sell girls of eight as brides
Villagers whose crops have failed after a second devastating drought are giving their young daughters in marriage to raise money for food
Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor The Observer (UK) Sunday January 7, 2007
Azizgul is 10 years old, from the village of Houscha in western Afghanistan. This year the wheat crop failed again following a devastating drought. Her family was hungry. So, a little before Christmas, Azizgul's mother 'sold' her to be married to a 13-year-old boy.
'I need to sell my daughters because of the drought,' said her mother Sahatgul, 30. 'We don't have enough food and the bride price will enable us to buy food. Three months ago my 15-year-old daughter married.
'We were not so desperate before. Now I have to marry them younger. And all five of them will have to get married if the drought becomes worse. The bride price is 200,000 afghanis [£2,000]. His father came to our house to arrange it. The boy pays in instalments. First he paid us 5,000 afghanis, which I used to buy food.'
Azizgul is not unique. Hers is one of a number of interviews and case studies collected by the charity Christian Aid - all of them young girls sold by their families to cope with the second ruinous drought to hit Afghanistan within three years.
While the world has focused on the war against the Taliban, the suffering of the drought-stricken villagers, almost 2.5 million of them, has largely gone unnoticed. And where once droughts would afflict Afganistan once every couple of decades, this drought has come hard on the heels of the last one, from which the villagers were barely able to recover.
While prohibited by both Afghan civil and Islamic law, arranged marriages have long been a feature of Afghan life, particularly in rural areas. What is unusual is the age of some of the girls. And the reason: to buy food to survive.
'Many families are doing this because of the drought,' Sahatgul said. 'Our daughters are our only economic asset. We will have the marriage ceremony at puberty. The groom, Rahim, has gone to Iran with his brothers to earn the money. He is working on a building site. He will come back with the rest of the money that he has earned or borrowed. He calls us every month to make sure that Azizgul is still his.'
Najibullah, 39, is a farmer. He sold his eight-year-old daughter Somaya for $3,000 (£1,560). She is engaged to a 22-year-old man from the village, Mohammed, who has also gone to Iran to earn the money to pay the bride price.
'He has already paid a deposit of $600, which we used to buy warm clothes and food,' said Najibullah. For her part, Somaya knows she is getting married but does not know what that means.
The consequences of the first drought last year - which saw the wheat crop, on which more than 80 per cent of Afghans depend, cut by half - have gone beyond child brides. In some areas, according to the charity's survey, farmers lost between 80 and 100 per cent of their crops. According to Christian Aid, the children of the affected areas have been hit in other ways: by malnutrition, increased infant mortality, and by being sent on three-hour journeys to collect water and firewood to survive.
Now many of those villagers worst affected are caught in a double bind. Without their own food to survive, aid supplies have been hampered by the winter snows, which have cut off many of the villages, while the World Food Programme's aid pipeline to areas like the Herat province (where Houscha lies) has been hampered by attacks on food convoys coming from Quetta in Pakistan by the Taliban.
'We have advisers in Afghanistan monitoring the situation,' said a spokesman for Britain's Department for International Development, 'and we have already given £1m in aid. Our view is that it is not quite a humanitarian crisis yet, but it is very, very difficult. The biggest problem facing the aid effort is not security in the country but the fact that large areas have been cut off by snow and that food aid can only be delivered to regional centres.'
The grim picture is echoed by the UN and other international organisations working in Afghanistan. According to the World Food Programme's most recent food security monitoring bulletin, food consumption in the worst affected areas has markedly deteriorated as wheat prices, where wheat is available, have increased by up to 37 per cent. But the picture is most graphically painted by the suffering of the people on the ground, in particular the children.
Zarigul is 40 and also from Houscha. 'Our children are very weak from lack of food and we are worried that they will die. We feed them boiled water and sugar. We have no vegetables for them, just potatoes. Last year we had vegetables. We need help - food for ourselves and our animals.'
Children are already dying. In a graveyard on a hill overlooking the village of Sya Kamarak in western Afghanistan, villagers gathered for the funerals of three young children who died on the same day, from malnutrition caused by the drought in western, northern and southern Afghanistan. There were no doctors' reports to confirm the cause of death - the parents were too poor to take them to the clinic, one day's walk away.
Jan Bibi, 40, said she had been feeding her three-month-old daughter Nazia with just boiled water and sugar because she had nothing else. 'My baby died because of inadequate food. I wanted to breastfeed her, but I was not producing enough milk.'
Back in Houscha, Abdul Zahir, 58, head of the men's council, summed up the desperate situation confronting families. 'There is widespread poverty. We have to sell off our children to survive. We are not proud of it, but we have to do it.'
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Pakistan temporarily shelves border fencing plan: Report
Pajhwok Report
KABUL, Jan 6 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The government of Pakistan has temporarily put on hold the border fencing plan and decided to establish a close liaison with the Afghan government to put a halt to cross-border movement of terrorists.
In this connection, Pakistan's Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao has been assigned the additional task of heading the proposed jirga commission. Mr Sherpao will establish contacts with Afghan officials to stop terrorists from crossing the porous border, said a report appeared in a section of the Pakistani media.
Quoting reliable sources, the report said the decision to form the commission was made after a meeting between President Hamid Karzai and Pakistan Premier Shaukat Aziz in Kabul last week. The formation of the commission would be notified by the Pakistani government in a few days, said the sources.
The Afghan government had also been informed about the establishment of the jirga commission, which would consist of five members. Three members of the commission included Balochistan Governor Awais Ghani, NWFP Governor Ali Mohammad Jan Aurakzai and Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao, who is also head of the commission, while two other members would be nominated soon, said the sources.
"The jirga commission would be similar to a jirga recently formed by Afghan government to tackle infiltration of terrorists into its territory," the sources added.
Regarding the fencing and mining of the border on the Pakistani side, the sources said it would be put on hold as the government would wait for the results and objectives it wanted to achieve by establishing the jirga commission.
Afghanistan had time and again showed its strong opposition to Pakistan's plan to fence and mine the border with the fear that it would separate families on both sides of the border.
PAN Monitor
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Rickshaws drivers observe strike in Herat
HERAT CITY, Jan 6 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Five hundred rickshaws drivers observed strike on Saturday against ban on the vehicles in the western Herat province.
Brig Gen Mohammad Eisa, head of the traffic department, told Pajhwok Afghan News the noise of the rickshaws had made chaos in the city. He said the rickshaws drivers often did not have license and the vehicles did not bear registration no. Eisa said if the drivers got license and registration no they would be allowed again.
Rickshaw drivers demanded of the government to allow them work in the province. Abdul Ghafoor, a rickshaw driver, told Pajhwok Afghan News he was supporting a huge family and could not earn square meal if he was stopped of driving rickshaw. He asked the government to ban the companies that was importing the rickshaws. Khalil Ahmad, another rickshaw driver said he would get license and registration no.
Ahmad Qurishi
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Weapons cache recovered in Baghlan
PUL-I-KHUMRI, Jan 6 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Police Saturday claimed recovering a huge depot of weapons and ammunition in Baghlan district of the central Baghlan province.
Brig Gen Habib Rahman Fazli, provincial chief of crime branch, said the ammunition contained 39 boxes of ZK-1 and anti-aircraft bullets, 12 artillery shells and 7 RPG-7 bullets. He said that 7 artilleries, 56 bullets, a wireless set and some landmines were recovered in the operation. Fazli said the ammunition was stored in a well and might be used for terrorist acts by enemies of the country, a euphemism used for Taliban. He said that none had been arrested in this regard and the investigation was going on. Police said this was the first ever depot recovered in the province.
Sher Mohammad jahish
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Former police chief observes hunger strike
PUL-I-KHUMRI, Jan 6 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Former police chief of the northern Baghlan province Mohammad Azim Jalal Hashmi, who was detained for allegedly abducting a young girl, observed hunger strike in jail on Saturday.
The former police chief said he would continue the hunger strike till his release. Pleading himself innocent, he said the charges against him were concocted. He alleged Baghlan Governor Sayed Ikram Masoomi was involved in the 'conspiracy' against him.
Regarding the charges against him, the former police chief said he had married the girl with her consent. He said his detention was illegal and he would continue the protest till the judges absolve him of the charges.
The accused was arrested in Kabul after family of the girl nominated him in their report lodged with the police regarding the abduction.
Zmary Bashari, spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said the case had been referred to the office of the Attorney General which will announce the final decision.
Prosecutor at the AG office Mohammad Nadir said they had questioned both the accused and the girl. Initial investigations support Hashmi's case and go in his favour.
He added the police chief was arrested for suddenly quitting his job. His case would soon be referred to the court for final decision. Meanwhile, provincial Governor Sayed Ikramuddin Masoomi rejected his involvement in the case and said it was the personal matter of the former police chief.
Sher Mohammad Jahesh
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Truck set on fire after accident
JALALABAD, Jan 6 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Enraged protestors in Behsud district of the eastern Nangarhar province set on fire a truck which crushed to death a boy in the Shah Borhan Agha area this morning.
The boy was crushed to death around 8am Saturday morning. Following the tragic incident, residents of the area blocked the road and set the vehicle on fire.
Mohammad Nasir, dweller of the area, told Pajhwok Afghan News the speeding vehicle hit the boy. He said the road in Shah Borhan Agha area was recently opened for traffic after reconstruction.
Imranullah Kakar, another resident, said driver of the vehicle managed to escape the scene. He said scores of people blocked the road as a protest and set the vehicle on fire.
Spokesman for the provincial police headquarters Colonel Abdul Ghafoor confirmed the incident and said fire brigade staff along with a police party had been sent to extinguish the fire.
Mueed Hashmi
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Kabul parks to be reconstructed
KABUL, Jan 6 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Italian ambassador has pledged help in reconstructing parks in the central capital.
Mahdi Saqib, deputy publication director of the Kabul municipality, told Pajhwok Afghan News the Italian ambassador Ettore Francesco Sequi made this pledge in a meeting with Kabul mayor Roohullah Aman on Saturday.
Ambassador Ettore was provided with documents about Khushal Khan Park in the first step, Saqib said. The parks would be constructed in fifth district at Kabul, he added.
The embassy would later provide the municipality with further details about the nature and budget of the project. The municipality had planned to hand over the reconstruction of the project to private sectors, he added. The Italian ambassador had also pledged to facilitate a meeting of Kabul and Rome mayor for exchange of experiences in near future, Saqib concluded.
Zainab Muhammadi
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Taliban leader's powerful vanishing act
Mullah Mohammed Omar may be hiding in Pakistan, where his elusiveness has created a cult-like devotion.
By Laura King The Los Angeles Times January 5, 2007
KUCHLAK, PAKISTAN - Where's Mullah Omar?
It has been more than five years since the Taliban's supreme leader, a onetime village cleric, vanished into the trackless terrain outside his fallen Afghan stronghold, Kandahar. And his likeliest source of sanctuary is thought to be the belt of rugged tribal territory straddling the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where the law of no nation prevails.
In Kuchlak, a dusty desert crossroads in the southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan, Mullah Mohammed Omar still is referred to by the title he assumed in 1996, when he and his puritanical Islamist movement seized power in Afghanistan: Amir al-Muminin, or Commander of the Faithful.
Omar's feat of eluding a long manhunt by the Americans and their allies, even with a $10-million bounty on his head, is celebrated here as proof of his mystical powers.
"With all their sophisticated satellites that can see a single needle from high in the sky, they cannot find him," said Fazil Mohammad Baraich, a district amir, or chieftain. "It is no surprise that God almighty protects him, and this increases our faith."
Rumors of Omar sightings abound, and are repeated by locals with an air of satisfied certainty.
"I, myself, have heard on good authority that he is living in a camp" in the military enclave outside Quetta, said Mohammed Ashiq, head of a merchants association in that provincial capital.
"And," Ashiq said, leaning forward conspiratorially, "I hear that he has gotten fat. Very fat."
During the Taliban's rule, it was Omar who ordered such stringent measures as the banishment of women from schools and public life, and the destruction of one of Afghanistan's greatest cultural treasures, the giant Buddha statues at Bamian.
He outlawed simple pleasures such as music and kite flying, even as he decreed, disastrously for his country, that the Taliban would provide aid and shelter to Osama bin Laden, who likewise has remained at large.
A Taliban presence
In tribal communities such as Kuchlak, sympathy for the toppled militia is defiantly undiminished. Many townspeople are of the same Pashtun clan as Omar, who by most accounts has never flown in an airplane and has rarely strayed from his homeland.
The cult-like devotion to Omar in the mosques and makeshift classrooms of the tribal territories helps ensure a steady supply of Taliban fighters. The militia's white flags flutter over Kuchlak's small, desolate graveyard, where the names of slain fighters are scratched into bare rock.
Little boys trudge through the town's rutted streets, bearing bags of bread donated to the town's many madrasas, or Islamic religious schools. On Kuchlak's edge, single tracks, equally suitable for wandering goats or militants on motorbikes, fade into a horizon the color of khaki, the Pashto word for dusty.
Across the border in Afghanistan, allied military commanders say they are putting increasing pressure on the Taliban leadership, most notably with a precision airstrike on Dec. 19 on a lonely road in Helmand province that killed Mullah Akhtar Mohammed Osmani, a senior deputy to Omar.
Tracking Omar "is certainly a priority, and this kind of success shows we have the potential to reach those at his level," said Maj. Dominic Whyte, a spokesman for North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces.
But if Omar has taken shelter in Pakistan, he may be out of the reach of coalition guns. An airstrike in October on a madrasa in the Pakistani tribal region of Bajur, which left dozens dead, triggered a heavy anti-American and anti-government backlash.
For that reason, a strike on a madrasa or village thought to be harboring Omar would be politically explosive unless American forces were absolutely certain that he, or a similarly high-profile target, was present.
Kuchlak, 10 miles north of Quetta, is a convenient way station for anyone looking to move surreptitiously in and out of the tribal belt.
One road out of town leads north to the Afghan border and continues to Kandahar. Another, with only a single police checkpoint in more than 100 miles, leads northeast to the tribal area of Waziristan, where Pakistani authorities have struck controversial truces with tribal elders that prevent troops from pursuing militants.
Because of Omar's longtime aversion to being photographed - a policy he was said to have adopted on religious grounds - few in the border hinterlands would be in a position to positively identify him. His missing right eye was his most recognizable characteristic, but allied military reports say he may have been fitted with a glass eye.
In any event, many observers believe that betrayal from within Omar's tribal milieu would be unthinkable. For one thing, it would violate the rigid Pashtun code of behavior, which places a premium on clan honor and the unquestioning protection of guests. For another, any traitor probably would pay with his life, and with the lives of his family.
Political questions
Omar's role in the Taliban leadership, whether as figurehead or active military commander, is widely debated among analysts.
Last week, before the beginning of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, Western news agencies received a statement from a purported spokesman for Omar, in which the Taliban leader boasted that his fighters would drive foreign troops out of Afghanistan.
The possibility that Omar has been sheltered in Pakistan raises thorny political questions for President Pervez Musharraf. Pakistan became a crucial U.S. ally after the Sept. 11 attacks, but the motives and loyalties of its government are under increasing Western scrutiny.
The Taliban movement, in its early days, was nurtured by Pakistan's intelligence service, and some observers doubt that Omar could have survived this long without its continued help. But others say no hard-and-fast proof has emerged that Omar is hiding on the Pakistani side of the border.
"He could be in Afghanistan, or he could be in Pakistan," said Rahimullah Yusufzai, a longtime Taliban watcher based in the Pakistani frontier city of Peshawar.
To admirers, the near-completeness of Omar's vanishing act after fleeing his gaudily appointed compound outside Kandahar in late 2001 is a triumphant rebuttal of the allies' characterizations of him as a simpleton.
"If that is the case," said Baraich, the amir, "then why has he been able to hide so well, and for so long?"
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