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June 21, 2007 

Taliban Says It Will Concentrate Attacks On Kabul
KABUL, June 21, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- A purported Taliban spokesman says the group is changing its tactics and will now concentrate their attacks on targets in Kabul.

Zabihullah Mujahed told RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan today in a telephone interview from an undisclosed location that the Taliban believes its attacks against targets in the capital have been the most effective.

In the latest incident claimed by the Taliban, an apparent suicide bomber exploded a powerful bomb on board a police bus in Kabul on June 17, killing 35 people, most of them police recruits.

Afghanistan's Interior Ministry says it is increasing security on routes leading into Kabul to prevent further attacks in the city.

NATO says it will increase cooperation with Afghan security forces, but the alliance will not change its military strategy in Afghanistan.

Three Canadian soldiers serving with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force were killed in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar Province on June 20 when a bomb blast destroyed their vehicle.
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Taliban hunt spies, target Kabul with Iraq-style tactics
LONDON (AFP) - The Taliban in Afghanistan are hunting NATO spies who they say have infiltrated the movement and are aiming to mount more Iraq-style suicide bombings on Kabul, a spokesman reportedly said.

In a frank interview with the BBC, Zabiyullah Mujahed, a Taliban spokesman who is believed to be hiding somewhere in southern Afghanistan, admitted that NATO forces had penetrated the Taliban but said the damage was limited.

He added that the Taliban was also recovering from allied attacks that killed some of its leaders.

"I absolutely reject the suggestion that we have been defeated. Our operation continues and gathers momentum day by day," he said, apparently speaking by telephone.

"The enemy has tried to infiltrate the Taliban ranks and has targeted our leadership. Thank God they haven't been too successful. We are trying to catch their spies," he said through an interpreter.

"Unfortunately, some have succeeded. But now we are using counter-intelligence to find these people," he added.

The spokesman also admitted that a suicide bombing in Kabul on Sunday that killed 35 people, the deadliest of the Taliban insurgency, demonstrated a new approach, including the use of suicide bombers.

"With each passing day, taking into account the enemy's tactics, we are changing our own tactics," he said.

"It is true we are increasing our pressure on Kabul, because Kabul is the capital city and the foreign troops are concentrated there," he said

"This is our next main target. Probably we will be successful."

"Our enemy is the same and we are repeating the tactics which they use in Iraq. They have proved effective in defeating the enemy," he added. "Our goal is the same -- the independence and freedom of our country."

The spokesman said they were not lacking in volunteers -- and if anything, the numbers were growing.

"A lot of people are coming to our suicide bombing centre to volunteer," he said.

"We have a problem with making sure they attack the right targets, avoiding killing civilians. It takes time to train them properly."
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Taliban put up a new fight
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Online / June 21, 2007
KABUL - With the Taliban geared for their biggest push of the year to take control of southern Afghanistan, district by district, coupled with suicide attacks in the cities, Western intelligence believes that the killing of Mullah Dadullah was a big mistake.

The one-legged, charismatic and battle-hardened Dadullah, 41, was killed in mid-May in the southern province of Helmand in a US-led coalition operation. He had emerged as the overall field commander of the Taliban, as well as an astute diplomat: he had courted Pakistan to act as a peacemaker between the Western coalition and the insurgents.

Highly placed Western contacts familiar with coalition operations in Afghanistan told Asia Times Online that with Dadullah dead, the Taliban have become a much more elusive adversary and the "peace route" with Pakistan is now a non-starter.

Dadullah was a natural leader who had been able to assimilate fighters of varied backgrounds and train them to follow a single coherent strategy. Maulana Jalaluddin Haqqani could possibly have taken his place, but he has been seriously ill, even rumored to be dead.

In these circumstances, the Taliban leadership decided to assign a number of seasoned commanders to different areas, where they would be in charge of their own tactics depending on local conditions. The idea was to scatter as many of them as possible to spread further already stretched coalition and Afghan National Army forces.

Although the commanders chosen were experienced, they were not well-known faces, and were thus able more easily to go about their business. For instance, Amir Khan Muttaqi was sent Kunar province, Mullah Kabir was activated in the Khost, Gardez, Paktia and Paktika areas, Mullah Bredar was assigned in the western zone that includes Ghor, Badghis, Farah and Herat.

For the southeast, the Taliban will keep coalition troops engaged with suicide attacks and guerrilla operations, while at the same time increasing operations in the southwest, such as in Badghis and Farah provinces.

Coalition troops are finding that when they focus on one sector, violence escalates in another. And they simply don't have enough resources to manage the whole of Afghanistan at the same time - especially when some of the coalition partners are not interested in ground operations.

The relative obscurity of the the new Taliban commanders also rules them out of becoming involved in any back-channel peace negotiations with Kabul. Indeed, rigid Taliban leader Mullah Omar is pulling their strings and there is no way he will ever sit with any Western coalition for dialogue.

Taliban on the move

As evidence of the new Taliban approach, southern Afghanistan has witnessed an array of devastating suicide attacks and guerrilla operations since Sunday, covering Kabul, Kunar, Nooristan, Khost and Paktia. There have also been incidents in Urzgan, Helmand and Kandahar.

The district of Mian Nashin in Kandahar fell and Afghan soldiers were forced to flee and call in North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) air fire. Similarly, in the Chor district of Urzgan, the Taliban seized key positions from where they plan a major push deeper into the province.

There was a major battle in the district of Grishk in Helmand between NATO forces and the Taliban on Tuesday. A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousuf, told Asia Times Online that the Taliban killed 16 NATO soldiers and destroyed three tanks. The claim could not be independently confirmed.

On Sunday morning, a suicide bomber blew up a police-academy bus in Kabul, killing 35 people and wounding 52. It was the country's worst bombing since the Taliban were ousted more than five years ago. The Taliban claimed responsibility.

The renewed Taliban activity is obviously of concern to the NATO command. Apparently as a result, Admiral William Fallon, the chief of the US Central Command, recently visited Pakistan for meetings with President General Pervez Musharraf, the vice chief of army staff, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director general of Inter-Services Intelligence.

US assistant secretary of state Richard Boucher and Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte have also been in Islamabad. The crux of this fresh interaction is that insurgencies do not have borders. Unlike previously, though, this does not mean that the US wants to go in hot pursuit of the Taliban in Pakistan. Rather, it wants to track them from the Pakistani tribal areas into Afghanistan.

The Taliban have several command centers in Pakistan, including in North Waziristan and South Waziristan, Bajur, Noshki and Chaman, from where recruits are sent to Afghanistan. But the Taliban also have hubs in Afghanistan in Nooristan, Kapisa, Kunar, Helmand, Kandahar, Farah and Badghis.

Massive bloodshed awaits Afghanistan's vastness, and there is currently no room for peacemakers.

Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief.
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Man Who 'Betrayed' Slain Taliban Chief Dies 'In Custody'
Karachi, 21 June (AKI) - (by Syed Saleem Shahzad) - A former close aide to Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah who was killed last month by Afghan government and NATO forces has died "in custody" after he was accused of betraying his former master, Taliban sources have told Adnkronos International (AKI). "Takht Mohammed was for 14 years a companion of Mullah Dadullah but he turned out to be an informer who passed on the information to the Afghan government that allowed it to track down and kill Dadullah," the source, speaking on condition of anonymity told AKI.

"After Dadullah’s killing, Takht Mohammed fled to Kuchlak (in Pakistan near Quetta) from where he was recently abducted by the Taliban. He the died of cardiac failure,” the source added.
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Iran dismisses charges it is arming Taliban
Thu Jun 21, 5:09 AM ET
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran on Thursday rejected U.S. accusations it is arming the Taliban in Afghanistan, saying an attack on its consulate there showed the hostility of the Sunni militant group towards Shi'ite Iran.

U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns on June 9 accused Tehran of supporting the Taliban and fuelling insurrection around the Middle East.

"These accusations are baseless and illogical," Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Mahdi Safari was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.

"Iran's role in reconstructing Afghanistan has always been confirmed by friends and enemies alike," he said.

Safari noted an attack earlier this month on an Iranian consulate in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar and said this showed the Taliban's enmity towards the Islamic Republic, IRNA said.

Iran supported Afghan groups fighting the Taliban, including the Northern Alliance which played a crucial role in toppling the Sunni group after the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

Violence has surged in Afghanistan after a traditional winter lull, with foreign forces launching attacks against Taliban strongholds in the south and east and the guerrillas hitting back with roadside and suicide bombings.

Earlier in June, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he could not link Tehran to a flow of weapons into Afghanistan and Afghan President Hamid Karzai hailed relations with neighboring Iran as especially good.

Washington is leading international efforts to isolate Iran over its disputed nuclear program and accuses it of fomenting instability in Iraq.

The West says Iran is trying covertly to develop nuclear weapons, while Iran says its nuclear program is for electricity generation.

The United Nations has imposed two rounds of sanctions on Iran for not stopping uranium enrichment and Western powers have warned of a third resolution if it does not halt such atom work.
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Senior Afghan urges action against Pakistan-based militants
Thu Jun 21, 6:05 AM ET
TOKYO (AFP) - A senior Afghan leader called for international assistance to eliminate alleged militant training camps in Pakistan, saying they were behind violence setting back development.

The two countries have been at loggerheads for months over accusations that Islamabad is not doing enough to stop Taliban militants based in Pakistan's northwestern tribal areas from launching cross-border attacks.

"The international community needs to be aware of the danger of terrorist training sites in Pakistan and needs to eliminate them as quickly as possible in cooperation with the Pakistani government," Afghanistan's Second Vice President Karim Khalili told a conference in Japan.

"The recent increase in terrorist attacks in Afghanistan -- which is blocking our country from rebuilding -- is regrettable," he said.

But he added: "The international community, as well as our government, have forgotten the fact that terrorists in Afghanistan came from foreign countries."

"To resolve this problem and restore stability in Afghanistan, getting cooperation from Pakistan is inevitable," he said.

Despite multinational efforts to bring peace after the fall of the extremist Taliban government in 2001, Afghanistan's fledgling democracy has been facing resurgent violence.

On Wednesday, a series of roadside bombings killed eight people including three Canadian soldiers.

Pakistan says it is fighting militants as best it can and last month started erecting a barbed wire border fence in the North Waziristan tribal area, where US officials have alleged that Al-Qaeda is running terror camps.

Khalili is in Tokyo for a conference on the Disbandment of Illegal Armed Groups, a UN-backed project with Japanese funding that aims to improve central government control in Afghanistan.

"We still face many challenges," Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso told the conference.

"In particular, it is the unfortunate truth that the weak governance of the Afghan government still hinders the country's reconstruction," Aso said.
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Mine kills NATO soldier in Afghanistan
By RAHIM FAIEZ, Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan - A land mine explosion killed a NATO soldier and wounded four more Thursday in eastern Afghanistan, where fighting between U.S.-led troops and suspected Taliban left eight militants and a policeman dead, officials said.

Violence is surging in Afghanistan as both militants and foreign troops step up their struggle over the fate of Afghanistan's five-year-old Western-backed government.

NATO said two of the soldiers hit in the mine blast were taken to a hospital, where one of them died. Three others were treated at the scene for minor injuries, the alliance said.

The nationality of the troops was not released, although most of the NATO soldiers in the east are American.

Troops from the U.S.-led coalition and the Afghan army, meanwhile, launched an operation against "an important group of enemies" in Paktika province late Wednesday, said Gov. Mohammad Ekram Akhpelwak.

Eight suspected militants were killed and seven others were detained for questioning, the Interior Ministry said. One police officer was also killed.

Coalition officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

The latest NATO death brings the number of foreign troops killed this year to 90. Three Canadian troops died Wednesday when a roadside bomb struck their vehicle in Kandahar province.

In all, more than 2,400 people — most of them militants — have died in fighting this year, according to an Associated Press tally of figures from Western military and Afghan officials.

Lt. Col. Maria Carl, spokeswoman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force, said Wednesday that Afghanistan was in the midst of the "fighting season," but insisted that recent suicide bombings and other attacks were "militarily insignificant."
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UN chief slams string of deadly attacks in Afghanistan
Thu Jun 21, 4:54 AM ET
UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - UN chief Ban Ki-moon strongly condemned the recent spate of deadly attacks in Afghanistan, including a weekend raid on police trainers that claimed more than 30 lives.

"The Secretary General condemns these acts in the strongest possible terms, which reflect an inexcusable disregard for the value of human life," his spokeswoman Michele Montas said in a statement.

The ousted Taliban regime claimed responsibility for Sunday's bomb attack against an Afghan police academy bus in Kabul, in which 30 Afghans were killed and dozens more injured.

"Over the past few days, there has been a spate of similar attacks in other parts of the country, reportedly claiming the lives of dozens of civilians, including 11 children," the UN statement said.

Ban urges the Afghan Government and the international community to take "the necessary measures to address the security situation, and added that in doing so, "the protection of civilian lives must remain the guiding principle".
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U.N. halts Afghan food deliveries
By ALISA TANG, Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan - The U.N. World Food Program has halted aid deliveries in Afghanistan's most volatile provinces after 85 of its trucks were attacked, set ablaze or looted in the last year by Taliban insurgents and thieves, an official said Thursday.

The agency suspended shipments from Pakistan through the violence-plagued south and west about four weeks ago, said Richard Corsino, WFP's director in Afghanistan.

"The biggest thing we're concerned about is if we can't resume, and we can't meet our obligations," Corsino said in an interview with The Associated Press in the Afghan capital.

He said he expected WFP to run out of food for its programs in the next few weeks in the seven southern and western provinces where shipments have been halted.

WFP does not believe people will starve or migrate because of the halted food deliveries, but they may be forced to sell their possessions to get by, Corsino said.

"The people we're trying to reach with this food are 'food insecure' or vulnerable people. It makes what is already a difficult life that much more difficult," he said.

WFP lost about 600 tons of wheat and cooking oil worth $400,000 in 25 incidents since June 2006, including 13 in the past three months, compared with no incidents in the first half of 2006, Corsino said.

Last year was Afghanistan's deadliest since the U.S.-led coalition swept the Taliban from power in 2001, with 4,000 people killed in fighting and attacks, most of them militants. Violence usually surges in the spring.

Corsino said that in one incident, a Taliban leader signed a paper and jotted down his satellite phone number for the truck driver before looting a shipment.

"People regard our food as a gift to the country, and it's not owned by anyone," Corsino said, describing the looters' mentality. He said his staff called the satellite phone number, and the man on the line identified himself as a Taliban member and acknowledged carrying out the heist.

In another case, it was clear that the trucker had colluded in the theft, Corsino said.

The shipments are made in unmarked, contracted trucks, but are still hit by thieves more frequently than commercial goods, Corsino said.

Sometimes the food shows up in markets at knockdown prices, while in one case goods stolen from Ghazni province were distributed in neighboring Paktia in a "Robin Hood" act of philanthropic banditry, Corsino said.

Other robbers were less benign.

Attackers killed two police who were escorting a shipment in western Farah province, but the 13 trucks and remaining guards managed to escape. Several times trucks have been set on fire with the food still inside, Corsino said.
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Hostages in Afghanistan 'rescued' 
Thursday, 21 June 2007, 16:38 GMT 17:38 UK  BBC News
American-led coalition forces in Afghanistan say they have freed two Afghans taken hostage by Taleban and al-Qaeda militants.
In a statement the coalition said that three residents of a village in the eastern province of Paktika were freed when its forces raided two compounds.

It said that the raid took place in Zaghun Shah district.

A coalition spokesman said militants in the compounds had kept women and children close by as human shields.

But he said that the hostage-takers were subdued without harming them.

One of the freed captives said the militants killed a third hostage a day earlier.

Eight militants were detained and a large cache of weapons was destroyed.
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AFGHANISTAN: Girls fear to go to school after shooting incident
LOGAR, 21 June 2007 (IRIN) - "I do not want to go to school," 12-year-old Maryam told her father in Sadaat village in the central Afghan province of Logar, where gunmen recently assassinated two schoolgirls.

"I am afraid," the traumatised girl begged her parents.

"I will be with you. I will not let anyone harm you," Maryam's father said, trying to encourage her.

Maryam witnessed the assassination of two fellow students in front of her school in Sadaat village, a suburb of Pul-i-Alam, the provincial capital of Logar Province, some 30km west of Kabul, on 12 June.

The incident has sparked widespread worries among many parents who fear for the safety of their daughters at school.

According to provincial officials, many female students have been absent from school since the shooting occurred a week ago.

Pakiza Mehboob, a teacher at a neighbouring girls' school in Pul-i-Alam, told IRIN that half of her students have been absent for a week.

"If the government does not improve security I will also quit my job as a teacher," Mehboob said. "I really feel scared when I see men who ride motorcycles."

Kamaluddin Zadran, head of Logar's education department, acknowledged the shrinking number of female students, but said it was only temporary.

"The attack has had a psychological impact on some families which will soon fade away and we look forward to having every student back in class," said Zadran.

Demands for improved security

Some parents said they would only let their daughters re-join their schools if their security was ensured.

Saeed Agha, a bereaved father of one of the victims of 12 June shooting, said he wants his second daughter to be educated, but not to risk her life.

"The government should change the current option of 'life or education' for our daughters," said Agha.

In the past two years the Qalai Saeeda girls' high school had experienced several attacks, according to the provincial education department.

"About three months ago this school was hit by a rocket, and a little while ago some men tried to torch it," said Saeed Hasan, who works at the school.

Some villagers criticised local officials for their failure to provide better protection for the school while it repeatedly came under attack.

"They [attackers] would not have caused this tragedy if police or a guard had been at the school gate," said a local resident.

But, Afghanistan's Ministry of Education (MoE) has said it cannot appoint security guards for each of the country's 9,000 schools.

"We believe attacks on schools and students will be thwarted when people actively take part in schools' protection. Given the fact that our government is still working to establish a national police force, it is not feasible to demand school protection units," Zuhoor Afghan, an MoE spokesman, told IRIN on 19 June.

"A heinous and cowardly act"

In a statement released from New York the UN Children's Agency (UNICEF) called the attack on schoolgirls in Logar "a heinous and cowardly act".

In a sign of sympathy Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered the construction of two new schools in Logar Province to be named after the two deceased students.

Shukria, 12, and Saadia, 13, were shot dead by two motorcyclists while leaving school for home, local officials reported. One female passer-by was also killed in the same incident, which left four students wounded. "Two injured students have been sent to Kabul for extended medical treatment," local police said.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack. However, Taliban insurgents have repeatedly told the media of their opposition to girls' education.

The Taliban imposed a ban on girls' formal education and women's work outside the home during their rule from 1996 to late 2001.

Access to education limited

Since the collapse of the Taliban in late 2001 the number of Afghan children who go to school has progressively increased, UNICEF and the Afghan government confirmed.

According to MoE, over six million children, around 38 percent of them female, now go to schools across the country.

However, a growing insurgency, attacks on schools and a series of socio-economic barriers have still deprived millions of Afghan children of formal schooling, British charity organisation, Oxfam, reported in late 2006.

In the last two months alone, 14 cases of attacks on schools, mostly torchings, have been confirmed, according to UNICEF.

In the volatile south and southeast of the country tens of schools remain closed due to continued threats by Taliban insurgents and other local militias, an MoE official conceded.

Afghanistan's central statistics department said in 2006 that over half of the country's estimated 24 million population is illiterate.
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Afghan schools try to make new start
By Soutik Biswas BBC News, Kabul Wednesday, 20 June 2007
group of girls returning home from school in Afghanistan's Logar province recently did not for a moment expect what lay ahead.

As they walked down a dirt track, insurgents sprang out of the parched farms and began firing on them.

Some of them fled into the farm, but two girls, one aged 13, the other 10, were killed in the ambush. Three of their friends were wounded.

This kind of attack on schoolchildren, the first incident of its kind in Afghanistan, highlights how the insurgents are trying to disrupt education in the war-ravaged nation.

A surge in violence over the past year threatens to neutralise the gains made by the country in sending its children back to school after the fall of the Taleban.

In the past 13 months, 226 schools, many run from tents, have been burnt down by the insurgents. A total of 110 teachers and students have been killed in incidents of indirect violence and another 52 wounded, officials say.

The Taleban also shut down 381 schools, the majority of them in provinces like Helmand, Kandahar, Zabul and Uruzgan where they have a formidable presence.

This is depressing news when you consider that more than six million Afghan children have returned to schools in the past six years - a sevenfold increase from the 900,000 children, all of them boys, who were going to school during the Taleban rule.

The number of teachers has also leapt from a paltry 21,000 to 143,000 during the same period. The government says it is hiring 10,000 teachers this year alone.

Now the attack on the schoolchildren has sent shock waves through the government.

"I am devastated. I am very worried that such incidents will make parents very scared to send their children to school," says Afghan Education Minister Mohammad Haneef Atmar.

The insurgents have in the past burnt down schools in the night, and fired rockets to destroy some. They have been distributing "night letters" asking the Afghans to stop working for the government and going to schools.

It is not difficult to destroy schools in Afghanistan - only 40% of the 8,500 schools in the country are run out of buildings. The rest operate out of tents or are simply run under trees.

Officials worry that the Taleban may have begun targeting school children because of the "relative success" of a programme to protect schools.

Over the past eight months, the government has spent $500,000 launching what it calls a "special school protection programme" - which works by groups of parents and local villagers keeping a watch on the schools, sometimes keeping licensed guns.

Some 1,000 schools have been covered under the programme, and officials say the protection scheme is yielding results - 35 of the 381 schools shut down by the Taleban have been reopened.

Untrained teachers

"This has worked quite a bit. When the insurgents see that the local community is protecting the school, they usually don't challenge," says Mr Atmar.

But the success of this programme could be the reason why the insurgents have now begun targeting schoolchildren as they find it difficult to attack schools guarded by local people.

The only hope may be the fact that there is finally a high premium on education in Afghanistan - and most parents don't want to take their children out of the schools because of the violence, yet.

"When I went to the school in Logar to meet parents after the recent attack, the first thing that they told me was: 'Please do not close the school down. We will give your more ideas for the protection of the school,'" says Mr Atmar.

As it is there are enough problems - 80% of the teachers are untrained, and at $60 a month, an Afghan teacher's salary is among the lowest in the world. A little over 6% of the government's non-defence budget is spent on education.

'Government's responsibility'

Analysts are critical of how little the government continues to spend on education; neighbouring Tajikistan, for example, spends three times more on teaching its children.

Now faced with insurgent attacks on children, the government reckons it would need a quarter of the country's existing 60,000-strong policemen to guard the schools alone. That is not possible, say officials.

Ultimately, the government will need to ramp up security and pour money into education to spread learning in the country.

Otherwise, a time may soon arrive when parents begin to pull children out of schools, fearing for their lives.

"How much can villagers do in fighting armed insurgents? It is ultimately the government's responsibility to secure its children," says a school teacher.

If insecurity wrecks the dreams of children to get educated, it will be a significant setback for Afghanistan in its efforts to make a new beginning.
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Helmand Residents Cast Doubt on Success of NATO Operation
It is either the best of times or the worst in northern Helmand, depending on who your source is.
Institute for War & Peace Reporting By IWPR trainees in Helmand (ARR No. 257, 19-June-07)
NATO says Operation Lastay Kulang - or "Axe Handle" - which its forces launched in early June to clear the Taleban out of the Upper Sangin Valley has been an unqualified success.

"From Sangin to Greshk, the entire area is under government and ISAF control," said Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Mayo, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force, ISAF. "The Taleban are weak. They are not able to fight with ISAF and the Afghan government."

There is, however, another version of this story, according to which Operation Lastay Kulang has been a miserable failure, causing death to civilians and destruction of homes and livelihoods without producing any lasting results.

“We took Kajaki district back from the NATO forces and the Afghan government and it is now completely under our control. We also took some parts of Sangin district,” said Taleban spokesman Qari Yusuf.

NATO and the Taleban may be about as far as possible away from each other on their view of Operation Lastay Kulang. But residents of the area are not swayed by spin - their daily lives are directly affected by the reality on the ground.

“At ten in the evening on Thursday [June 14], NATO took its soldiers away by helicopter," said Mahmadullah, a resident of Kajaki. "Then the Taleban came back. They took over those areas that NATO and the Afghan government captured two weeks ago, called Kata-Kajaki [lower Kajaki]".

Nazar Mohammad, also from Kajaki, confirmed this version of events. "When I woke up early on Friday morning, I went to the mosque," he told IWPR. "On my way there, I saw a lot of Taleban walking around, and I asked why they were there. All the people said, 'The British have left, and now the Taleban are back.'"

A Taleban district commander, who did not want to be named, was more specific: "The centre of Sangin and Sori-Gaari to the north of the centre, as well as the Tangay area, are under government control. The rest of Sangin, including Sarwan Qala, is the Taleban’s."

According to ISAF sources, a small number of British and American "advisors" are accompanying Afghan National Army, ANA, troops and driving northwards in a wedge from Greshk to Kajkai, clearing the area of insurgents. The foreign forces then push on, leaving the national troops to hold the area that has been taken.

But locals say that as soon as the last foreign boots leave the ground, the Taleban, deterred only by NATO's overwhelming air advantage and heavier armour, swarm back.

The area around Sangin and Kajaki is strategically important because it furnishes electricity to Helmand and to a great extent also neighbouring Kandahar. More than two million people depend on the Kajaki dam and hydroelectric power station, which are in need of major reconstruction. The power supply has been highly unstable since January, when Taleban insurgents began cutting electricity lines that run through Sangin.

The Provincial Reconstruction Team, PRT, in Lashkar Gah has been promising for months that work on the power station would soon begin, but the standoff between Taleban and ISAF has prevented any real progress from being made.

HEARTS AND MINDS GONE WRONG

Sangin, located between the provincial capital Lashkar Gah and Kajaki, has been the scene of bitter fighting in the last two months that has left much of the district centre a mass of rubble. In part to reach out to local residents and assure them that their concerns were being heard, ISAF organised a shura, or council, to confer with tribal elders in Sangin on June 7.

As hearts and minds campaigns go, it was certainly unique.

After a tentatively optimistic beginning, during which British forces listened sympathetically to complaints about the lack of water and electricity, the need for reconstruction, and demands for compensation for damages, a bearded American Special Forces officer who identified himself only as "Major Gill", jumped to his feet.

“You do not actually want assistance! You are all Taleban! It is my job to kill Taleban and I will not leave here until all the Taleban are gone,” he said, speaking through an interpreter.

As an angry murmur spread through the crowd, Gill continued, “You continue to allow the Taleban into your villages and homes. I have seen them misuse your women and children as human shields.

“The ISAF forces have come to help you, and you ask for power and water. But you don’t want schools and hospitals. No one will come to build these things if the Taleban are there and the workers are getting killed.”

Major Gill was not best served by his translator, in whose interpretation the words "You allow the Taleban to misuse your women and children" took on a slightly seedier meaning than Gill perhaps intended.

The American also took the somewhat unusual step of unilaterally offering amnesty to Taleban fighters, although forgiveness under the law is normally the prerogative of a country’s elected government.

"The Taleban should come and lay down their arms and we will guarantee that no one will say anything to them," the US officer told the white-bearded elders, who by now were standing up and shouting, some making threatening gestures.

"Do you want us to dig up our dead women and children so you can see that they were not Taleban?" said Gul Agha, an elder who had to be physically restrained by his colleagues. "The British do not help us. They just come for a look, and then leave again. They kill civilians, innocent people."

"You came to arrest the Taleban but you can’t do it!" screamed another man.

Gill continued, seemingly unperturbed.

"Millions of dollars are coming into Sangin," he said. "If you don’t grow poppy, we will spend the money on you."

The US Congress recently passed a 6.4 billion US dollar assistance package for Afghanistan, the Afghanistan Freedom and Security Support Act. But the bill mandates a cut-off of aid to those provinces and districts that support "terrorists" or continue to grow opium poppy.

Helmand is far and away the leader in Afghanistan's drugs trade; according to a 2006 survey by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. This one province furnishes close to 40 per cent of the world's supply of heroin. Despite stirring rhetoric and billions of dollars spent on the counter-narcotics effort, this year's crop looks certain to be even larger, according to provincial officials.

Given the disappointing results of assistance programmes to date, the anti-poppy speeches may be a bit of a hard sell in the province.

"We will never stop cultivating poppy until the end of your life, Gill," said one shura member who did not want to be named. "This is our land and our livelihood. If we stop planting poppy life will get much harder."

SECURITY A “LIE"

Sangin's district governor, Ezatullah, insisted that the area was getting back to normal.

“We have created a tribal shura and invited people of every tribe, and the people have assured us that they will help us with security," he said. "We will start first with power and water, and then begin to rebuild the bombed-out houses."

But Afghan army officials say privately that there is no real security in Sangin.

"Those foreign [expletive deleted] say there is security – it’s a lie," fumed one commander. "They don’t risk their asses out here. There are Taleban right in the district centre, but the British and the Americans stay in their holes."

This latest operation against the insurgency has been costly. While exact figures are difficult to come by, most accounts track hundreds of civilian casualties, and dozens of ANA deaths. The British and American forces have also sustained losses, with seven killed in a helicopter crash in early June, and dozens others killed or injured in fighting or terrorist attacks over the past three months.

"The Taleban are all over the place," said Abdul Hakim, a resident of Sangin. "The British will never be able to get rid of them. We now have troops from 35 countries. They could make it 70 countries, and still they wouldn’t succeed."

SANGIN A GHOST TOWN

Locals have had enough of empty promises. Sangin's bazaar is almost entirely flattened, and those walls still standing exhibit black gaping mouths instead of doors.

The town itself is almost deserted, with a few isolated specks of life. The small army of journalists at the shura had to hunt hard to find residents to interview.

Most people were unwilling to talk.

"I saw 18 people killed here in this bazaar," said Noor Mohammad, a young shopkeeper. "Not even a cat can live here now. Anyone who so much as moved was shot so full of holes he looked like a soup strainer."

According to Noor Mohammad, barely three per cent of the shops are now open.

Abdul Razzaq, who had a small shop in the bazaar, looked sadly at the ruins of his enterprise.

"I lost 50,000 rupees worth of goods, and mine was the smallest shop," he said, shaking his head. “Others lost much more – millions in damages.

"I don’t think the British have got even with us yet. There will be more bombs," he said.

But some local people seem to be taking the harsh lessons of the past month to heart, and are uniting to deny the Taleban access to their homes and their villages.

In May, an insurgent attack on coalition forces called down a retaliatory strike that all but flattened the village of Sarwan Qala. In response, residents rose up against the Taleban, chasing down and killing a commander and his deputies.

"There was a fight between locals and the Taleban, and Commander Wali Mohammad and his two friends were killed," said Sultan Mahmud, chief of police in Sangin district. "They captured their weapons, and now the people are more powerful than the Taleban."

Some of Sangin’s residents agree.

"Last week the American Major Gill accused us of being Taleban," said one shopkeeper. "But we are against the Taleban. We won’t let the Taleban use our houses and our people.

“In Sangin district people are getting closer to the government, because right now the Taleban are weak. We will help the government kick the Taleban out of Sangin district."

IWPR is implementing a journalism training and reporting project in Helmand. This story is a compilation of reports filed by the trainees.
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Canadian MPs mourn deaths of three soldiers in Afghanistan
Wed Jun 20, 5:48 PM ET
OTTAWA (AFP) - Canadian lawmakers on Wednesday paid tribute to three NATO soldiers killed in Afghanistan as Prime Minister Stephen Harper called it a terrible tragedy.
 
"This is, of course, a terrible tragedy, as it always is when Canada loses brave men and women who are willing to put on the uniform not only to defend our own rights and freedoms but those of people around the world," Harper said.

Wednesday's attack in Afghanistan brought the number of Canadian troops killed in the country since 2002 to 60 along with one Canadian diplomat.

Canada has some 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, fighting Taliban and Al-Qaeda insurgents, and opposition leader Stephane Dion also praised the soldiers in the field.

"Today three Canadian soldiers died, and they served with courage and honor in Afghanistan. A country can ask no greater -- for no greater sacrifice."

The location of the latest attack was not specified, but was described as farmland and lots of grape fields with lots of tracks and mud walls up to 10 feet high.

"At the time, they were traveling in a small all-terrain vehicle," Brigadier General Tim Grant said in a press conference broadcast from Kandahar.

The open-top vehicle was not armored and was being used to transport supplies to checkpoints "outside of (Canada's) forward operating bases."

"They were fighting the good fight," he said. "We are not deterred from our mission."

But "we will review how the re-supply is done, the equipment that we use and the procedures that are in place. If we determine that we need to change our tactics, techniques and procedures, well do that," he added.
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Afghan Minister Promises More Facilities For Fruit Exporters
Thursday June 21, 12:30 PM
KABUL, June 21 Asia Pulse - Afghan Minister for Commerce and Industries Dr Muhammad Amin Farhang Wednesday said the government would provide better facilities to fruit exporters.

Naming grapes, melon, watermelon, apple, apricots and pomegranate as the main fresh-fruit exports of the country, the minister said officials from the United States and European and Asian countries had promised to help Afghanistan in boosting its exports of fresh fruits.
 
Speaking at a news conference, he said the ministry had recently entered into a contract with the GTZ on international standard packing of fresh-fruits destined for other countries.

The Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) had withdrawn the two per cent tax it was receiving from the ministry on its fruit exports, said Farhang. Besides, some European countries, the United States and India had also agreed to abolish taxes on Afghanistan's fruit exports.

Suliman Fatimi, head of the Afghanistan Exports Promotion Agency, told the press conference that they had provided more facilities to exporters.

Reckoning his agency's exporter-friendly steps, Fatimi said traders used to send their goods out of the country in at least four days; however, they could do so only in one day now.

To facilitate exporters outside Kabul, he said the agency had also opened its branches in Kandahar, Herat and Balkh provinces.

At the same time, he admitted that some problems like uncalled for money-taking by some officials were still there, which would also be removed with the passage of time.
(Pajhwok Afghan News)
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Taliban Loses Influence in Afghanistan, U.S. Commander Says
By Ed Johnson
June 21 (Bloomberg) -- The Taliban are losing influence in southeastern Afghanistan, where 60 out of 83 districts now support the government, a U.S. Army commander in the region said.

Local leaders are saying they won't allow the Taliban to recruit children, Army Colonel Martin Schweitzer told reporters in Washington yesterday via a video link from Khost province.

``There's no better barometer that indicates these communities and these villages are looking toward their government versus the Taliban,'' he said, according to a transcript of the briefing. About a year ago, only 19 districts in the region could be classed as pro-government, he said.

The U.S. has about 10,000 soldiers carrying out anti- terrorism operations in Afghanistan and 15,000 service personnel under the command of NATO, which is leading the fight against the Taliban and trying to stabilize the country under President Hamid Karzai's government.

Insurgents have stepped up their offensive against international and Afghan troops and are targeting Afghan government officials in suicide bomb attacks.

The tactics, which often cause civilian deaths, are reducing support for the Taliban, said Schweitzer, who is commander of the 82nd Airborne Division's 4th Brigade Combat Team.

``They want more Afghan National Army forces on the ground securing their communities,'' he told reporters.

Kabul Attack

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is concerned about the recent increase in violence in Afghanistan, in particular a June 17 attack on an Afghan Police Academy bus in the capital, Kabul, that killed more than 30 people, his office said yesterday.

The attack was the ``deadliest of its kind'' in Kabul since the Taliban regime was toppled in 2001, his spokeswoman Michele Montas said in a statement.

Ban called on the Afghan government and coalition forces to ``take the necessary measures to address the security situation'' and ensure the protection of civilian lives remains the ``guiding principle,'' Montas said.

The U.S. military said this week that seven Afghan children were killed June 17 in a coalition air strike against a suspected al-Qaeda safe house in eastern Paktika province.

At least 230 Afghan civilians were killed last year during U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization operations because of lack of precautions or the use of indiscriminate force, U.S.- based Human Rights Watch said in an April report.

Bombings by the Taliban more than doubled last year, compared with 2005, killing at least 669 Afghans, according to the report.
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Tokyo conference calls for more efforts to disarm Afghanistan
Thursday June 21, 10:13 PM
(Kyodo) _ An international conference on Afghanistan agreed Thursday to step up efforts to disband illegal armed groups in a bid to stabilize the war-torn country.
But a summary of the one-day meeting in Tokyo did not mention as in last year's the initial target for completing the Disbandment of Illegal Armed Groups, or DIAG as the U.N.-backed program is called, by the end of this year.

While appreciating the progress made so far, participants discussed "the challenges facing the DIAG operations such as security, narcotics, poverty, unemployment and above all weak institutional capacity of law enforcement and security institutions," according to the summary by co-chairs Japan, Afghanistan and the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.

Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso said in an opening address to the meeting, "It is the unfortunate truth that the weak governance of the Afghan government still hinders the country's reconstruction."

Afghan Vice President Mohammad Khalili and Tom Koenigs, special representative of the U.N. secretary general for Afghanistan, were also among the 64 participants from 13 states and six international organizations in the third meeting of its kind.

The DIAG program, begun in June 2005, is designed to disarm an estimated 125,000 illegal militiamen in up to 1,200 illegal armed groups that were present in Afghanistan. 

Japan has "actively" assisted the program, having appropriated $135 million for it as well as a preceding program on disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of former combatants, or DDR, out of more than $1.2 billion (148 billion yen) so far rendered in aid to Afghanistan, Aso said.

"The success of DIAG is a matter of urgency," the Japanese foreign minister said. "DIAG is a vital program, since it reintegrates armed groups into civil society."

Meeting separately with the visiting Afghan vice president, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday pledged Tokyo's continued contributions, referring to the Self-Defense Forces' refueling support for ships engaged in the U.S.-led antiterrorism campaign in Afghanistan as well as its foreign aid.

"The important thing is that people in today's Afghanistan feel they are better off," Abe told Khalili, according to Foreign Ministry officials.
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NATO chief wants Canada to stay in Afghanistan
Thu. Jun. 21 2007 1:16 PM ET Canadian Press
MONTREAL -- The secretary-general of NATO is hoping Canada will stay in Afghanistan beyond its 2009 deadline. Japp de Hoop Scheffer said Thursday it's important that all 26 NATO allies in Afghanistan carry on their missions.

"I think more time is necessary to create those conditions for reconstruction and development to go on and proceed,'' he told reporters.

Scheffer was at an international conference in Montreal.

"That is a message to the Canadians as much as it is to the Dutch or to the Danes or to the Norweigans. It's a message I have for all of my allied friends in the alliance and the partners alike.''

But he said Canada's decision to stay longer in Afghanistan is one that will be made by the Canadian government. Scheffer was to meet later today in Ottawa with Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The number of Canadian soldiers killed in war-torn Afghanistan has now reached 60.

Three Canadians were killed Wednesday when their unarmoured vehicle hit an improvised explosive device while on a re-supply mission.

Canadian military officials have defended the use of the unarmoured vehicle, but say procedures will be reviewed.
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NEW IRIN FILM: Losing Hope - Women in Afghanistan
NAIROBI, 21 June 2007 (IRIN) - In April 2007 IRIN Films returned to Afghanistan to report on the plight of Afghan women nearly six years after the overthrow of the Taliban regime by international forces.

Despite notable achievements in the education sector and the representation of women in Afghanistan's parliament, its women still endure chronically high rates of infant and maternal mortality, growing insecurity and horrific levels of domestic violence.

"In late 2001 when the Taliban were overthrown by international forces, we hoped the situation would change for Afghan women with respect to women's rights and gender equality," said Horia Mossadeq, an Afghan women's rights activist. "But unfortunately the situation has not changed for a large proportion of the female population."

Shot largely in the remote northeastern province of Badakhshan, Losing Hope opens a window onto the lives of Afghan women. Served by few roads and even fewer health centres, expectant women here face a greater chance of losing their lives in childbirth than in any other country in the world.

The maternal mortality rate is 650 per 100,000 live births here.

The difficulty that many women face accessing health care facilities means that some have turned to the medicinal qualities of opium to quieten untreated ailments and unruly children - prompting spiraling rates of addiction in the process.

Culture, and the attitudes of men are another obstacle women face in their battle to establish their rights. In Badakhshan, all women must seek the permission of their husband before seeing a doctor while some men will not allow their wives to see a doctor under any circumstances.

In a country where four out of every five women are illiterate, the need to educate is perhaps the most pressing of all. Significant achievements have been made, but in the more violent southern and eastern provinces, the policy is under serious threat.

As Taliban insurgents and other conservative forces have strengthened over the past two years, schools have been burned down, female teachers killed and the parents of thousands of children terrorised into keeping them out of school.

It is not just the militants that leave women and girls cowering at home. Rates of domestic violence continue to rise in a country traumatised by decades of conflict. Early marriage remains common and honour killings continue largely unchecked while self-immolation remains the last refuge of the desperate.

To borrow the words of Horia Mossadeq, this film is "a scream to the international community to say, 'look how much we are suffering and no one is here to help us'."
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Taliban threat to Canada just a stunt, officials say
Video a desperation tactic, Day says as he pledges to stop suicide bombers at the border - COLIN FREEZE  From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
June 20, 2007 - A Taliban commander's pledge to send hundreds of suicide bombers to Canada and other Western countries is a disturbing but highly implausible publicity stunt, say top security officials who are struggling to deal with threats already present in Canada.

ABC News obtained footage this week of a reputed Taliban graduation ceremony. In it, a top commander lines up about 300 young training-camp graduates. Then he announces plans to send them on missions to the United States, Canada, Germany and the United Kingdom in retaliation for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's presence in Afghanistan.

Yesterday, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day called the video a desperation tactic. "The Taliban are aware that our troops cannot be intimidated ... so they are trying, through public-relations means, to worry the hearts of Canadians at home," he told reporters.

He added that while he takes threats seriously, he feels confident that intelligence and border officials could stop any suicide bombers. "Canadians can sleep well at night knowing that we have very effective security capabilities."

Security officials view the scheme as out of character for the Taliban, given that the militants drawn from Afghanistan and Pakistan focus their attacks in those regions. Refugee flows from these countries have been dropping for years - from more than 2,000 people annually six years ago to just over 800 in 2005, according to the federal refugee-protection agency.

Yet the video has prompted fears that some operatives could get through, or that Canada might become more of a target for jihadists. Top Canadian counterterrorism investigators say they have their hands full.

"Presently, we are very short of personnel. I am bringing in people from other sections all the time," RCMP assistant commissioner Mike McDonell testified at a Senate committee on Monday, before ABC broadcast the footage. The head of the RCMP's $40-million-a-year, national-security section went on to say he has been forced to borrow 100 Mounties from other investigative departments.

It was assistant commissioner McDonell who last year announced the arrests of 18 Canadian terrorism suspects. The conspiracy allegedly involved a scheme to detonate truck bombs in Toronto to get Canadian Forces soldiers to leave Afghanistan.

The problems in Canada's largest city haven't gone away since last year. "It is fair to say that the centre of gravity for us with respect to today's national-security threat is in the Toronto area," the assistant commissioner told the Senate national security committee.

Warnings to Canada from the Taliban are unusual, but not unprecedented. Last June, a top Taliban military commander urged Canada to pull its military out of Afghanistan. "Our main enemy is the United States. As for Canada and the other countries, we have no historical enmity," Mullah Dadullah said in a televised interview. "... But if they want to come here as fighting forces, we will view them just as we view the Americans."

Mullah Dadullah went on to direct suicide bombings in Afghanistan and release a series of gory beheading videos on the Internet. When he was killed by NATO forces last month, authorities made a point of ensuring that footage of his dead body was broadcast around the world.

The latest salvo in the propaganda war is now the Taliban graduation ceremony. In the video, the slain commander's younger brother, Dadullah Mansoor, looks over scores of young new recruits.

While he inherited his brother's networks, experts say his family's power is diminished. With reports from Graeme Smith in Kabul and Jeff Sallot in Ottawa
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Al Qaeda video fuels fear, caution
 Recruits allegedly slated to hit Canada, U.S., U.K.
June 20, 2007 - TAMARA CHERRY, TORONTO STAR STAFF REPORTER
A video showing about 300 men and boys as young as 12 at an Al Qaeda training camp is creating fears, ABC News says, that suicide missions are being deployed to Canada and other countries.

But such fears were met with caution and skepticism yesterday by security officials and analysts.

"Of course it's a concern," Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day told reporters of the video aired Monday on ABC News. "We've always said that Canada is not immune to threats of terrorism."

The video showed a graduation ceremony for a training camp for Afghanistan's Taliban movement, ABC News said.

The recruits were organized in four "teams" to be deployed on supposed suicide missions in Canada, the United States, Germany and Great Britain.

"These Americans, Canadians, British and Germans come here to Afghanistan from faraway places," Taliban military commander Mansoor Dadullah said to the crowd. "Why shouldn't we go after them?"

The footage is said to have been shot by a Pakistani journalist invited to the event somewhere in the Afghan-Pakistan border region June 9.

Admitting no security system is 100 per cent fail-safe, Day said the ability for the alleged terrorists to cross our border is "limited."

"Canadians can sleep well at night knowing that we have very effective security capabilities," he said.

"This is really no news to us, because we always plan for the worst and hope for the best," OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino said. "We believe that terrorists are planning all the time to frustrate our security, to attack our infrastructure."

Interim RCMP Commissioner Bev Busson said she didn't "necessarily" see the news as an escalation of threat to Canada.

A senior intelligence analyst with the Search for International Terrorist Entities Institute in Washington dismissed the video as "straight-up propaganda."

"I don't put a lot of credibility into it," said Ned Moran. The only detail that sets this video apart from others put out by radical jihad groups "several times a day," he said, is that it was broadcast through an American network, rather than an Islamic medium.

David Harris, director of the international and terrorist intelligence program at Insignis Strategic Research in Ottawa, cautioned that the threats could be valid.

"Whether (the video is) highly factual or merely apocryphal, it's serving notice that we're on the menu."

The video will likely serve as a recruitment mechanism for like-minded individuals already among us, he added. "It's possible some of the folks pictured are not going to Canada, but returning to Canada."

Omar Samad, Afghanistan's ambassador to Canada, noted that the consequences of thousands of young men "graduated" from similar camps have been seen in terror attacks "from Bali to Casablanca, from New York to London."

"It leaves very little room for dismissing it offhand," he said.

Last summer, Dadullah's brother, Mullah Dadullah, who was killed in a U.S.-led operation last month, said Canada and other countries that have no history of conflict with Afghanistan should stay away. "Our advice to these countries," he told Al Jazeera network, "is to avoid the heat of battle because we will wreak vengeance upon them one by one."
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Death of a startup: Afghan ringtones?
Keen to tap a fast-growing market, I underestimated the cultural obstacles to running my telecom startup.
Eaton Dunkelberger, FSB contributor June 21 2007: 1:45 PM EDT
Palo Alto (FSB Magazine) -- When I finished my MBA last year with $20,000 in unused school loans, I realized I could tap that money to start my own business. With a degree from the London Business School, I figured I could take my entrepreneurial talents anywhere in the world.

I chose Afghanistan.

It was even more of a challenge than I expected. The main difficulty wasn't so much the security situation. More problematic was the fact that years of war and chaos have made Afghan businesspeople cautious about offending the mullahs and the government. I planned to sell ringtones and other mobile-phone content. To do that I had to get my customers - the country's mobile-phone providers - to take a chance on services that the culture had yet to accept. Along the way I got quite an education.

My interest in the Middle East began in 2003, when I served a six-month tour of duty as a U.S. Marine Corps officer during the invasion of Iraq. In the aftermath I saw that development of the region's private sector was almost nonexistent. I wanted to get involved.

I visited Afghanistan for the first time in 2005, when I interned at a new staffing agency during my summer break from business school. Back in London, I searched for a business in which I could draw on what I had learned about Afghan business culture. A friend suggested mobile-phone content. "Man, people would go bananas for this," he said. I thought he was right. The country was just discovering cellphones. I put together a business plan.

I returned to Afghanistan in April 2006 to set up Danebarf, which means "snowflake" in Dari, one of the languages spoken there. At the time there were about a million mobile-phone users in the country, and the number was growing fast.

After grueling efforts to meet with the right contacts at the country's three large mobile-phone companies, I persuaded them to let me sell ringtones to their customers. But my main goal was to deliver products with higher margins. I proposed a text-messaged horoscope service. The executives rejected the idea. They feared that we might offend religious leaders who consider horoscopes offensive to God. They also nixed my idea to offer alerts on mobile phones when there was a riot or bombing. If the warnings offended government officials, the companies might lose their licensing.

Afghan phone companies turned out to be searching for entertainment services, such as voting on MTV-style videos. I delivered what they wanted, but I knew Danebarf needed to sell more profitable products to survive.

The real deathblow to my startup came when leaders of a nonprofit group abandoned plans to partner with me on two products, hinting that they felt my venture was too commercial. I had just about run out of my startup money. Seven months after I arrived, I decided it was time to wrap up.

What I learned is that I needed to allow more time to make my business work. I couldn't expect to find solutions to deep cultural differences instantly.

Now I'm building my sales skills at Adeara, a value-added reseller of computer systems in the San Francisco Bay Area. I would like to return to the developing world again as a social entrepreneur. And when I do, I'll make sure I have more cash to help me stay the course. - As told to Jeff Wise

Owner's Manual is written by entrepreneurs about lessons they have learned. Eaton Dunkelberger can be reached at edunkelberger.mba2006@london.edu. Please send feedback and column ideas to fsb_mail@timeinc.com.
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Afghan township struggles to make magic out of mud and mines
By Vivian Tan In Beneworsik, Afghanistan
BENEWORSIK, Afghanistan, June 21 (UNHCR) – Getting to Beneworsik township is a problem. You drive past the Bagram airbase in Parwan province north-west of Kabul, continue towards the mountains and turn left into a vast expanse of mud. After 20 minutes of sloshing around, the bespattered four-wheel-drive finally reaches a cluster of half-built houses in the middle of nowhere.

Well, not exactly nowhere – Beneworsik returnee township is located beside a firing range for the Afghan national army. As the sound of gunfire echoes in the distance, Halim, one of the elders living here, said: "We're not worried, we've been through much worse – rockets, bombings."

Halim is among 220 families of returning refugees who received government land in their native Parwan province last year. Many of them had come back from Pakistan between 2002 and 2004, but had no land. Instead, they lived in public buildings or tents in Kabul. Halim campaigned in the 2005 parliamentary election and lobbied hard for the Kabul squatters to be given land in Parwan. He didn't win, but got land for his people last August.

Throughout the country, more than 3,800 families have moved into townships in a government land allocation scheme for landless returnees and internally displaced Afghans that started in 2005. The demand far outweighs the availability of suitable land in mountainous Afghanistan – the government has received 344,000 applications for land, but less than a third of this number has been selected so far. It can take up to two years from the time of application to the time of land distribution.

Five sites – in Nangarhar, Baghlan, Herat, Ghazni and Logar provinces – have been selected as pilot townships that are currently being developed. This includes infrastructural development in the areas of water, roads and some shelter. However, basic services such as health and education are often unplanned, and access to job opportunities is nearly non-existent.

The Afghan Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation (MoRR) plans to start 10 more sites next year, subject to the viability of the proposed areas.

Beneworsik is not one of the pilot townships, but it has done quite well considering the odds against it. The authorities moved the residents here just before winter and created a humanitarian emergency as the area was mined and devoid of any infrastructure and services. UNHCR advocated for a minimum of essential services, while the UN Mine Action Centre for Afghanistan stepped in to survey and clear the area of mines after people began arriving.

During the winter months, food and relief supplies were provided by the Provincial Reconstruction Team, the Bayat Foundation and Kinderberg, among others. UNHCR distributed 144 shelter materials for one-room shelters to the most vulnerable families, but many could not complete the work in time and spent the winter in tents.

"That was the first winter, we expected life to be hard," said Halim, who is paying US$120 for his 375-square-metre plot. "But by next winter, the house should be complete. There are still problems with facilities and jobs, but we are grateful to the government for giving us land and we are happy to have a place to call home."

His neighbour, Mohammed Sadique, added, "For four years, I slept in a tent near the Kabul stadium with my family. Here and Kabul, you can't compare it. Although we had jobs there, land was a pressing need for us. Now at least we have a roof over our heads."

MoRR has built wells, but the pumps keep breaking down and do not provide enough drinking and construction water in the summer. Other basic facilities are still lacking. "I am anxiously waiting for a chance for my children to go to school, even if it's just a tent school," said Rogul, a mother of three. UNHCR is working with UNICEF and other agencies to provide more community-based education.

Sadique said their isolation was a concern. "There is no path linking us to the road and no public bus will come here with all this mud. Sometimes we walk to the nearby district. It takes three hours and the whole day is gone," he said, adding: "What will happen when someone is sick?" The government has set up a health post in the area while a Bangladeshi aid group comes to vaccinate the children.

"Unemployment is a big problem here. If there is a road, it will help us to travel out for work," Sadique said. However, he is hopeful: "We expect more families to come from Kabul. We've already demarcated their plots for 200 afghanis ($4) a day, but when they come, they'll need to build their houses, maybe schools and clinics. We hope to have jobs then."

Khan Aga has created his own job and is building a home. The 19-year-old returnee owns the only motorcycle in the township and shuttles to the market to buy gas canisters to sell at a profit of five afghanis a kilo. He also runs a small shop selling groceries and household items.

With a capacity for up to 12,000 families, there is room to grow in Beneworsik township. "I want my home to be green," said Khan Aga, pointing to a vegetable patch in front of his sister's house next door where he has planted onions, potatoes and leeks. It will take time before Beneworsik starts to feel like a real home, but if greens can sprout from mud, there is hope for this returnee settlement.
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Afghan refugees calling for action
Group to host talk, protest Saturday
By Todd R. Brown, The Argus, CA STAFF WRITER 06/21/2007 04:28:59 AM PDT
FREMONT — While the Tri-City area is renowned for its Afghan population, the expatriates here are few compared with millions more refugees living beyond their homeland's border.

The issues facing Afghan immigrants in the Bay Area, and the degradation suffered by so many living in camps in Iran, Pakistan and elsewhere take center stage Saturday, when a free symposium and demonstration are set in Centerville.

Six speakers will offer their thoughts during "East Meets West: Awakening to the Challenges of Afghans in Fremont," from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Golden Peacock restaurant on Peralta Boulevard. The event will include South Asian food and music.

A protest asking Afghan President Hamid Karzai to pay more attention to the refugee dilemma will follow from 3 to

6 p.m. at the corner of Fremont and Peralta boulevards. "I came mountain to mountain. I survived (by fleeing) to Pakistan," said Wazhma Mohseni, 38, of Fremont, who organized the protest. "We're just a people. We want peace for our people."

During Afghanistan's war with the Soviet Union, Mohseni said her father, an Afghan soldier, was taken away and killed by Russians who broke down the family's door in the middle of the night. She spent almost two years in neighboring Pakistan before coming to Hayward in 1985 with her mother and siblings.

Today, the housewife and mother of three said she was so moved by stories of rape and other abuses in the refugee camps surrounding her home country

that she wanted to publicize the protest at local businesses and mosques and on Afghan cable TV.

"They call me from all over the Bay Area (and from as far away as) Modesto," she said.

Conservative estimates put the local expatriate population at 15,000, but Melanie Gadener, executive director of Foundation for Self Reliance, said it could be 60,000. Because Census data are categorized by race, not nationality, a definite estimate is elusive, she said.

"Before 9/11, I did not even know where Afghanistan was on the map," said Gadener, whose Fremont nonprofit arranged the symposium. "Education is so important in overcoming ignorance."

Now working on a Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, on the Afghan diaspora, Gadener said she gathered Saturday's panel, including Fremont Councilwoman and Bangalore native Anu Natarajan, to discuss the melding of cultures locally.

"Fremont is one of the most diverse cities. Getting the support system is not the issue," Natarajan said of South Asian immigrants. "It's the challenges of anybody living in a new country. You're giving up your known reality."

Gadener's foundation provides Afghan war widows with life skills training and offers some language teaching, along with connecting immigrants to other resources.

Yet such opportunities are a just dream for refugees with no sanitation systems and little food or water.

"I personally know many Afghan refugee families," she said. "It's poverty, especially for the widows. They're at the beck and call of their male relatives. Honestly, I don't know how some of them survive. I don't know how they put one foot in front of the other."

Atiqullah Atifmal, Afghanistan's consul general in Los Angeles, said the U.S. invasion and the war on terror took priority over the refugees' plight.

"We were busy with the reconstruction of the country," he said. "We couldn't manage this issue. I know that the living conditions are bad, especially in Pakistan and Iran. It is not fair."

He said talks are under way with several countries to allow refugees to return gradually, although Pakistan won't wait past 2009 to repatriate its 2.5 million homeless Afghans. Still, Atifmal said that is about half the number who were there when the Taliban fell nearly six years ago.

As for Iran, with its 1.5 million Afghans, he said: "They forced our refugees to return home, and not in a good manner. It caused a lot of problems for Afghanistan."

By contrast, he said many Hayward and Tri-City area Afghans have been here for 15 or 20 years, time to acclimate to their host country's culture; their children are now earning degrees at American universities.

"Now they have found their place here," he said, adding that he still would like to see Afghan schools take root to educate the youths about their native culture and history as well.

Atifmal, who has an office in Union City, said Karzai may come to the area in September to view the diaspora firsthand.

Staff writer Todd R. Brown covers Newark, Ohlone College and ethnic communities. Reach him at (510) 353-7004 or tbrown@angnewspapers.com.
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Afghan refugees must not be returned now
21.06.2007 07:56 Norway Post, Norway
The Socialist Left Party's foreign policy spokesperson, Aagot Valle, says the situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating, and that refugees must not be forcibly returned now.

The Socialist Left Party is one of the three government coalition parties.
Valle has just returned from a tour of Afghanistan, where she also met with UN's High Commissioner for Refugees.

She says that the High Commissioner stressed that refugees must not be returned to places where they would lack a strong network or close family, - not even to Kabul.

The Norwegian Department for Labour and Inclusion has made it clear that the Afghan refugees who have received a final no to their application for asylum, must leave Norway.
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Families, mourners, Karzai attend mosque service for 21 police killed in bomb blast
The Associated Press - Wednesday, June 20, 2007 - KABUL, Afghanistan: Wearing a black shalwar kameez tunic, Amanullah cried at the mass funeral service Wednesday as he mourned his father's death — one of the 21 police trainers killed in a deadly suicide bomb attack this week in Kabul.

"Where is my father?" he wailed, kissing the epaulettes and police caps of the officers around him as they offered condolences and tried to calm him.

"God bless your father, Habibullah. He was not only your father — he was father of all the police of Afghanistan," one police academy student said to him.

Dozens of mourners, including President Hamid Karzai, filed into the mosque in central Kabul to pay respects to the families of police killed in a bomb attack Sunday that killed as many as 35 people, the deadliest insurgent attack since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001.

Sunday's bomb ripped through a bus carrying dozens of police trainers. A number of civilians were also caught in the blast.

Mourners at the mosque walked past portraits of the dead policemen hanging in front of the walls and windows. They walked up to family members, placed their hands on their hearts and bowed solemnly in a quiet procession. "God bless them," they said, one by one.

"Twenty-one of our teachers were killed in the blast that day. It was a black day for police. I pray that God punish these terrorists, and that terrorism will fail," said Abdul Aziz, one of the dozens of police officers in navy blue uniforms at the wake.

Afghan police are often criticized as poorly trained and corrupt, but international donors are putting increasing emphasis on building a professional force — replicating some of the relative success in building the Afghan army that often fights alongside NATO and US forces against Taliban militants.

There are currently more than 70,000 police. It is hoped to increase that to more than 82,000 by end 2008, said Maj. Gen. Bob Durbin, commander of the Combined Security Transition Command Afghanistan responsible for building Afghan security forces.

Lt. Col. Maria Carl, spokeswoman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force, said the international community is working every day to train "groups of brave men to become soldiers and police."

She said a recent surge in suicide and bomb attacks was tragic but "militarily insignificant."
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