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July 24, 2007 

Afghanistan buries its last king
Tuesday, 24 July 2007, 12:20 GMT 13:20 UK BBC News
The funeral is under way in Afghanistan of the country's last king, Mohammad Zahir Shah, who died on Monday aged 92.

Flags are at half mast during three days of mourning for the former monarch, who returned from exile in 2002, 29 years after being deposed.

Representatives from all over the world are attending the ceremony for the man known as the father of the nation.

Meanwhile, there has been fresh violence in the country, with six Nato-led troops being killed.

Officials say that scores of Taleban rebels have also reportedly been killed in fighting.

Tributes

The BBC's Charles Haviland in Kabul says many see the former king as a symbol of the national unity since lost amid violence.

A guard of honour carried the former king's coffin draped in the Afghan flag to a viewing stand under a shade of pine trees at the palace grounds.

His body was being taken to a Kabul mosque before burial in a hilltop shrine above the city next to his late wife.

Television and radio stations in Afghanistan are broadcasting Islamic recitations interspersed with tributes to the ex-king.

These include old footage of Zahir Shah's 40-year reign, which began in the year Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany.

The new British Foreign Secretary, David Milliband, is among those attending. He flew into Kabul earlier on Tuesday on a pre-planned trip, his first official visit abroad in his new post.

Tributes to the former king have been sent from around the world.

US President George Bush described him as "a monumental figure in Afghan history".

Violence

Police and foreign troops in the capital, Kabul, stepped up security ahead of the state funeral, occupying high points which could be used by militants to mortar bomb the ceremony.

The Nato-led force says that four of the six troops who died in the latest fighting on Monday were victims of a bomb blast.

Not all the nationalities are known, but Norway says it has lost one special forces soldier.

The US-led coalition, which operates alongside the Nato-led force, says that it and Afghan troops killed more than 80 Taleban rebels in clashes in southern Helmand province.

Afghan officials have mentioned 30 insurgent deaths. The claims cannot be independently confirmed.

The Taleban have meanwhile further extended a deadline for demands to be met for the release of 23 South Korean hostages.
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Sad Afghanistan readies for last king's funeral
by Waheedullah Massoud Tue Jul 24, 4:18 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - Afghanistan prepared Tuesday for the funeral of its last king Mohammed Zahir Shah, as the war-torn country bids farewell to the man known as the "Father of the Nation".

Afghans were to hold prayer ceremonies across the conflict-torn country he led for 40 years, a period of stability and calm before decades of upheaval and virtually non-stop war.

Flags were at half mast across the country as President Hamid Karzai declared three days of mourning for the late king -- the last monarch to rule Afghanistan and two days of holidays for his funeral and prayer ceremonies.

His funeral and burial were to be held in the capital Kabul, where Karzai's government has been trying to consolidate its rule in the face of a bitter and bloody insurgency by the deposed militant Taliban.

The king, who died Monday aged 92, returned from 29 years of exile after the Taliban were toppled by a US-led invasion following the September 11, 2001 attacks, and was given the honorary title of "Father of the Nation".

Zahir Shah ended the centuries-old monarchy when he abdicated while on holiday in Italy in 1973, after hearing his former premier Mohammad Daud, who was also his cousin, had staged a coup.

All government offices and most businesses have closed for two days and the usually bustling streets of Kabul were quiet as hundreds of government workers in orange uniforms swept up.

Police and troops blocked key roads around the presidential compound where the late king lived and to the city's main mosque where the funeral will take place.

Afther the funeral Zahir Shah's body will be taken to a hilltop mausoleum overlooking Kabul where he will be buried beside his father, king Nadir Shah who was shot dead in 1933, and his wife Homaira, who died in 2002.

The mourning country expects ministerial level guests from Pakistan, India, Tajikistan, Canada and Italy, along with the Aga Khan, the billionaire spiritual leader of the world's Ismaili Shia Muslims, officials said.

Afghan television channels have replaced their usual shows with Koranic recitations plus shows featuring analysis of the king's life and personality.

Tributes have also come in from around the world, with UN chief Ban Ki-moon saying that the international community was grateful to him for giving up claims to the monarchy in favour of a republican government.

"Zahir Shah was a monumental figure in Afghan history, and his life spanned vast changes in that country's political system," US President George W. Bush said in a statement released by the White House.

He said the king had "continued to play an important part in the life of his country" after returning to Afghanistan as an "ordinary citizen" in 2002, shortly after the Taliban's ouster.

The militants said the king had "enjoyed a lot of credibility" before he returned to the country.

Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Gordon Brown also expressed sadness.

India said it would mark his death by lowering its national flag Tuesday on state buildings and diplomatic missions worldwide.
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Security tight ahead of Afghan ex-king's funeral
By Sayed Salahuddin Tue Jul 24, 2:42 AM ET
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan and foreign troops beefed up security in Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, on Tuesday ahead of the state funeral for the country's last king, Mohammad Zahir Shah, who died at the age of 92, officials said.

Several thousand Afghan forces and hundreds of NATO and the U.S.-led coalition soldiers were involved in tightening security in Kabul, which has seen an increased number of suicide attacks by resurgent Taliban rebels in the last two years.

The focus was the airport where foreign dignitaries will arrive to attend the state funeral on Teppe Maranjan, a hill overlooking Kabul where several royal family members are also buried.

President Hamid Karzai has declared a three days of mourning and ordered flags flown at half mast for the man who ruled Afghanistan for 40 years before being overthrown in a bloodless coup by his cousin in 1973.

That put an end to the most peaceful era of the country in its recent history and since then Afghanistan has seen a succession of coups, wars and foreign military interventions that cost millions of lives and devastated towns, cities and villages.

Called as the "father of the nation" and seen as a symbol of national unity among the fractious nation, Zahir Shah returned from 29 years of exile in 2002 to live out his last years as an ordinary citizen.

He was regarded as a shrewd politician who managed to balance Cold War rivals and later served as advisor to Karzai.

The former king died in his bed after months of illness on Monday.

Zahir Shah came from a long line of ethnic Pashtun rulers and was the last monarch of a dynasty established in 1747.

The former king's reign is remembered as one of the most tranquil periods of Afghanistan's turbulent history.

Some Afghans look back with nostalgia at Zahir Shah's rule, but others saw him as an ineffective, weak ruler.
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British FM arrives in Afghanistan: Foreign Office
LONDON (AFP) - Britain's Foreign Secretary David Miliband arrived in Kabul Tuesday for his first visit in the post to Afghanistan, his office in London said.

In a statement Miliband, less than one month into the job, said he had travelled to Afghanistan to underline Britain's commitment to helping the country in its post-Taliban era and helping improve security.

He also said he was there "to listen and to learn about what I believe to be a set of challenges of unusual severity and extraordinary complexity".

"And... I am here to explain what Britain can do, and what we can't do, for the Afghan people and their country," he added.

"I will be setting out the achievements so far, the challenges we face, and the international response to these challenges and how to improve it."

On arrival in Kabul, Miliband also paid tribute to former Afghanistan's last king Mohammed Zahir Shah, who died Monday aged 92.

"He played a unique role in helping to restore the unity of the Afghan people and Afghanistan's democratic values," he added.

Britain has about 7,000 troops in Afghanistan, rising to 7,700 within months, as part of the UN-sanctioned, NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

Most are based in the south of the country and are involved in some of the fiercest fighting against Afghanistan's former hardline Islamist rulers the Taliban.

The British government last week endorsed a House of Commons Defence Committee report that criticised some NATO countries for not sending more troops to Afghanistan.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has pledged continued support to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and has resisted growing calls for troops to be withdrawn because of mounting British fatalities.
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Miliband to encourage Afghan security
Tue Jul 24, 2007 11:31AM BST By Katherine Baldwin
KABUL (Reuters) - The foreign secretary, David Miliband, landed in Afghanistan on Tuesday to encourage President Hamid Karzai's efforts to improve law enforcement and tackle corruption as British troops battle Taliban rebels.

On his first trip outside Europe since Prime Minister Gordon Brown promoted him to the post last month, Miliband will discuss how Karzai can build government capacity and extend his remit into Afghanistan's tribal areas, officials said.

Miliband's presence in Afghanistan so soon into Brown's new administration is designed to reassure Afghans their country is high on Britain's agenda and London's commitment is for the long haul, Miliband told reporters en route to Kabul.

He will also deliver Britain's core message to Karzai.

"Our agenda is no secret," he said. "It is to promote economic development, to squeeze the space in which terrorist groups can develop, tackle the narcotics problem, (and) promote good government and democratic institutions."

The two men will also discuss progress in fighting the Taliban and al Qaeda-linked insurgents who are especially active in the south and east, as well as counter-narcotics strategy.

Britain, which has 7,100 troops in Afghanistan and a large financial commitment in development aid, is only too aware of the consequences of failure of NATO's mission there and of efforts to extend democracy across the country.

Failure could turn Afghanistan into a breeding ground for al Qaeda militants and have a knock-on effect on Pakistan and potentially Iran, British officials say.

BIG CHALLENGES
In one of his final speeches last month, former Prime Minister Tony Blair warned Afghanistan risked being overwhelmed by the same anti-Western violence that has torn up Iraq.

"Afghanistan embodies some of the biggest challenges for foreign policy," Miliband said.

"The challenges and problems are manifold," he said, but added it was important not to slip into fatalism about Afghanistan's prospects.

With the attempted bombings in Britain last month still fresh in mind, Miliband will also urge Karzai to work more closely with Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf in order to stop the Taliban and other militants sheltering and training along the lawless border between the two countries.

Miliband's planned visit coincides with three days of mourning for former Afghan King Mohammad Zahir Shah who died on Monday, aged 92.

Miliband plans to attend Zahir Shah's funeral, to hold talks with Karzai and meet Afghan and British officials.

Last week, a British parliamentary committee highlighted a series of concerns about progress in Afghanistan, saying there were worrying signs the Taliban were growing stronger and that Afghan police and armed forces lacked training.

It also said the 36,000-strong ISAF mission needed reinforcements to battle the Taliban and al Qaeda militants that were expanding their influence in the south.

Britain leads NATO forces in the restive Helmand province in southern Afghanistan.
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Bush mourns last Afghan king as 'monumental figure'
Mon Jul 23, 6:53 PM ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush mourned Afghanistan's last king Mohammed Zahir Shah, who died Monday aged 92, as a "monumental figure" in his country's history.

"(First Lady) Laura (Bush) and I are saddened by the death of Mohammed Zahir Shah," Bush said. "On behalf of the American people, Laura and I extend our condolences to Mohammed Zahir Shah's family and to the people of Afghanistan."

In a statement released by the White House, Bush said "Zahir Shah was a monumental figure in Afghan history, and his life spanned vast changes in that country's political system."

The US president said Zahir Shah had "continued to play an important part in the life of his country" after returning to Afghanistan as an "ordinary citizen" in 2002, shortly after US forces ousted the Taliban Islamist militia.

"Zahir Shah supported the goal of a representative and freely elected government in his homeland, and he encouraged Afghanistan toward democracy and stability," Bush said.

In expressing her condolences, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Zahir Shahs decision to step aside as reigning king "reflected his understanding of the benefits of a democratic society in meeting the aspirations of the Afghan people for peace and reconstruction."

He fostered unity in Afghanistan and played an essential role in the democratic rebirth of his country, Rice said.
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India mourns demise of last Afghan king
Mon Jul 23, 3:31 PM ET
NEW DELHI (AFP) - India is to mark the death of the last Afghan monarch by lowering its national flag Tuesday on state buildings and diplomatic missions worldwide, the government said.

Mohammed Zahir Shah, 92, the last monarch of war-devastated Afghanistan, died in Kabul on Monday. The ex-monarch was rushed to India in 2004 for urgent medical treatment.

Two Indian leaders will represent the country at Shah's scheduled funeral in Kabul on Tuesday, the Indian foreign ministry said.
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Afghan governor rejects force to free Koreans
By Omar Subhani Tue Jul 24, 4:24 AM ET
GHAZNI, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Force will not be used to free 23 South Korean hostages held by Taliban rebels in Afghanistan and Afghan authorities are hopeful of a breakthrough later in the day, a provincial governor said on Tuesday.

The Taliban have extended a deadline to 1430 GMT on Tuesday, after which they said they would start killing the hostages if South Korea did not agree to withdraw its 200 troops from Afghanistan and Kabul did not free Taliban prisoners.

The Christian hostages were seized from a bus in Ghazni province on the main highway south from the capital.

The militants have threatened that any use of force by government troops surrounding the kidnappers would put the lives of the 18 women and five men at risk.

Talks with the Taliban through tribal elders were ongoing and the government was hopeful of progress by late Tuesday, Ghazni governor Mirajuddin Pathan told Reuters.

"We are hopeful that this issue to be finalized today through talks. By no means will military operations be used," he said.

The group holding the hostages had conflicting and confusing demands, but they included the withdrawal of Korean troops, he said. Seoul has said its contingent of military engineers and medics will leave Afghanistan as planned at the end of this year.

Asked about the Taliban demand for the release of their prisoners, Pathan said the group had not come up with any list of names and could not say whether the Afghan government would give in.

Foreign ministry spokesman Sultan Ahmad Baheen also spoke about progress. "There has been progress made, but I can't give you any details, because it will jeopardize the lives of hostages and our ties with the rest of the world," he said.

A group of some 150 people demonstrated in the city of Ghazni on Tuesday demanding the safe release of the hostages.

RISE IN VIOLENCE
Most of the Koreans are in their 20s and 30s, and include nurses and English teachers. A delegation of Korean diplomats has come to Afghanistan to aid the negotiations.

It is the largest abduction of foreigners in the Taliban campaign to oust the Afghan government and eject foreign troops.

The Koreans were seized a day after the Taliban kidnapped two Germans engineers and five Afghans from a neighboring province southwest of Kabul.

One of the Germans has died, apparently killed by his captors, while the other and four Afghans are still in captivity. The fifth Afghan managed to escape.

The Taliban are demanding Berlin withdraws its 3,000 soldiers serving with NATO forces in the country.

The abductions coincide with a rise in violence in the past 18 months, the bloodiest period since U.S.-led and Afghan forces overthrew the Taliban in 2001.

The Taliban have kidnapped a number of foreigners and Afghans in recent years. The group has killed some of the foreign and Afghan hostages, but has released others in exchange for Taliban prisoners or the payment of ransom.

The Afghan government came under harsh criticism at home and abroad for freeing a group of Taliban in return for the release of an Italian journalist in March.

It had vowed never to give in to Taliban demands.

Neither Germany nor South Korea has shown any sign they might give in to Taliban demands and pull out their troops, nor has Kabul indicated this time that it will release Taliban prisoners.

But the kidnappings risk weakening public support for military involvement among the 37 NATO nations contributing forces to Afghanistan.

(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi)
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Elders talk with Taliban about hostages
By AMIR SHAH, Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan elders and clerics were trying to negotiate with militants holding 23 South Korean hostages in central Afghanistan a day after a purported Taliban spokesman said the hard-line militia had extended its deadline for their lives until Tuesday evening.

The South Korean Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said it asked the Afghan military to refrain from conducting operations near the location where the hostages were believed to be held out of concern the kidnappers could be provoked.

Villagers in Ghazni Province held a rally demanding that the hostages be released, said Mohammad Zaman, the deputy provincial police chief. Some carried banners and shouted slogans calling for the Koreans to be freed, he said. An AP Television News reporter saw 100 to 150 villagers demonstrating.

"We want the Taliban to release them, because they are guests," Zaman said. "They are in Afghanistan and we want them to be safe."

A five-member delegation from Ghazni province traveled to a remote area of Qarabagh district Tuesday to try to secure the Koreans' freedom, said Khwaja Mohammad Sidiqi, the local police chief.

"Our negotiations are continuing," said Khial Mohammad Husseini, a lawmaker representing Ghazni province in Afghanistan's parliament. "I hope that today we will get a good result."

On Monday, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, who claims to speak for the Taliban, said the militants extended the deadline another day after the Afghan government refused to release any of the 23 Taliban prisoners the insurgents want freed.

Though some of Ahmadi's statements turn out to be true, he has also made repeated false claims, calling into question the reliability of his information.

The militants have pushed back their ultimatum on the Koreans' fate at least three times. Afghan officials in Ghazni province have met the militants in person and are also negotiating over the phone, but little progress appears to have been made so far.

The deputy interior minister, Abdul Khaliq, meanwhile, said Monday Afghanistan was not prepared to make a deal "against our national interest and our constitution," though he did not explicitly rule out freeing any prisoners.

The South Korean hostages, including 18 women, were kidnapped on Thursday while riding on a bus through Ghazni province on the Kabul-Kandahar highway, Afghanistan's main thoroughfare.

The South Korean church the abductees attend has said it will suspend some of its volunteer work in Afghanistan and stressed its members were involved in medical and volunteer aid — not Christian missionary work.

South Korea has about 200 troops serving with the 8,000-strong U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, largely working on humanitarian projects. They are scheduled to leave Afghanistan at the end of 2007.

Ahmadi also said the militants are still holding one German and four Afghan hostages, despite Ahmadi's claims Saturday that those hostages had been shot and killed.

He said the hardline militia were demanding the release of 10 Taliban prisoners in exchange for the German and Afghans. Originally, five Afghans were being held hostage, but one of them, the brother of Afghanistan's Parliament speaker Arif Noorzai, "escaped" from Taliban custody, Ahmadi said.

Francesc Vendrell, the EU representative for Afghanistan, said officials are not convinced the Taliban is actually holding the German and the Afghans. Police have suggested a separate criminal group may be holding the five.
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Six NATO troops killed in Afghanistan
Tue Jul 24, 1:20 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - Six NATO troops have been killed in Afghanistan, where around 60 Taliban rebels were also reported dead in two days of fighting amid a surge of violence blamed on the Islamic hardliners.

The militants, leading a mounting insurgency since they were toppled from power by a US invasion after the September 11 attacks, also threatened to kill 23 South Korean hostages by sundown on Tuesday.

In two days of fighting that ended Monday in Helmand province, the heartland of the opium fields that reportedly fund much of the Taliban's operations, around 50 of the rebels were killed, the US-led coalition said.

Fighting erupted on Sunday when would-be Taliban suicide bombers drove an explosives-filled car towards the troops near the village of Shaban, while rebels also opened fire from two nearby compounds.

Later in the day the insurgents tried but failed to shoot down a coalition aircraft, the statement said.

"As the battle continued into early morning (Monday), more than four dozen insurgents had been confirmed killed by ANA (Afghan National Army) at the scene," said the statement.

The statement said there were no civilian casualties from the two-day clash, but accused the Taliban of "deliberately" hiding and firing from within civilian houses.

Elsewhere another 14 "enemies of peace and stability" died in neighbouring Zabul province in a 10-hour-long clash, the interior ministry said.

The victims included what the statement described as a known Taliban commander and six Pakistani nationals. Kabul accuses Pakistan of sponsoring the Taliban insurgency.

On Monday the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said six of its soldiers had died in Afghanistan.

A roadside bomb killed four in the east, and injured another soldier, as their vehicle passed by.

The two others were killed in separate incidents in the south and east. Their nationalities were not immediately released by officials.

But the Norwegian army in Oslo said one of its special forces troops was killed when militants opened fire on a patrol Monday in Logar province, near the capital Kabul.

The latest casualties brought the number of international troops serving under ISAF and a separate US-led coalition killed this year to 118. The bulk of the casualties are Americans.

ISAF has a 37-nation force of more than 37,000 soldiers while the separate US-led anti-terrorism coalition has around 14,000 members in Afghanistan.
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Dozens dead as Afghans secure key road
KABUL (AFP) - Afghan security forces reopened a key highway after intense fighting with Taliban rebels, as violence around the country left nearly 50 people dead, including six NATO soldiers, officials said Tuesday.

The militants, leading a growing insurgency since they were toppled from power by a US invasion after the 9/11 attacks, also threatened to kill 23 South Korean hostages by sundown on Tuesday and said a German captive was very sick.

Two policemen and 26 Islamist fighters were killed on Monday during an operation to clear the main road from the southern province of Kandahar -- the birthplace of the Taliban movement -- to neighbouring Uruzgan, police said.

The road had been seized by the militants a few days earlier. It was now "open and secure", highway police deputy commander Mohammed Wali told AFP.

In another incident Afghan army soldiers killed 13 "terrorists" on Monday in a sweep-up operation in Kandahar, the defence ministry said in a statement.

"Their bodies were left on the battlefield," it said.

The fighting added to the growing death toll from a bloody three days in Afghanistan. Another 60 Taliban rebels were earlier reported dead in other clashes, mostly in the country's southern opium poppy heartland.

The drug is believed to fund much of the Taliban's operations.

Overnight the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said six of its soldiers had died in Afghanistan on Monday.

A roadside bomb killed four in the east, and injured another soldier, as their vehicle passed by. The two others were killed in separate incidents in the south and east.

Their nationalities were not immediately released by officials.

But the Norwegian army in Oslo said one of its special forces troops was killed when militants opened fire on a patrol Monday in Logar province, near the capital Kabul.

The latest casualties brought the number of international troops serving under ISAF and a separate US-led coalition killed this year to 118. The bulk of the casualties are Americans.

ISAF has a 37-nation force of more than 37,000 soldiers while the separate US-led anti-terrorism coalition has around 14,000 members in Afghanistan.

Southern Afghanistan has been the worst hit by a wave of Taliban violence which has claimed thousands of lives in the nearly six years since the hardliners were forced from power.

Meanwhile across the border in Pakistan a top Taliban militant and former Guantanamo inmate from Pakistan's rugged tribal areas was killed by that country's security forces, officials said.

Abdullah Mehsud was wanted for the 2004 kidnap of two Chinese engineers near the Afghan border. One of the hostages died in a bungled rescue mission.

Pakistani officials said he was involved in cross-border attacks on ISAF and coalition forces in Afghanistan. Kabul has accused Islamabad of failing to tackle insurgents on its soil -- and in some cases of sponsoring them.
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US Senators want to "finish job" in Afghanistan
By ANI Tuesday July 24, 04:30 PM
Washington, July 24 (ANI): Concerned by the resurgence of the Al Qaeda in Western Pakistan bordering Afghanistan, US policymakers have expressed a keenness to "finish the job" that began with the initiation of War on Terror post-9/11.

In a talk show on Fox News on Sunday, Democrat Senator Evan Bayh, who is a key member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the National Intelligence Estimate indicated that the central front in the War on Terror is Pakistan and Afghanistan, rather than Iraq, as considered earlier.

"We've got to finish the job in Afghanistan. We were attacked from there. And Pakistan is where the Al Qaeda leadership is reconstituting itself today," Bayh added.

Over the issue of the US pursuing military operations in the western border of Pakistan to root out Al Qaeda from there, Bayh said the US Administration should be 'more aggressive' in this regard. However, he cautioned that it should not in any way undermine the authority of the Pakistani Government. "We can use some other means - covert means, that sort of thing - but you've got to be careful, because if it is clear that we're going into their national territory, we run the risk of undermining a regime that has been one of our allies in this struggle,' he said.

Another Senator and member of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, Kit Bond said that the western areas of Pakistan are "not an easy place, even for the military of the Government of Pakistan", adding, "We work in co-operation with them (Pakistanis). And if we knew precisely where Osama bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahiri were, action would be taken. And I am confident of that."

"We work with our allies based on who is in power. While many of these countries are not our ideal Jeffersonian democracy, we can't expect them to meet all of our standards. We're pretty sloppy in some areas ourselves," Senator Bond added.

Meanwhile, Pakistan has rebuffed the US offer for air support during its operation against the Al Qaeda elements in its North Western Frontier Province.

Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, had disclosed the offer of US military and intelligence assistance on Friday. (ANI)
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Germany May Send More Trainers for Afghan Police, Lawmakers Say
By Andreas Cremer
July 24 (Bloomberg) -- The German government may step up its commitment to training Afghan police forces, setting aside civilian abductions and mounting voter opposition to any deeper involvement in the country, according to coalition lawmakers.

``We need to do more and should increase our current contribution to training police forces,'' Karl Lamers, deputy chairman of the defense committee in the Bundestag, or German parliament, said by phone yesterday. ``As critical as security conditions may look at the moment, this is an important mission we have to fulfill,'' the Christian Democrat lawmaker said.

Chancellor Angela Merkel meets with Tom Koenigs, head of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan, in Berlin today. They will discuss how steps to rebuild the country and defeat Taliban insurgents can be co-ordinated ``more effectively,'' the chancellor said on July 22.

The meeting takes place amid a heightened focus in Germany on Afghanistan after the kidnap of two German engineers. One of them was found dead with gunshot wounds to his body, the Foreign Ministry said yesterday. Merkel has said Germany will not be blackmailed into pulling its forces out of the country, dismissing a reported Taliban statement that both hostages would be killed unless Germany ends its military engagement.

``I'd like to make this unequivocally clear: We must increase our training capacities in qualitative and quantitative terms,'' Rainer Arnold, defense spokesman for Merkel's Social Democrat coalition partners, said yesterday in an interview.

`More Than Limited'

As Germany continues to keep its forces out of Taliban strongholds in southern and eastern Afghanistan, it should assume ``leading responsibility'' for training security staff in the northern provinces, Arnold said. Germany should also consider providing ``more than limited help'' to logistical efforts in southern Afghanistan, he said.

The hardening attitude among coalition lawmakers comes amid a flurry of diplomatic activity to try to secure the release of the second German hostage, presumed to have been taken captive on July 18 in Wardag province, west of the capital Kabul.

The German government, which has deployed more than 3,000 troops in Afghanistan to help combat the Taliban, said last month that its military and humanitarian involvement in the country was generating a higher threat from terrorism both in Afghanistan and at home. About 500 German civilian aid workers are also in Afghanistan.

Security `Championed'

Merkel told ARD television on July 22 that Germany's security ``is being championed'' outside its national borders, calling on lawmakers to renew troop deployments in Afghanistan, currently in the country under three separate mandates, each of which must be renewed by Oct. 12. ``Reconstruction requires security,'' Merkel said.

One or two more German battalions would mark a ``wonderful addition'' to current security operations in Afghanistan, U.S. General Dan K. McNeill, commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's International Security Assistance Force, told ARD television yesterday.

``I can only ask the Germans to consider the wonderful effect its small contingent of troops has had in the north and how much more effective it would become through a few more German soldiers,'' McNeill said.

Still, much of the German public, sensitive to military deployments after more than half a century of pacifism following the experiences of World War II, remains to be convinced.

Sixty-eight percent of Germans oppose their country's military engagement in Afghanistan, an Emnid poll of 1,000 people for N24 television showed. No more than 29 percent of respondents back the mission, according to the survey of May 2.

Germany took the lead on training Afghan police when western governments pledged support for the U.S.'s anti-terror policies following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Italy pledged to help restore Afghanistan's legal structures while the U.K. focused on combating the drugs trade.

In the five years since Germany's first deployed its forces, more than 4,300 police apprentices have graduated from the Kabul-based academy, co-run by Germany, while about 14,000 policemen have been trained, according to the Interior Ministry.
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New Afghan Commandos Take to the Frontlines
by Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson NPR Morning Edition, July 23, 2007 ·
The first battalion of Afghan commandos trained by American Special Forces will graduate in Kabul this week.

Officials say this class of army commandos will be the best equipped yet to tackle insurgents who are increasingly using al-Qaida-style tactics to destabilize Afghanistan.

The commandos are part of a push by NATO countries to get Afghans to take charge of a war that experts say shows no signs of ending.

Simulated Attacks

At a former al-Qaida training camp just outside of Kabul, Afghan soldiers fire volleys of blanks charge over sandy hills toward a crumbling building. Their target is a group of mock Taliban fighters with a stash of weapons and mound of fake heroin.

The simulated raid quickly melts into mass chaos. Once inside the building, everyone starts yelling. The soldiers in green berets fire at anything that moves, and many are unsure of where to go and what to do next.

A half-hour later, the exercise is over, and the trainees assemble for a review of their performance by a team of U.S. Special Forces soldiers acting as mentors to the commandos-in-training.

The Afghan trainees hesitated before entering the premises, the U.S. team notes. They also failed to secure the building and ended up shooting at their own side.

Nevertheless, the Americans conclude the trainees did fairly well.

"With a little more time, a little more training, these guys will be pretty good, you know. Everything just takes time," says a Special Forces member who is not allowed to reveal his name.

Putting Afghans on the Frontlines

However, this group graduates tomorrow and will soon be handling missions that, since the fall of the Taliban, have fallen to the West to carry out.

With a growing resistance in some NATO countries to keeping soldiers in Afghanistan, the pressure is on to get the local army and police out in front in the war against insurgents and terrorists. That pressure is especially high these days, given a growing body count that could make this the bloodiest year in Afghanistan since 2001.

Experts say that putting more Afghan troops on the frontlines could ease what is perhaps the biggest obstacle for foreign troops in this war: ignorance of Afghan culture and customs.

Using Afghan troops eliminates the Taliban's ability to characterize their enemies as foreign invaders.

U.S. Maj. Gen. Robert Durbin, who for the past 18 months headed military training in Afghanistan, says the buildup of Afghan forces is in full swing.

"I won't speculate on a specific timeline that defines when what we call Afghan primacy will be in effect — when the Afghan national security forces will be in the lead and be able to effectively conduct counterinsurgency operations independently," Durbin says. "I will tell you that we have a program designed over the next 18 months to complete equipping and the training and the majority of facilities to build a 70,000-man Afghan National Army and an 82,000-man police force."

Many of the soon-to-be commandos believe that it will take four to five years for Afghan forces to be ready.

Trainee Capt. Abdul Mateen says Afghans desperately need Western help to rebuild their air force if they are going to beat the Taliban. He says Afghanistan's neighbors — in particular, Pakistan — must also be pressured by the international community to stop enemy fighters from pouring over the borders, though he admits that the three-month commando training is a major step.

The new weapons and equipment, such as the M-4 assault rifles, are an enormous improvement over the Kalashnikovs, according to Col. Fareed Ahmadi, the commando battalion commander.

"Actually, this was the dream of every Afghan soldier to have modern, good and capable equipment and weapons. My soldiers will conduct operations and do the job better than they did in the past," Ahmadi says.

Meanwhile, officials say American trainers will embed with the new commando battalion to ensure they are able to handle their new missions.
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AFGHANISTAN: Clashes over pastures threaten to ignite further conflict
KABUL, 24 July 2007 (IRIN) - Afghanistan will become embroiled in another violent armed conflict, this time between two ethnic groups, if grievances over access to grazing land are not immediately and appropriately addressed, warns the country’s human rights commission.

Since early June, clashes between Pashtun Kochis (nomads) and Hazara settlers of Behsood District in Afghanistan’s central Wardak Province over access to pastures have culminated in the death and injury of several people and displacement of hundreds, Afghan officials confirmed.

On 15 July, a provisional ceasefire agreement, brokered by the UN, was inked by both parties to the conflict, which demands Kochis temporarily withdraw from the area.

“The agreement is only a short-term call for a ceasefire which ignores the very long-term complexities of the problem,” remarked a UN official who was involved in multilateral efforts to end the conflict.

July 2007 marked the fifth post-Taliban year in which Kochis, who lead a nomadic life through animal husbandry, have engaged in deadly clashes with Hazaras from central Afghanistan.

Farid Hamidi, a commissioner at the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), blamed the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai for not doing enough to end the conflict once and for all.

“We have been witnessing this growing conflict every year,” Hamidi told IRIN on 22 July in Kabul.

Entrenched positions

IRIN interviewed representatives of both parties in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, who warned the conflict would gain momentum should the government fail to find an immediate, acceptable and viable solution to the problem.

Hashmat Ghani Ahmadzai, a leader of the Kochis’ tribal council, said access to pastures was a means of survival for Kochis who have been grazing livestock for centuries.

“Although this is an unjust and biased [ceasefire] agreement we will comply with it only for the time being,” said Ahmadzai, emphasising that next year Kochis would not compromise their livelihoods.

A Hazara representative, Kazem Waheedy, echoed a similar warning. “We will not let Kochis graze their flocks in Hazarajat [areas where most settlers are Hazara] any more,” said Waheedy, adding that the Hazaras would use all means to stop the intruders.

These are not empty threats, the AIHRC has found. The problem of access to grazing land has the potential to turn into a major conflict, the country’s human rights entity warns.

Blame

Hazaras and Kochis blame each other for turning disputes into violent clashes.

Hazaras and some media outlets in Kabul have accused Kochis of deliberately destroying schools, houses and farmland belonging to settlers in Behsood.

However, the findings of a joint mission - comprised of UN, AIHRC and government representatives, who visited the area - challenged reports of widespread destruction.

“Most of the reports have been exaggerated,” said Trevor Martin, head of the UN Assistance Mission (UNAMA) office for central Afghanistan, involved in management of the conflict.

Meanwhile, Kochi elders accuse the country’s human rights commission and other senior government officials of being biased, and having their own political agendas.

“Karim Khalili [second vice-president] has deliberately exacerbated the situation in his own political interests,” Parween Momand, a member of parliament in the lower house of the National Assembly, told IRIN.

A senior AIHRC official, though, rejected criticism of the watchdog’s role in collecting and disseminating facts on the Kochi-Hazara dispute.

Disputed documents

After the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan in December 1989 and subsequent chaos in the country, the movements of Kochi families were restricted to eastern and southern parts of the country where the Pashtuns are in a majority.

Many Kochis hold documents issued by former rulers of Afghanistan which indicate their right to graze flocks in some parts of the country, including central regions where most Hazaras live. Some Kochis also say they have legal documents proving ownership of large swaths of land in other provinces of the country.

According to UNAMA’s Trevor Martin, the Kochis’ desire to resume access to pastures in central regions has now been “rejected and resisted” by Hazara settlers.

Hazara people question all documents that allow Kochis to graze flocks in their region, saying the area does not have the capacity to accommodate outsiders any more.

Intolerance and mistrust between the two tribes, exacerbated by the current political situation, is manifest, analysts say.

“It is a very complex situation and it is not going to be solved easily… It will require a great deal of patience from both communities,” Martin said.

Nationwide solution needed

Both Kochis and Hazaras as well as others are demanding the government find a viable solution in accordance with the country’s constitution. Article 14 requires the government to “develop agriculture and animal husbandry… [and] improve the nomads’ livelihoods”.

Ali Samimi, a Hazara community leader in Kabul, said the problem of Kochis’ access to public grazing land is not limited to central Afghanistan. “There needs to be a nationwide solution to the problem,” Samimi said, adding all nomads should be given land to establish a settled life.

However, Kochis doubt that the mere distribution of land will radically transform their way of life.

“What can these destitute people [Kochis] do with a piece of land in a desert?” asked Shirani Lalak, a spokesman for Afghan nomads.

Kochis will also require alternative livelihoods and a basic infrastructure to provide crucial services if they are to give up their nomadic life, AIHRC said.

“We believe a viable solution will be a multidimensional approach - economic, political, social and legal - which should tackle the grievances of both sides,” Fareed Hamidi of AIHRC said.
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The world's worst suicide bombers
By Brian Glyn Williams Asia Times Online, Hong Kong
Suicide bombing statistics from Afghanistan alarmingly demonstrate that, if the current trend continues, 2007 will surpass last year in the number of overall attacks.

While there were 47 bombings by mid-June 2006, there were about 57 during the same period this year. Compounding fears of worse carnage to come, Afghanistan's most lethal single suicide bombing attack to date recently took the lives of 35 Afghan police trainers near Kabul.

When considering the expanding use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and the discovery of the first Iraqi-style explosively formed projectile (EFP) in Afghanistan in May (ie, a more deadly form of IED that has killed high numbers of soldiers in Iraq), it is understandable that critics of the war in Afghanistan discuss it in alarmist tones.

About 80% of US casualties in Iraq come from IEDs, and members of the US and Afghan military who were interviewed for this study believe that the absence of mass-casualty suicide bombings and EFPs are the two factors that made Afghanistan less dangerous than Iraq. A deeper investigation of the wave of suicide bombings that have swept the country in 2006 and 2007 paints a less bleak picture.

Missing the target
An analysis of the attacks carried out in the past two years reveals a curious fact. In 43% of the bombings conducted last year and in 26 of the 57 bombings traced in this study up to June 15 this year, the only death caused by the bombing was that of the bomber himself. This means that, astoundingly, about 90 suicide bombers in this two-year period succeeded in killing only themselves.

There was one period in the spring of 2006 (February 20 to June 21) when a stunning 26 of the 36 suicide bombers in Afghanistan (72%) killed only themselves. This puts the kill average for Afghan suicide bombers far below that of suicide bombers in other theaters of action in the area (Israel, Chechnya, Iraq and the Kurdish areas of Turkey).

Such unusual bomber-to-victim death statistics are, of course, heartening both for coalition troops - who have described the Afghan suicide bombers as "amateurs" - and for the Afghan people - who are usually the victims of the clumsy bombings.

These statistics also represent a uniquely Afghan phenomenon that warrants investigation. A part of the reason for the low kill ratio lies in the Taliban's unique targeting sets. As Pashtuns with a strong code (Pashtunwali) that glorifies acts of martial valor and badal (revenge), Afghan suicide bombers are more prone to hit "hard" military targets than callously obliterate innocent civilians in the Iraqi fashion. On the rare occasions where there have been high-casualty bombings of Afghan civilians, they tend to have been carried out by Arab al-Qaeda bombers. [1]

The Taliban's selective targeting is a calculated decision on the part of the Taliban shuras (councils) to avoid inciting the sort of anti-Taliban protests that led thousands in the Pashtun town of Spin Boldak to chant "Death to Pakistan, death to al-Qaeda, death to the Taliban" after a particularly bloody suicide bombing in that frontier city last year.

Taliban spokesman Zabiyullah Mujahed recently claimed, "We do our best in our suicide attacks to avoid civilian casualties. These are our Muslim countrymen, and we are sacrificing our blood to gain their freedom. Their lives are important to us, of course. But fighting with explosives is out of the control of human beings." Then he made an interesting admission that speaks to other factors that might explain the Afghan suicide bombers' failure rate. He stated, "We have a problem with making sure they attack the right targets, avoiding killing civilians."

Clearly, there is more to the Taliban bombers' stunning failure rate than simply "hard" targeting difficulties and an obvious reluctance to slaughter the Afghan constituency that the Taliban is trying to win over.

Members of the Afghan police, government and National Directorate of Security (NDS) who were interviewed about this trend during the months of April and May offered a surprisingly unanimous explanation for the Taliban bombers' poor showing. [2] They said it lay in the ineptitude of the people the Taliban were recruiting as fedayeen (suicide) bombers.

Afghan officials continually told stories of lower-class people who had been seduced, bribed, tricked, manipulated or coerced into blowing themselves up as "weapons of God" or "[Taliban leader] Mullah Omar's missiles". Afghan NDS officials also spoke of apprehended bombers who were deranged, retarded, mentally unstable or on drugs.

Such claims should, of course, be accepted with caution, for two reasons. First, the targets of suicide bombings are prone to speak in disparaging tones regarding the mental state and motives of those who carry out bombing attacks against them. They tend to describe them as mindless, insane, fanatical, drugged or brainwashed.

Second, in his groundbreaking work Understanding Terror Networks, Marc Sageman has refuted the long-held notion that suicide bombers are impoverished, voiceless dupes tricked into killing themselves. Rather, he has shown them to be politically and religiously motivated. They are conscious actors who, like the multilingual and educated team that carried out the attacks of September 11, 2001, do not need to be brainwashed.

Certainly, in the Afghan context, there are bombers who fit the Sageman profile. Several Taliban leaders have carried out bombings, and the al-Qaeda team that scrambled on short notice to launch the symbolically important mass-casualty bombing at Bagram Air Base during US Vice President Dick Cheney's February visit was clearly composed of "professionals" [3]

Nevertheless, interviews and field work conducted in Afghanistan for this study revealed considerable evidence that the "duped, bribed, brainwashed" paradigm applies to a growing percentage of the bombers being deployed in the Afghan theater. [4] Afghan police told of numerous incidents where citizens in Kabul reported finding abandoned suicide vests in the city. They seemed to signify a last-minute change of heart in several would-be bombers.

In one case, they told of a mentally deranged man who threw his vest at an Afghan patrol, assuming it would explode on its own. [5] Several of the bombers apprehended by the NDS were carrying mind-altering hallucinogens or sedatives, which they had been told to take to calm their fears during their last moments of life. Others, including a Taliban bomber who was arrested while pushing his explosives-laden car toward its target after it ran out of fuel, appear to be inept beyond belief. [6]

Recent media and think-tank reports have also mentioned the utilization as suicide bombers of an Afghan war invalid who was blind, another who was an amputee and one who was a disabled man whose only motive was to make money for his family. Coalition troops who have spoken of seeing bombers blow themselves up far from their convoys have characterized it as the act of drugged or mentally unstable bombers.

While this might explain some of the Afghan suicide bombers' failures, there also appears to be a financial motive behind several of the bombings that offers further explanation. United Nations representatives spoke of a bomber who entered a Kabul Internet cafe in 2005. Instead of setting off his bomb in the middle of the cafe where it would do the most damage, he went into a bathroom to set it off, killing only two people. [7] There are many such examples of Afghan suicide bombers seemingly with a conscience or reluctance to inflict mass casualties.The possibility that a number of them are doing it simply for payments for their families might explain this. [8]

Research in the Pashtun areas to the southeast of Kabul reveals an even more disturbing trend than the employment of suicide bombers who are mentally unsound, using drugs or working solely for money: the use of child bombers.

Afghanistan's child bombers
Villagers interviewed for this study - living in front-line provinces such as Khost, Paktika and Paktia - have reported that Taliban recruiters were active in their areas. Many parents have lost their young, impressionable sons to those who prey on them. [9]

Parents often learn of their tragic fates only when the Taliban arrive at their homes to hand out their sons' "martyrdom payments". Villagers are, of course, outraged by such tactics, but there is often little recourse in light of the Taliban's dominance in the countryside.

In one case, a powerful tribal chieftain in Khost province who discovered that his son had been recruited by Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani for a "martyrdom operation" managed to get him back (after threatening to attack the Taliban with his tribe); unfortunately, this is an exception, as is the recent case of a captured 14-year-old suicide bomber who was personally pardoned by President Hamid Karzai. The president announced, "Today we are facing a hard fact, that is, a Muslim child was sent to a madrassa [seminary] to learn Islamic subjects, but the enemies of Afghanistan misled him toward suicide and prepared him to die and kill." [10]

Such recruitment for madrassa training of young bombers is even more widespread on the Pakistani side of the border. There have been several widely reported instances of the Taliban recruiting schoolchildren to be suicide bombers in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and in North-West Frontier Province.

In one notorious instance, Taliban soldiers arrived at the Oxford High English medium school in Tank and began to recruit young boys by asking them to fulfill their "jihad duty" and engage in an "adventure". According to witnesses, "The militants came to town with a mission, and wanted to convert us to their cause. 'They said that jihad was obligatory and those who heed the call are rewarded,' the principal said. 'As many as 30 students from each of the four government schools in Tank enlisted.' A similar number have also joined from private schools. The ages of those taken are between 11 [and] 15 years."

According to one of the teachers involved, the students who were recruited without their parents' permission were subsequently trained as suicide bombers. The age of these bombers would explain why one of the courses in Taliban suicide camps teaches students how to drive a car.

In a similar case quoted by the United States' MSNBC cable network in March, two Pakistani teenagers who left school to train as suicide bombers without their parents' permission claimed, "We were told to fight against Israel, America and non-Muslims," said Muhammed Bakhtiar, 17, explaining why he wanted to become a suicide bomber. "We are so unhappy with our lives here. We have nothing. We read about jihad in books and wanted to join ... We wanted to go to the Muridke madrassa so we would have a better life in the hereafter."

While Mullah Nazir, a powerful Taliban leader in Pakistan's Waziristan provinces, recently made an unprecedented request for the Taliban to stop recruiting children, a recent video of a suicide-bomber ceremony in the region would seem to indicate that his appeal has been honored in the breach.

In the video that was obtained by the American Broadcasting Co (ABC), boys as young as 12 are shown "graduating" from a suicide-bombing camp run by Mullah Dadullah Mansour, the successor to his brother, the recently slain Mullah Dadullah.

As disturbing as this video is, it pales in comparison to the discovery Afghan security officials recently made in eastern Afghanistan. In an incident that caused tears of fury among villagers, a six-year-old street urchin approached an Afghan security checkpoint and claimed that he had been cornered by the Taliban and fitted with a suicide-bomber vest. They had told him to walk up to a US patrol and press a button on the vest that would "spray flowers". Fortunately, the quick-thinking boy instead asked for help, and the vest was removed.

While this case is obviously an extreme example, it fits the trend and certainly goes a long way in helping to explain why almost half of Taliban suicide bombers succeed in killing only themselves. Many Taliban bombers come from small backwater villages and have to be taught how to drive on strange roads, travel beyond their locale or country, and then hit fast-moving, armored coalition convoys with improvised explosives. Even at the best of times, suicide bombing is a task that involves considerable resolve, determination and focus, and a degree of intelligence. Clearly, such vital ingredients are often missing in the Afghan context, where many of the bombers appear to be as much victims as perpetrators.

Commenting on the bombers' failure rate, US military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Fitzpatrick explained the lack of ambiguity that US military personnel have about the bombers who commit suicide instead of suicide bombings. "Certainly there are a fair number of failed attempts, and that's okay. I hope they don't get better."

While some have engaged in relativism in efforts to compare the coalition's "collateral damage" losses from close air support to the Taliban's "collateral damage" from suicide bombing, the coalition clearly has the moral high ground when the enemy has resorted to deploying children as "living weapons".

Notes
1. The bomber who killed 20 people in a mosque in Kandahar in 2005 was an Arab. The bomber in the Spin Boldak bombing of 2006 that killed 26 civilians was also said to be an Arab, and the Taliban later denied responsibility for the unusually bloody bombing. Similarly, al-Qaeda leader Abu Laith al-Libi has been accused of being the mastermind behind the February large-suicide bombing at Bagram Air Field during Vice President Dick Cheney's visit that killed 22 civilians. Most recently, National Directorate of Security officials this month arrested an Arab member of al-Qaeda who was planning to use suicide bombers to assassinate Afghan officials.
2. Author interviews, Kabul, April 2007.
3. In one case, a mullah drove a vehicle-borne improvised device into a bus. Most recently, the Kunduz bombing of May was carried out by a mullah named Jawad from Baghlan province.
4. Marc Sageman's excellent work has more applications for elite, transnational al-Qaeda-style bombers than the impoverished, illiterate Afghans who seem to make up the majority of the bombers in recent years.
5. Author interview in National Directorate of Security headquarters, Kabul, April 2007.
6. Story relayed to the author by Craig Harrison, director of UN security in Afghanistan, United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) compound, Kabul, April 2007.
7. The media erroneously reported that the bomber had set the bomb off in the middle of the cafe.
8. As in other "zones of jihad", including Chechnya and Iraq, it appears that Arab financiers are offering payments ranging from US$11,000 to $23,000 for those who carry out bombings.
9. Author's findings while carrying out research in the region in April 2007.
10. This story was conveyed to the author in Gardez, Paktia province, by Tom Gregg of the UNAMA, on the morning after a suicide bomber hit the town. Local Pashtuns interviewed after the bombing called the attack "obscene" and "un-Islamic".

Dr Brian Glyn Williams is assistant professor of Islamic history at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth.

(This article first appeared in The Jamestown Foundation. Used with permission.)
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Kidnapping brings unwanted attention to Afghan Christians
By Chris Sands in Mazar-e-Sharif  Independent, UK 24 July 2007
The kidnapping of South Korean church volunteers by the Taliban has sparked vigils in Seoul, and shone the spotlight on Afghanistan's small, underground Christian community.

In Mazar-e-Sharif, home to one of Islam's most revered shrines, Ahmedi, 33, says he would be killed instantly if his faith were exposed. In this staunchly traditional society, conversion from Islam remains reviled by many Afghans - and by government officials.

"If the war had not happened, if the Americans and foreigners had not come to Afghanistan, we would not have this freedom and we would not have this office," says Ahmedi, who was fearful of giving his full name.

The "office" is a community centre set up by a Christian charity, and Ahmedi is one of 100 or so Christians living in the northern city.

Rumours abound here that many aid organisations are used as a cover by foreigners to indoctrinate people into Christianity. And in Ahmedi's case, there is an element of truth - he converted from Shia Islam three years ago after meeting an American evangelical. Now his wife and four children are also Christian, and he is the priest of a local church. He has even helped convert other Afghans.

The 23 South Koreans were kidnapped last week at gunpoint from a bus in Ghazni province, and belong to the Saemmul Church in Bundang, which says they are working as volunteer nurses and English teachers.

However, boasts from some evangelical church leaders in South Korea about unofficially sending missionaries to Afghanistan has muddied the water between Christian volunteers doing humanitarian work, and those whose primary mission is to seek converts overseas.

In Mazer-e-Sharif, a recent convert called Abdullah recalled how his family reacted when he revealed his change of faith. "When I received Jesus, I went to my house and I didn't say prayers any more like other Muslims," he said. "One night my father asked me to get up and pray, but I told him I can't. He asked me why, and I told him I was a Christian. He started to fight with me."

Abdullah's parents have come to accept his religion, but his oldest brother continues to ostracise him, and most other people do not even know he has converted. "If I go out and say I am a Christian they will curse me, hit me and kill me," he said, matter of factly.

Last year Abdul Rahman, a Christian convert, was arrested by police and threatened with the death penalty until the Italian government offered him asylum. His case is cited by many Afghans as evidence that President Hamid Karzai is a puppet of foreign powers.

Mazar-e-Sharif is home to the shrine of Hazrat Ali, a cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Mohamed. According to Ahmedi, there are also two large churches and a number of smaller ones in the city, all hidden inside houses and offices.

Meanwhile, a group of foreign missionaries continues to work in the area and in other northern provinces. Taliban militants say the South Korea church volunteers are in good health, but they have threatened to kill them unless Seoul withdraws its troops from Afghanistan and the Afghan government releases Taliban prisoners. Yesterday the deadline for their lives was again extended.

Despite the dangers they face, Afghan Christians refuse to give in to the fear that they will be found out. "If I am afraid I will never receive Jesus," said Abdullah.
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Retreat not being sounded just yet
Preparing Afghan Police Is Essential, Commander Says
Don Martin National Post Tuesday, July 24, 2007
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -If Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor is correct and the Canadian mission here is slowing, shrinking or changing its focus as the countdown lurches toward a possible February, 2009, pullout, it'll be news in Kandahar, where all signs are pointing to a military and redevelopment buildup.

New air-conditioned Leopard tanks are expected next month, 16 military vehicles to better detect land mines are scheduled for arrival this fall, and the ground floor of a frantic expansion at Canada's reconstruction base in Kandahar City is filling up with new staff even before work on the top level is complete.

The lone Foreign Affairs bureaucrat here will soon be replaced by five officials as a signal that Afghanistan has become a hefty diplomatic priority. The number of Canadian teams deployed to mentor and train Afghans to govern themselves more effectively has quadrupled.

The Canadian International Development Agency is finally moving beyond its most visible project -- putting a Maple Leaf stamp on garbage cans lining the deadliest suicide bombing stretch of highway in the country -- to quietly backing a myriad self-help initiatives for Afghans.

It doesn't exactly look like a retreat being sounded, even if the death toll in the country is rising. Yesterday, four U.S. soldiers on combat patrol were killed by a roadside bomb in eastern Afghanistan and two other NATO troops died in other parts of the country.

As Brigadier-General Tim Grant makes clear, Canada's most important work here won't be done for another three years at best. The key to winning conditions for Canada's departure are the cops, an ill-prepared force of underpaid, underemployed youngsters being trained by Canadians to bring law and order to the daily chaos and confusion of Afghan life.

"In my mind, our mission now has everything to do with the Afghan National Police," the base commander said in an exit interview as he prepares to hand over control to the Van Doos deployment from Quebec. "It will take three years, maybe longer, to give them the professionalism and confidence needed to be that front line of defence and base of governance."

Brig.-Gen. Grant, who bears an eerie physical resemblance to B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell, insists the job can't be declared done until Afghanistan has a clean police force to call its own. Right now, all they have is a corrupt, unreliable and often AWOL force, particularly during poppy harvesting season -- which creates the bizarre optics of police working the fields to get illegal opium to market.

"Our aim is not to be the lead of combat operations. That is a role for the Afghan army," Brig.-Gen. Grant told me after a mad dash down Kandahar's main highway to a medal ceremony.

"Can they do that by themselves right now? No. Are they getting closer day by day? They sure are. So what we'll see over time is a change in the weight of our effort, allowing us take our expertise and abilities and focus them on areas where we can make a difference."

Brig.-Gen. Grant's partial to an initiative called the Provincial Reconstruction Team, which sends soldiers into villages armed with well-paying contracts for digging ditches or installing wells. The idea is that Afghans learn to improve their own lives, instead of increasing their reliance on foreign aid.

Yet, Brig.-Gen. Grant has a hard spin to turn his rotation's list of accomplishments into a parade of positives. He insists dramatic improvements in the Panjwaii district, the former Taliban stronghold west of Kandahar, will be its signature accomplishment.

Yet, the district has helped make this troop rotation the deadliest of the three since Canada redeployed to Kandahar. The six-month toll has been 22 soldiers -- and not one death came from actual combat against the Taliban. It's been all roadside and suicide bombs, each blast bigger than the last, closer to military checkpoints, and inflicting ever more catastrophic damage to armoured vehicles.

Politically, problems are on the rise, too. In some districts, tribal councils have fallen apart as locals find themselves unable to agree on new leadership. Scratch a local and you'll find an almost visceral distrust of the national government in Kabul festering under his skin.

And everywhere, all the time, security concerns dominate people's lives. The general himself had a near brush with disaster on Monday when a rocket flew over his convoy and hit a mountainside at the operating base visited by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the spring. It was hardly a reassuring sign of peace in a district considered a showcase of enhanced security.

Still, Brig.-Gen. Grant is quick to insist that progress is not a six-month process. "People were concerned the Taliban were going to take Kandahar City last summer, that it would fall and rest of the country would go with it," he says. "This year, in spite of suicide bombers and improvised explosive devices, people have confidence in their safety, traffic is way up and they are building everywhere you look."

He's got a point. There are signs of economic vibrancy and renewal in Kandahar City. But, then again, signs can be misleading. The indicators that Canada is here for the long term would appear to be sending off false readings of its future intent.

What Canada is building up today seems doomed to be taken down in 18 months, leaving Afghanistan's international force with a huge hole at the centre of its southern headquarters -- and a legacy of unfinished business to show for its soldier sacrifice.

NATIONALPOST.COM

For more on Canada's mission in Afghanistan, including the latest news, commentary and field sketches from Post graphics editor Richard Johnson, check out nationalpost.com/afghanistan
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Pakistani Taliban leader refuses to be taken alive
Tue Jul 24, 4:35 AM ET
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A Pakistani Taliban leader blew himself up to avoid arrest by government forces near the Afghan border on Tuesday, three years after his release from U.S. detention in Guantanamo Bay, officials said.

Abdullah Mehsud, 31, spent over 2 years in Guantanamo.

Shortly after his release in March 2004, Mehsud shot to prominence by kidnapping two Chinese engineers working in South Waziristan, a region known as a hotbed of support for al Qaeda and the Taliban.

"He was killed in a house in Zhob," Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said, referring to a district of southwest Baluchistan province neighboring Waziristan.

A counter-terrorism squad acting on a tip-off raided the house belonging to a senior official from the pro-Taliban Islamist party of Fazal-ur-Rehman, leader of the opposition in the National Assembly.

"We asked them to surrender but they opened fire," Mira Jan, the chief administrator for Zhob, told Reuters.

"The shooting lasted for about half an hour and then we heard a blast from inside the house."

Mehsud blew himself to avoid arrest, Jan said. Four other men were arrested.

Mehsud, who lost a leg in a landmine explosion a few days before the Taliban took Kabul in September 1996, was second-in-command of a Pakistani Taliban group headed by Baitullah Mehsud.

Baitullah Mehsud's followers have kept up the fight against

U.S., NATO and Afghan forces deep inside Afghanistan.

The elimination of Abdullah Mehsud comes hard on the heels of a series of clashes between security forces and militants in North Waziristan.

The army says it has killed at least 54 militants since Saturday evening, the same day U.S. President George W. Bush said he was "troubled" by intelligence reports suggesting al Qaeda was regathering strength in Pakistani tribal areas.

Bush said Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf had realized a peace pact struck with militants in North Waziristan 10 months ago had failed and was taking action.

In Bajaur, the most northeasterly of Pakistan's seven semi-autonomous tribal regions, militants executed two paramilitary soldiers, kidnapped on Monday.

Their bodies were found wrapped in plastic bags and dumped in a field near Khar, the main town in Bajaur.

In March, tribesmen in Bajaur gave the government assurances they would not shelter foreign fighters.

But Islamist militants in the lawless border region have launched several attacks on security forces to avenge the storming of a radical mosque in the capital, Islamabad, this month.

More than 180 people, mostly police and soldiers, have been killed in a spate of attacks, mostly in northwest Pakistan, since the operation against the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, complex was launched on July 3.

The government said 102 people were killed in the siege and the storming of the mosque on July 10.
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Pakistan rejects 'Bin Laden raid'
Monday, 23 July 2007 BBC News
Pakistan has responded angrily to suggestions from the United States that American forces might be sent into Pakistan to strike at Osama Bin Laden.

A senior US official has said he believed the architect of the 2001 suicide attacks on New York and Washington was in northern Pakistan. Pakistani FM Khurshid Kasuri said Bin Laden was not in the country.

A recent US intelligence report says al-Qaeda is intensifying efforts to put operatives into the US. The report says the nation is at a heightened risk of attack.

Analysts warn that al-Qaeda's leaders have found a "safe haven" in Pakistani tribal areas which has allowed them to regroup. US director of national intelligence Mike McConnell said recently he believed Bin Laden was in northern Pakistan, near the Afghan border.

President Bush's homeland security adviser Frances Townsend said that in the pursuit of Bin Laden, no options were off the table.

Pakistani foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri said he did not believe that the al-Qaeda leader was in Pakistan - and in any case, if the US shared its intelligence, Pakistan's army could do a better job.

Pakistan Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao said: "Our stance is that Osama Bin Laden is not present in Pakistan. "If anyone has the information he should give it to us, so that we can apprehend him," he was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency. President Pervez Musharraf last week vowed to root out extremists "from every corner of the country".
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Pakistan aid plan facing resistance - $300m requested for paramilitaries
By Farah Stockman, Boston Globe Staff  |  July 22, 2007
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is struggling to get congressional approval for millions of dollars in aid to a tribal paramilitary group in the semiautonomous region of Pakistan where Al Qaeda and the Taliban have gained such a foothold that they have been able to launch destabilizing attacks on both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The $300 million plan to transform Pakistan's colonial-era Frontier Corps into a modern fighting force is a crucial piece of a new, $2 billion US-Pakistani counterinsurgency effort designed to wrest the region from extremist militants.

But this new funding request has run into resistance, in part because of congressional restrictions on aid to nontraditional military groups, and also because questions have been raised about whether the tribesmen who make up the Corps are friends or foes of the United States, according to congressional sources and US officials.

State Department officials say the Corps, an 80,000-member law enforcement force traditionally used for border patrol and antismuggling activities, needs a massive training program, communication equipment, vehicles, and night-vision goggles to fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Until now, the US government has given the Corps only modest assistance for counternarcotic efforts.

Hundreds of Frontier Corps members have been killed or wounded in battles with militants in recent years, but there also are disturbing signs of conflicting loyalties inside the Corps. The group is led by experienced officers from the Pakistani Army, but its rank and file come from the very Pashtun tribes that have given the militants safe haven.

US soldiers in Afghanistan have reported observing some Corps members allowing Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters to cross the border at will and even welcoming them to rest at Corps guard posts. The Corps has also fired occasionally on the US-assisted Afghan Army. In May, a lone Corps member abruptly opened fire at a meeting with US and Afghan soldiers, killing an American and a Pakistani, and wounding eight others. He was killed in the shoot-out that ensued.

Daniel Markey, a Pakistan specialist who was a member of the State Department's policy planning staff on Pakistan from 2003 until January 2007, said the shooting was an "indication of the challenge that Pakistan will face in training the Frontier Corps."

"Sometimes their loyalties are uncertain," he said. But State Department officials say bolstering the Corps, in tandem with a plan to distribute nearly $2 billion in development aid over the next decade, is the best strategy to rid the impoverished region of extremists and win the support of the tribes.

"We think this has the greatest chance for success," said a State Department official who asked that his name not be disclosed because he is not a spokesman. "There are some real advantages with working with the Frontier Corps. They are local, [so] they can identify who else is local and who is an outsider. They have extensive networks that would take us decades to develop."

The debate over funding the Corps comes amid a wider debate about all aid to Pakistan. The Bush administration has pledged strong support for Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, but Musharraf's popularity has plummeted in recent months because of his dismissal of the country's chief justice and other actions that critics say are designed to keep him in power.

Musharraf, a general who came to power in a military coup, became a key US ally in the war on terror in 2001 after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Before the attacks, Pakistan's government cultivated an alliance with the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan, who had ancestral ties to the Pashtun tribes in Pakistan's border region. But after the attacks, Musharraf took sides with the United States, directing his intelligence agencies to help arrest key Al Qaeda suspects inside Pakistan and ordering his army into the tribal areas for the first time in Pakistan's history to search out Al Qaeda fighters.

The military incursion angered the fiercely independent local population. Last fall, after hundreds of Pakistani military casualties in that region, Musharraf announced a series of "peace agreements" with the tribes, withdrawing his forces to their barracks in exchange for a pledge by tribal leaders not to allow cross-border attacks on Afghanistan and not to shelter foreign fighters.

Markey said Pakistan used the peace deals to send operatives into the tribal areas to try to co-opt the Taliban militants and the tribal leaders, but that the strategy has been only "marginally effective." The latest National Intelligence Estimate concludes that Al Qaeda has regained its full strength in Pakistan's tribal areas.

Marvin Weinbaum , a former State Department intelligence analyst now at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, said the Pakistani attempts to reach out to militants in the tribal areas raised eyebrows in Washington, sparking a continuing debate about whether elements of Pakistan's intelligence services were renewing their old alliance with the Taliban.

In recent weeks, Musharraf ordered the military to return to abandoned checkpoints in the region, and militants declared the peace deals dead. Some Pentagon officials also are frustrated with Pakistan, seeing an increasing number of attacks on US and Afghan soldiers by militants who use Pakistan's tribal areas as a base.

Last September, President Bush questioned Musharraf about the situation in the tribal areas during a White House meeting. Musharraf responded that he needed time to develop a comprehensive plan to win popular support through development aid.

Since then, the Bush administration has embraced Musharraf's new plan, pledging $750 million in development aid over next five years to the tribal region, in addition to Pakistan's pledge of $1 billion over the next decade.

Richard Boucher , the assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, told reporters last week that Washington has also promised to help Pakistan fund its $300 million plan to reform the Frontier Corps, requesting $71.5 million from Congress this year for equipment such as communications devices, vehicles, and night vision goggles.

Congress has declined to fund the request because of insufficient details about how the money would be spent and worries about the Corps' loyalties, congressional aides said.

"There were concerns about who is the Frontier Corps -- what is this organization?' " said one adviser to Congress on South Asia who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak.

Administration officials have worked hard to allay these fears, arguing that while some Corps members might sympathize with militants among their fellow tribesmen, the main problem was that the Corps lacks the equipment and training to take them on, he said.

But a July 12 hearing before the House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs showed that some members of Congress remain skeptical about the billions in military aid that is already going to Pakistan.

"How do we in Congress justify to the American people writing checks for billions of dollars to a regime that may not be the partner against terrorism that the United States needs it to be?" Representative Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican, asked at that hearing.

Another problem with the funding request for the Frontier Corps is that Congress limits the kind of assistance that the Defense Department can give to a force that is not a part of a foreign military. The Frontier Corps is organized under Pakistan's Ministry of the Interior. But administration officials said they were optimistic that an exception would be granted.

Even if funding is approved, modernizing the Corps will be a challenge. Founded under British colonial rule, the Corps' history is scattered with stories of divided loyalties.

Chris Mason, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Advanced Defense Studies, said the plan was an important attempt to counter the rise of extremists who have driven moderate tribal leaders out of the region. But he warned that it might not be enough.

"The radicals may have become so strong and so numerous . . . it may be beyond the ability of the Pakistani military to suppress them," he said.
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Turning point in Afghanistan: Is Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf really going to take on al-Qaeda?
By Robert Sheppard, CBC News – Analysis July 23, 2007
It was not an auspicious beginning. At least 16 Pakistani soldiers were killed and more than a score wounded in two separate ambushes last week as Pakistan's military government finally moved to take on the Taliban, al-Qaeda and the unruly warlords sheltering in the virtually lawless territories bordering Afghanistan.

The attacks and the sporadic suicide bombings that reached even into the capital, Islamabad, were a vivid reminder of the many past failures when Pervez Musharraf's government attempted to eradicate the country's heavily armed warlords and their fundamentalist followers.

But they were also stark punctuation to the fact that Musharraf's 10-month-long "peace accord" with the frontier bosses of North and South Waziristan — a policy he had appeared to be staking his government's survival on — had fully unravelled.

However reluctantly (though with Washington's clear approval), Pakistan has now embarked on a kind of pincer movement against the Taliban and al-Qaeda remnants sheltering along the border areas with Afghanistan.

As it moves in from the south and east, the U.S. and NATO forces are expected to advance from the north and west, probably mostly through air strikes, in a giant squeeze play, or at least a battle on two distinct fronts.

How this will work out, of course, is anyone's guess. This is region that has been in an almost constant state of war for at least 30 years (many will say an eternity) and pretty much defeated all outsiders.
But Musharraf's move is nonetheless an important U-turn in the fight against extremism in that part of the world, not to mention a battle he has been trying desperately to avoid.

What's more, it coincides with two other related developments — the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate last week that raises the spectre of a resurgent al-Qaeda in these same border territories, and a British all-party report that seems designed to lay the groundwork for a longer, more involved NATO focus on Afghanistan. Taken together these may reflect a turning point in how the war in Afghanistan is to be waged.

Until just last week, Musharraf had been defending his ceasefire with the tribal chiefs and even talked about attempting to revive it after they called it off. The September 2006 pact was the deal by which Pakistan would pull its military out of the tribal regions in return for local leaders policing their own militants and reining in outsiders.

The deal had kept at least a partial lid on extremist violence in mainland Pakistan but it has also been blamed for a huge resurgence in al-Qaeda's fortunes in the territories. No less an authority than New York University's Barnett Rubin has stated that "The main centre of global terrorism is in Pakistan," by which he was referring to the tribal territories bordering Afghanistan. This was the theme amplified by last week's National Intelligence Estimate as well.

Within Pakistan, the trigger for the change of heart over the tribal areas pact was the government siege and eventual attack on Islamabad's controversial Red Mosque earlier this month, to rid it of several hundred armed extremists.

Many, if not most, of the young students who had been holed up in the mosque, exchanging fire with security forces, had come from the fundamentalist religious schools and mosques in the tribal regions, local observers said. The attack on the mosque, which eventually left more than 100 dead, unleashed a wave of anti-Musharraf violence and demonstrations in these remote areas and, so far at least, one spectacular suicide bombing in Islamabad itself.

The reaction in turn underscored the pincer movement Musharraf is facing on his own home front: journalists, judicial activists and pro-democracy groups had been demonstrating actively for some time now trying to ensure a peaceful transition from Musharraf's eight-year military rule, and limits on his power. Backing him had been many of the smaller, religious parties who he had been counting on to help extend the constitutional basis for his regime and who had direct links to the fundamentalists who are now turning against him.

Musharraf's reluctance to take on the fundamentalists directly is understandable from his point of view. He has survived at least three assassination attempts by extremists, he has not wanted to turn his army on his own people, and his senior intelligence and military staffs are, by many accounts, riddled with officers who are sympathetic to at least some of the aims of the Islamic fundamentalists.

What's more, though he has a nuclear-tipped military that is over half a million strong and, some say, is one of Pakistan's few truly national institutions, he may not have the right military tools — the helicopter gunships and air strike capabilities — to take on the Taliban and al-Qaeda in their tribal stronghold, senior U.S. intelligence officials have said.

Developing or borrowing those tools would likely mean a closer alliance with American, British or NATO forces to help take the fight inside Pakistan's territories, which is politically very problematic for a proudly Islamic country like Pakistan.

The NIE report
Another harbinger of change last week was the release of the National Intelligence Estimates, an annual event, by U.S. security officials.

This highly abbreviated summary of what the combined U.S. intelligence community feels is the biggest threat facing America these days received widespread news coverage because it raised the spectre of a resurgent al-Qaeda, and even Osama bin Laden, preparing for another strike.

In the U.S. press, the NIE summary was largely played as a critique of the White House priorities to focus on Iraq and Iran as the big threats when Afghanistan and the adjacent Pakistan tribal territories were turning out jihadists by the tens of thousands annually.

And while this is true, it's also usually the case that these announcements are often highly orchestrated and filtered through upper reaches of the bureaucracy, either to buttress the administration's policies or prepare for a change in direction.

In this case, the backdrop seems pretty obvious: the war in Iraq is lost, neither the American military or the public have much stomach to tough it out there any longer and a deciding point is coming, possibly as soon as the fall.

But Washington can't just walk away from the global fight against terror — that would send the worst message to its enemies and allies around the world — so it needs a new target: Afghanistan and the al-Qaeda hideouts in Pakistan's tribal frontier.

Musharraf's (forced) about-face was clearly welcomed by Washington, which obviously didn't think much of his now aborted appeasement pact, even though the White House supported it publicly all these months. Frances Fragos Townsend, who head the Homeland Security Council at the White House, was quoted in the New York Times on the pact, saying bluntly: "It hasn't worked for Pakistan. It hasn't worked for the United States."

By some accounts there are as many as 100,000 al-Qaeda-related jihadists in Pakistan and Afghanistan at the moment, which is many times the estimate for Iraq, where local sectarian rivalries seems to be at the root of much of the violence.

And as Britain's most senior generals reportedly told the new Labour prime minister last week, the consequences of failure in Afghanistan are far greater than Iraq because it could lead to an Islamist government taking power in Pakistan and controlling its nuclear arsenal.

Britain's take
The warnings by Britain's generals, made public by Lord Inge, the retired chief of the defence staff, echo the sombre and detailed assessment by an all-party committee of British MPs.

Britain has upwards of 7,000 military personnel in Afghanistan, more than double the number it has in Iraq, and the defence committee report envisions a long and involved commitment to the region, which should be of interest to Canadians, in that our own military commitment there is supposed to conclude in 2009.

(Incidentally, the full committee report quotes British Gen. David Richards as noting that the Canadian-led Operation Medusa, a big military foray against the Taliban, "was a reasonably close run last year" and that if Kandahar had fallen, the neighbouring provinces where the British and Dutch are based would likely have fallen as well because of the symbolic importance of Kandahar to the local Pashtun people.)

The British defence committee report concludes that while the fight for Afghanistan is not failing, there have been setbacks — among them, too many Afghan civilians being killed and still too much corruption in the Afghan security forces. But the most important factor is that there are too few troops on the ground to win and that "some of our NATO allies" — though specifically not Canada, it points out — "are leaving us in the lurch."

The all-party report follows on the heels of the British government's decision to significantly upgrade its diplomatic and aid presence in Afghanistan, along with its military one, and seems designed to send a clear message to its NATO partners, one that will surely be heard in Canada's Parliament: It is: We Brits are in this for the long haul. Who is with us? 
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Battle against corruption second front in Afghanistan
For Canada's reconstruction team, it's a daily challenge
Ottawa Citizen; CanWest News Service, Saturday, July 21, 2007
KANDAHAR - In the remote badlands of this dusty, sun-baked province, Lt.-Col. Bob Chamberlain and his soldiers are fighting another side of Afghanistan's unconventional war. Instead of bullets and mortars, they rely on legal pads, inky thumbprints and time-coded digital photos.

Their enemy is not Taliban or al-Qaida insurgents, but something as old as democracy itself: blatant, self-serving corruption. "It's a work in progress," says Chamberlain, commander of Canada's provincial reconstruction team, "an asymmetric approach, village to village."

Whether it is digging a well or repairing a school or hospital, Canada's mainly military PRT faces the same obstacle as its 36 partner countries here in Afghanistan: how to deliver aid to a battered country plagued by chronic corruption infecting all levels of government, from national bodies down to provincial and local councils.

Chamberlain realizes his soldiers must improvise if they are to prevent the pool of aid money they control from simply being stolen.

"When we deliver any Canadian capacity, we have a process on the ground," Chamberlain explains. This, he says, "could mean someone with a message pad writing things down, taking a thumbprint of the individual, taking a photo of them.

"So that at the end of the day I know: that's the contractor, he's the son of --, here's his fingerprint, here's the time/location, here's the photo of the project, and here's the contract that goes with it."

While the military fight against the reconstituted Taliban and al-Qaida insurgency often takes place in maze-like mud-walled villages and farmers' fields, Afghanistan's battle against corruption is unfolding literally everywhere else, from newly created government ministries in Kabul to village councils.

"If we cannot successfully tackle this problem, I think the ultimate success of the exercise -- especially of the governance-building exercise in Afghanistan -- is certainly in jeopardy,"

Hansjoerg Kretschmer, the European Commission ambassador to Afghanistan, said from his office in Kabul.

Corruption is the No. 1 obstacle to peace and economic prosperity in Afghanistan, says Chris Alexander, a special United Nations representative in Kabul and a former Canadian ambassador.

"It is tragic to see Canadian men and women in uniform, to see UN colleagues, to see Afghan leaders relying on persons to represent them and to be their partners in extremely important ventures ... who are in fact much more interested in trafficking narcotics, much more interested in serving their tribe ... who are much more interested in gathering police salaries unto themselves than in paying police," Alexander said during a visit to Ottawa earlier this year.

Alexander's view is bolstered by numerous international reports, including assessments by the U.S. State Department, a leading American think-tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and as recently as the past week, Britain's parliamentary defence committee.

Such reports paint a bleak portrait of endemic corruption in Afghanistan, which includes criminal gangs and local mafias that are represented at virtually every level of government as well as the judicial system.
Taken together, they document widespread examples of embezzlement; corrupt government, police and health officials; numerous instances of theft; and mismanagement of major aid projects.

Alexander says corrupt officials are not causing the insurgency, but they are aggravating and prolonging it. "Governance of this kind, of this quality, must be rooted out, branch and root, if the effort of Canadians and others in southern Afghanistan is to be meaningful."

GOOD GOVERNANCE VITAL - And yet, he says, the West is underestimating the "vital importance" of bringing good governance to Afghanistan.

Corruption is endemic across Afghanistan but especially so in the south, including Kandahar, where Canada's 2,500 troops are based, and in neighbouring Helmand province, a centre of the country's flourishing opium trade.

"Poor governance tends to arise in conditions of insecurity because government officials acquire bad habits under pressure and when they're forced to take desperate measures to stand against a very dangerous enemy," Alexander explains in an interview.

The quality of good governance is weakest at the lower district-council level of government, he says. "It's good that the councils exist. They're elected. Some of them are performing very well. But some of them, now that they've been elected, are playing a narrow game, and again trying to capture resources and pursuing a self-serving agenda."

Kretschmer, of the European Commission, says the traditional tribal power structures need to be replaced with a new mentality in which the acquisition of power through merit -- not merely connections -- is the overriding factor. "Afghanistan is very much a country which is operating on the basis of personal relationships."

The World Bank and other international bodies, in conjunction with the Afghan government, are, in fact, working on anti-corruption strategies, Kretschmer say. A key battleground is the poppy fields, which have re-established Afghanistan as the leading supplier of opium for the world's illegal heroin trade.

Kim Howells, who until recently was Britain's Foreign Office minister, says Karzai understands the importance of fighting corruption. Toward that end, he must change deeply ingrained habits and promote democracy, not to mention root out senior people in his government who are known to be profiting from Afghanistan's illicit narcotics trade.

"Wherever I've gone in Afghanistan, that's been the major source of complaint amongst the ordinary Afghanis that I've spoken to," Howells said in a recent interview. "Why should they give up opium-poppy farming, for example, when they know there are some very senior members of the administration involved in trafficking? Why should they not be part of that culture of bribery and corruption when they know the local police chief is taking money?"

As Canada's death toll mounts, many Canadians hunger for proof that some credible form of rebuilding is occurring here, that the sacrifice is worth it. But on those amorphous front lines in the war on corruption, the overriding concern is all about convincing Afghans to trust their central government as the sole provider of a better way of life.

"For the governor, his accountability is for the funds he's been given, says Chamberlain, Canada's PRT commander. "It nowhere meets Canadian probity requirements and never will in the Canadian way. What we want the Afghans to do is discover their approach. It's early days," he adds. "I'm very optimistic we have the right approach. Given time, we'll get to that point."
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Pakistan Tells U.S. to Avoid Raids on Its Territory
By Paul Tighe
A Pakistani soldier stands guard July 24 (Bloomberg) -- Pakistan told the U.S. to refrain from any military action on its territory against suspected al- Qaeda members, saying Pakistani security forces are responsible for anti-terrorist operations.

``Any attack inside our territory would be unacceptable,'' Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said in Islamabad yesterday, the official Associated Press of Pakistan reported. Any such action would be ``irresponsible and dangerous.''

The U.S. maintains the option of ``striking actionable targets,'' White House spokesman Tony Snow said at a briefing in Washington yesterday. At the same time, the U.S. recognizes that Pakistan is a sovereign government and an important player in the fight against terrorism.

The anti-terrorism strategy being used by President Pervez Musharraf is failing, U.S. intelligence officials have said in recent days. Musharraf, already denounced by Pakistan's Islamic parties, earlier this month ordered security forces to storm Islamabad's Red Mosque to end a standoff with clerics, an operation that sparked street protests and suicide bombings that killed more than 130 soldiers and civilians.

Musharraf's attempt to achieve a political settlement with tribal leaders in the border region with Afghanistan has backfired, Director of U.S. National Intelligence Michael McConnell said two days ago on NBC's ``Meet the Press'' program. The 2006 agreement for tribesmen to expel non-Pakistani gunmen has resulted in al-Qaeda establishing a haven there, he said.

President George W. Bush's Homeland Security Adviser Fran Townsend has said the U.S. wouldn't rule out taking military action inside Pakistan in the event of a specific al-Qaeda threat to the U.S.

Efforts Undermined

Pakistan is ``combating terrorism in our own interest,'' Aslam said, according to APP. ``We do not want our efforts to be undermined by any ill-conceived action from any quarter that is inconsistent with the principles of international law.''

Security forces will act based on information gathered by Pakistan's own means or after ``concrete'' intelligence shared by other countries, she said.

The 2006 accord with tribal leaders in North Waziristan has been ``helpful,'' she said, adding that the government wanted to continue with the agreement even if it is only 20 percent effective. ``We are the best judge how to deal with it.''

Pakistan's anti-terrorism strategy uses military action, political change and economic development to try to eradicate extremism, Musharraf has said. Anti-terrorism operations have resulted in the arrest of about 700 suspects since 2001, including alleged al-Qaeda commanders Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Mohamed Abdullah Binalshibh, both accused of helping plan the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington.

Military Action

Musharraf has deployed more than 80,000 soldiers in the tribal region and established 1,000 military posts on the 2,430- kilometer (1,510-mile) border with Afghanistan. He rejects criticism from Afghanistan that Pakistan allows Taliban and al- Qaeda fighters to train in camps in the border region and fails to stop gunmen crossing the frontier.

The army killed at least 35 militants in fighting in North Waziristan yesterday, Agence France-Presse reported, citing the military. Two soldiers died in the clash, it said.

Al-Qaeda has gained strength in the ``safe haven'' it has established in the tribal region, 16 U.S. intelligence agencies said in a report published last week. The network is forming a stable leadership with new lieutenants, the agencies said.

Bush has been under pressure from some members of the U.S. Congress to cultivate alternatives to Musharraf. Critics contend the 63-year-old general, installed by a 1999 coup, has resisted democratic changes and failed to combat al-Qaeda's resurgence.

Nuclear-armed Pakistan has been governed by the army for more than half the years since the Muslim nation won independence in the 1947 partition of colonial India. The longest period of democratic rule was between 1988, when Benazir Bhutto was elected prime minister, and 1999, when Nawaz Sharif was overthrown by Musharraf.
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Afghan student can stay in the UK
Monday, 23 July 2007, 18:47 GMT 19:47 UK BBC News
A teenager who has been living in Kent after fleeing Afghanistan following the murder of his parents has been told he can stay in the UK.

Husien Panahi, 19, settled in Chatham four years ago, and was officially granted asylum over the weekend.

His campaign to stay had attracted many supporters, including members of staff and fellow sixth form students at his school in Chatham.

The Home Office can appeal against the ruling by an immigration tribunal.

During his time in Kent, Mr Panahi has learnt English, passed 11 GCSEs and sat his A-Levels. He is now hoping to go to university later this year.

He was supported in his campaign against deportation after immigration officials ruled earlier this year that he should return to Afghanistan.

The verdict from the immigration tribunal overturning the Home Office decision came in a letter he received on Saturday.

"I'm so proud of everyone who supported me... and I wish that I had the time, and I had the chance first of all, to go and find everyone and shake their hands, and say a big thank you to all of them," Mr Panahi said.

One of his teachers, Vaughan Lewis, added: "We're really delighted because he's such an exceptional person.

"He's given so much since he's been in the country and it would have been a terrible, glaring injustice if he'd been refused permission to remain here."
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Karzai welcomes statement by Saudi cleric
KABUL, July 22 (Pajhwok Afghan News): President Hamid Karzai on Sunday welcomed the statement by Grand Saudi Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Al-Sheikh in which he asked Muslim youth to keep themselves away from "fake jihad".

The cleric, in an interview last week, urged upon Muslim youth to be aware of elements who were launching ''fake jihad'' while they had their own agendas.

In a statement, President Karzai expressed unanimity with the views of the top Saudi cleric and appreciated his call to the Muslim youths.

Karzai said Islam is the religion of peace, but inhuman acts by some misguided elements in recent years had earned a bad name for Islam and Muslims all over the world.

Stressing the need for promotion of education and unity among Muslims, Karzai said youth must be educated to get a bright future.

He urged upon Afghan clerics to convey the message of the Saudi Mufti to the common Afghans so as they come to know about those involved in attacking and killing innocent people.
Zubair Babakarkhail
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Coalition troops detain four suspected Taliban
Pajhwok Report
KABUL, July 22 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The US-led Coalition troops arrested four suspected militants during a raid in Surkh Rod district of the eastern Nangarhar province Sunday morning.

"Credible intelligence led coalition forces to compounds suspected of housing militants with ties to the Tora Bora Front," said a statement from the Coalition's Bagram base.

During a search of the compounds, the statement said the troops found a landmine which was destroyed on the spot.

The detainees would be questioned regarding their identities and involvement in anti-government activities. The surrender was peaceful and there were no casualties, the statement added.
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Water channel dispute claims four lives in Khost
KHOST CITY, July 22 -(Pajhwok Afghan News)-Four people were killed as two brothers clashed over the ownership of a water channel in Khost City, capital of the province having the same name.

Two brothers Sayed Muhammad and Noor Muhammad quarreled over the passage of a water channel last evening.

The verbal clash converted into armed fighting and the exchange of fire resulted in the killing of four people - two sons of each brother.

Police spokesman Wazir Badshah told Pajhwok that one of the brothers wanted to irrigate his field by diverting the water. However, he was stopped by the other which led to the tragedy.

Naqeeb Gul, resident of Matoon area where the incident emerged, said the two brothers were claiming ownership of the water channel over the previous two years.

Disputes over ownership of lands, mountains and forests between individuals and tribes are common in Khost which often result in losses of precious lives.

Several people were killed and injured in one such clash between local residents of Sabri district and nomadic kuchis in the same province last year.

Suspects detained
Police spokesman Wazir Badshah informed about the arrest of 19 suspected militants in operation in Yaqoobi district of Khost.

The operation was launched in the backdrop of the recent incidents of violence in the district, said the police spokesman.

Four taxi-cabs, one motorcycle and some propaganda material, including pamphlets and cassettes, had also been seized from the detainees, Wazir Badshah informed.
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