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March 1, 2007 


Blast in Afghanistan kills 2, injures 48
By AMIR SHAH, Associated Press Writer Thu Mar 1, 3:46 AM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - A roadside bomb in western  Afghanistan left three civilians dead and 48 wounded, including 10 children, officials said Thursday.

The blast targeted a passing police vehicle in the city of Farah, said Mohammad Qasem Bayan, the chief of public health department for Farah province.

The attack happened in the city center near a school, Bayan said.

The police vehicle was slightly damaged and two officers also were wounded, said Zemeri Bashary, a spokesman for the ministry of interior.

"It is the work of enemies of Afghanistan," Bashary said, suggesting the resurgent Taliban militants were behind the attack.

Western Afghanistan has been spared much of the violence rocking the country's south and east, but that area is on a major route for heroin smuggling into  Iran.

Last week, suspected Taliban militants briefly took over one of the districts of Farah province after police fled the posts.

That followed a roadside attack last Sunday on the province's police chief on his return from destroying poppy fields. The police chief was unharmed, but four other officers in the vehicle were killed and two wounded.

Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium poppy. In 2006, production in the country rose 49 percent to 6,700 tons — enough to make about 670 tons of heroin.

The government has stepped up its attempts to destroy poppy fields after rejecting the U.S. idea of ground-based spraying of the illicit crop.

In southern Helmand province on Wednesday, residents discovered the body of a doctor who was kidnapped and killed by suspected Taliban militants earlier in the week, said Gen. Mohammad Eisah, the province's deputy police chief.
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Associated Press Writer Noor Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.
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Two killed in Afghan bombing, doctor found dead
Thu Mar 1, 3:49 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - A bomb targeting a provincial police chief's vehicle in western  Afghanistan killed two people and wounded 53 Thursday while authorities found the bullet-riddled body of a kidnapped doctor.

The remotely detonated bomb exploded in the centre of the town of Farah, capital of the province of the same name, at a point where labourers had gathered for day work, they said.

Two civilians were killed, the Farah hospital director, Mohammad Qasim, told AFP.

"Fifty-three injured people came to the hospital. Twelve of them are in a serious condition," he said, and were sent to a nearby  NATO-led International Security Assistance Force base for surgery.

The interior ministry in Kabul said the police chief's vehicle was the target. The bomb appeared to have been hidden in a garbage skip, ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP.

Farah province has seen a surge in unrest in recent weeks blamed on Taliban insurgents or opium traders. The rebels captured the town of Bakwa for less than 24 hours last month before being forced out by NATO-led and Afghan troops.

President Hamid Karzai said Wednesday that Afghanistan's opium production is fuelling unrest gripping the country.

Meanwhile, in the volatile neighbouring province of Helmand, the bullet-riddled body of an Afghan doctor was found dumped near the remote area of Garmser which has seen much Taliban-related activity.

The doctor, who worked at a hospital in the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, had been missing since Saturday, provincial security chief Isah Khan said.

He did not say who may have been responsible for the killing. The extremist Taliban have kidnapped and executed dozens of people working for the government or foreign groups, accusing some of being spies.
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Democrats push Bush for more money for Afghanistan
Wed Feb 28, 6:53 PM ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) - US Democrats, the majority in Congress, on Wednesday asked  President George W. Bush to budget more money for  Afghanistan, where they say more effort is needed to fight terrorism than in  Iraq.

The request came as Bush met for the first time at the White House with a consultative "war on terror" group comprised of his fellow Republicans and rival Democrats.

The president had proposed the creation of such a group when he announced his new Iraq strategy on January 10 and, against the wishes of most Americans, sent 21,500 additional soldiers to the violence-wracked country.

The first meeting of the new consultative group, however, was devoted to Afghanistan, Bush's other front in the fight against terrorism, and not Iraq, the participants said.

Iraq is a thorny subject to broach. The new Democratic-controlled Congress, installed in January, fiercely opposes Bush's plan.

But the debate could escalate soon when Congress examines Bush's request for an additional 93.4 billion dollars to finance military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan this year and a budget of 141.7 billion dollars for 2008.

"We believe that there is need for more resources, in terms of the reconstruction in Afghanistan. In the supplemental, we would like to see more money for Afghanistan" for 2007, said House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record) following the White House meeting, which included Vice President  Dick Cheney and Secretary of State  Condoleezza Rice.

"We have long said that that should be the focus of the war on terror," said Pelosi.
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Pakistan leader says militants will be forced out
Thu Mar 1, 4:18 AM ET
ISLAMABAD (AFP) - President Pervez Musharraf said Pakistan will force foreign Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants to leave the troubled tribal belt bordering  Afghanistan, state media reported Thursday.

General Musharraf -- told by US Vice President  Dick Cheney on a surprise visit earlier this week to crack down on insurgents -- also urged Pakistanis to help by informing the authorities about extremist suspects.

"People have come there from outside. They are living in our mountains and spreading terrorism not just in Pakistan but in the entire world," the official Associated Press of Pakistan quoted Musharraf as saying late Wednesday.

"These people are putting Pakistan in danger. These people should leave and go, otherwise we will have to deal with them and we are dealing with them," he told a large public meeting in southern Sindh province.

The impact of terrorism was being felt throughout Pakistan and it was the public's duty to help, Musharraf said. "Identify and point out those who have such tendencies and inform the law enforcement agencies," he said.

Musharraf, who has escaped three assassination attempts blamed on Islamic militants opposed to his fight against extremism, also said that the country's development was being harmed by fundamentalism.

"We have to check such tendencies, otherwise the country will not be able to move on to the path of progress and development," he added.

Cheney on Monday said Washington was concerned that Al-Qaeda was regrouping in Pakistan's northwestern tribal zone and that Taliban rebels based there were preparing for a spring offensive against foreign troops in Afghanistan.

The US vice president's brief trip to Islamabad came amid reports that US aid could be cut if Pakistan did not take more action to hunt down Islamic militants.

The next day Cheney was forced to take shelter when a Taliban suicide bomber blew himself up at the gate of the main US base in Afghanistan. Cheney was unhurt but Afghan officials said 20 people were killed.

Pakistan says it has killed up to 1,000 militants and lost 700 soldiers in military action in the tribal areas since 2003, but it has since signed peace deals with militants in North and South Waziristan districts.

US and Afghan officials say attacks across the border have soared as a result of the pact.
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Talibanization takes root in militant havens on Pakistan's frontier
The Associated Press Wednesday, February 28, 2007
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: Barbers are scared to shave customers' chins; alleged thieves with blackened faces are paraded through the streets in shame; and suspected spies for the U.S. are found beheaded in a ditch.

Tales of Taliban-style justice in Pakistani border regions are proliferating — a sign that an area already serving as a base for militants fighting in neighboring Afghanistan is slipping further out of government control.

This week, the United States voiced growing concern that al-Qaida was regrouping in the area.

U.S. intelligence chief Mike McConnell said Tuesday that Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, were believed to be hiding in northwestern Pakistan, trying to set up an operations base there.

A day earlier, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney — on a brief visit to Pakistan's capital, Islamabad — delivered a message of concern to Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

Musharraf's recent strategy of seeking peace with pro-Taliban tribesmen, in preference to military confrontation, appears to have backfired.

"The pro-Taliban militants are making their presence felt in some very ugly ways," said Samina Ahmed, South Asia director for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group think tank. "They seem to be dictating the agenda."

Residents of Miran Shah, the main town in Pakistan's North Waziristan area and a militant stronghold, say the Taliban run an office where inhabitants can file complaints and receive a quick ruling based on Islamic law from a 10-member committee.

The committee has reputedly dealt with family feuds and seized suspected thieves.

Shopkeepers say three men accused of stealing cars were driven through jeering crowds in the nearby town of Mir Ali last week, their faces blackened and heads shaved.

The committee has not yet dealt with any major crimes — partly because the fear of Taliban justice has succeeded in curbing lawlessness, at least in the main towns, residents say.

Further north, several barbers in the Bajur district recently said they would no longer shave customers' beards after receiving a warning that it was "un-Islamic" and being threatened with unspecified punishment.

More ominous are the cases of scores of people who were accused of being aligned with Pakistan's government or being foreign agents, and were later found shot or beheaded, their bodies dumped beside country roads.

In the latest such incident, a schoolteacher's body was found Tuesday in a sack on a roadside in South Waziristan.

A note found with the corpse identified the slain man as "Akhtar Usman, the one who spied for America." The word "Hypocrite" was scrawled on the temple of his severed head in Urdu, Pakistan's main language.

There is little indication that authorities are willing or able to confront such developments in an area steeped in Islamic radicalism since it was a base for the mujahedeen war against Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Taliban fighters and al-Qaida militants — including Arabs and Central Asians — poured into Pakistan's rugged border zone in 2001 and 2002 as U.S.-led forces drove them from Afghanistan. They found refuge in the fortress-like houses of sympathetic tribes and Afghan refugee communities.

Under U.S. pressure, Musharraf sent his army into the semiautonomous tribal agencies for the first time in Pakistan's 60-year history to pursue the militants.

Hundreds were killed on both sides in scores of operations in the tribal belt, mostly since 2004.

Musharraf then changed tack. A peace deal struck in North Waziristan in September demanded that militants stop attacks into Afghanistan and halt "Talibanization," in return for Pakistani troops moving out of towns like Miran Shah, while retaining a presence at the border.

A peace agreement also was signed in South Waziristan in 2005.

Ali Mohammed Jan Aurakzai, the top government official in northwestern Pakistan, has defended the peace deal approach.

He recently said that reports of barbers refusing to shave beards and Taliban-style courts were isolated incidents that reflect the area's Pashtun tribal tradition, rather than a fundamentalist takeover.

But tribal elders who act as guarantors for the North Waziristan deal appear powerless to enforce it. Even Musharraf has acknowledged that some of his security forces have been turning a blind eye to militant infiltration.

U.S. and Afghan officials complain of rising cross-border attacks, and American intelligence director McConnell said Tuesday in Washington that the September deal is helping al-Qaida's efforts to establish training camps and other operations there.

It remains difficult to verify that statement. Pakistan's Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao denied it Wednesday, saying the U.S. had shared no such information with Pakistan.
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Taliban official: Bin Laden is alive
Thu Mar 1, 3:49 AM ET Associated Press
LONDON - A senior Taliban commander says  Osama bin Laden is alive and in contact with leaders of  Afghanistan's Taliban insurgents, according to an interview aired on British television.

Mullah Dadullah said he had not met bin Laden since the fall of the Taliban regime after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, but said "we know he's still alive."

"He's not yet martyred. Such information would be easy to get — his comrades stand shoulder to shoulder with us. They keep us informed," Dadullah said in an interview broadcast Wednesday by Channel 4 News.

The authenticity of the information could not be confirmed. Channel 4 did not say how it had obtained the footage, and it was not known when or where Dadullah made the comments, which were translated into English.

Dadullah, commander of Taliban operations in eastern and southeastern Afghanistan and a trusted associate of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, said bin Laden met outsiders rarely. Dadullah did not comment on bin Laden's whereabouts.

"Only his comrades see him; we exchange messages with each other to share plans," Dadullah said. "We also go to the battlefield together. We actually meet very rarely, just for important consultations. It's hard for anyone to meet Bin Laden himself now, but we know he's still alive."

Dadullah said the Taliban had "hundreds more" suicide bombers ready to attack  NATO forces in Afghanistan. NATO commanders have said they believe the Taliban plans a spring offensive against alliance troops in the country.
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British FM visits Afghanistan's Helmand
KABUL (AFP) - British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett Thursday visited the southern Afghan province of Helmand where thousands of British troops are deployed to fight the Taliban, a statement said.

Beckett met local legislators and British forces operating in the provincial capital Lashkargah under the  NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the British foreign office said in a statement.

She paid tribute to the hard work of civilian and military staff operating in "demanding circumstances", it said.

"Real progress is being made in building up the capacity of local institutions and driving forward development projects that are so important to improving the lives of the local people," it quoted her as saying.

Britain on Monday pledged an extra 1,400 troops for  Afghanistan, taking the number of British soldiers in ISAF to 7,700. Most of them are based in Helmand.

Beckett on Wednesday met Afghan President Hamid Karzai and her counterpart Rangeen Dadfar Spanta in Kabul, where she said that Britain, Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan must all do more against the Taliban.

The ousted Islamic regime is leading an intense insurgency in southern and eastern Afghanistan.

Britain is the second-largest aid donor to Afghanistan and has spent two billion dollars here since 2001, when the hardline Taliban government was toppled.
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Taliban: Suicide army is ready
POSTED: 1357 GMT (2157 HKT), March 1, 2007
KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- The Taliban's top military commander said his forces have assembled a hundreds-strong army of suicide attackers poised for a spring offensive against U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan.

In a rare interview with Britain's Channel Four, Mullah Dadullah -- the man in charge of day-to-day military operations for the hardline Islamic militia -- also claimed he had a regular line of communication with Osama bin Laden.

"The Americans have sown a seed. They will reap the crop for quite a long time," Dadullah said. "We will get our revenge on them, whether in Afghanistan or outside."

The Taliban military commander said he has readied his military to take on the 35,000-strong NATO force in Afghanistan.

"The suicide martyrs, those willing to blow themselves up, are countless," Dadullah boasted.

"Hundreds have registered their names already and are ready to go and we have hundreds more on the waiting list. Each is anxious to be the first to be sent."

Evidence of a resurgent Taliban is everywhere, along with the influence of al Qaeda-style attacks, according to CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen.

There were 139 suicide attacks in Afghanistan last year, up four-fold from 2005, the U.S. military said. Roadside bombings doubled in 2006 to more than 1,600.

During the past year, NATO forces have fought a number of bloody battles against Taliban forces in the southern city of Kandahar, once the stronghold of the extremist movement, and the surrounding region.

In the interview, Dadullah restated earlier claims that he communicates with bin Laden on a regular basis and works directly with al Qaeda in the field.

"We exchange messages with each other to share plans," the Taliban commander said of bin Laden "We actually meet very rarely -- just for important consultations. It's hard for anyone to meet bin Laden himself now, but we know he's still alive."

"His comrades stand shoulder to shoulder with us," Dadullah said, referring to al Qaeda fighters. "We also go to the battlefield together."

The Taliban harbored bin Laden and al Qaeda in the days after the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States and refused to turn him over to Washington, prompting an invasion that wrested their control of Kabul.

Dadullah said the Taliban did not regret standing by al Qaeda.

"For the Taliban, Islam is more important than anything else," he said. "It's our religious duty to shelter any Muslim brother who's on the run from the infidels, even at the cost of our government."
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Afghanistan: UN Monitor Cites 'Rapid Deterioration' As Drugs Spread
By Breffni O'Rourke
March 1, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- The international body that monitors the implementation of UN antidrug efforts has warned that Afghanistan is failing to make progress on drug control; on the contrary, things are getting worse.

The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) concludes in its annual report that iIlicit opium-poppy cultivation in Afghanistan reached record levels in 2006.

It adds that, apart from exporting narcotic substances, Afghans are themselves falling victim to drug dependency.

The INCB also says a full one-third of the Afghan economy is based on the production of narcotics, and that this is contributing inexorably to the corruption gripping the country.

Message For Kabul

The Vienna-based board says it is "seriously concerned" at the deterioration in drugs control. It also calls on the government of President Hamid Karzai to urgently address this problem with the help of the international community, particularly donor countries.

The report says that the production of opium, the raw ingredient of heroin, has grown by almost half in the past year.

"Illicit opium-poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has reached record levels -- the highest level in history in 2006 -- and this is a main concern of the board," INCB spokeswoman Liqin Zhu tells RFE/RL.

The opium crop is estimated at a massive 6,100 tons, making Afghanistan by far the largest producer of opium in the world.

Afghanistan is more than just the source of much of the heroin flooding into North America and Europe. It is itself falling victim to drug consumption. The board says a nationwide survey of drug abuse in Afghanistan in early 2006 revealed that the country has 1 million drug users -- 60,000 of whom are children under the age of 15.

Meanwhile, the use of other illicit or controlled substances in Afghanistan is growing. The INCB cites in particular the synthetic substance acetic anhydride. It says the absence of proper drug-control regulations means that, for instance, shops are selling such substances over the counter.

Growing Regional Problem

And not only Afghanistan is suffering. The neighbor countries of the Middle East and Central Asia are being drawn into the web of addiction.

"More than half of the world's heroin abusers live in Asia, and the highest level of opiate abuse occurs along the main trafficking routes originating in Afghanistan," spokeswoman Zhu says. "Therefore the situation in Afghanistan definitely has a great impact on the neighboring countries."

Iran, for instance, is estimated to have 1.2 million opiate abusers, while Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan are also hard hit. There are around 50,000 drug addicts in Kyrgyzstan -- 12 percent of whom are under 18-years old, according to figures cited in Bishkek today by Timur Isakov, an adviser to the director of Kyrgyzstan's Drug Control Agency.

James Callahan, who is based in Tashkent for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), tells RFE/RL's Turkmen Service that the northern route through Central Asia from Afghanistan to Russia and Europe probably accounts for at least 20 percent of the drugs that are trafficked out of Afghanistan.

"The impact of that in Central Asia is that there has been a significant increase in drug abuse, particularly of heroin," Callahan says. "And along with the drug abuse comes HIV/AIDS because of sharing of needles and other unsterile equipment by injecting drug users."

He says that additionally -- because of the large amounts of money available in drug trafficking -- public officials are tempted to take money from drug traffickers in order not to prosecute them.

Callahan urges all the governments in the region to cooperate with one another to combat the drug-trafficking problem because the drug traffickers themselves don't pay any attention to borders.
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US ramps up Taliban fight
By Mark Sappenfield, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor Wed Feb 28, 3:00 AM ET
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN - Vice President  Dick Cheney came to  Afghanistan on an unannounced visit Tuesday to remind Americans of the importance of the first, and often forgotten, front in the war on terror. A Taliban suicide bomber who failed in an attempt to assassinate Mr. Cheney here helped to make a compelling case for him.

Since last summer, when the Taliban seized entire districts in the southernmost provinces and attempted to encircle Kabul, the United States has refocused its attention on Afghanistan.

Recently, the Bush administration proposed $10.6 billion in aid, announced the overhaul of its diplomatic mission here, and increased the number of American troops to 27,000 - the highest level since the 2001 invasion.

It is, in part, an attempt to save what has been promoted as the administration's great overseas achievement, even as  Iraq slips further into chaos. But Tuesday's events are indicative of the Taliban's eagerness to escalate the fight, and analysts question whether America's increased commitment to Afghanistan will be sufficient to make the country's democratic experiment successful.

"For so long, Afghanistan was held up as the success story," says Paul Fishstein, director of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, an independent analysis organization. "Now it seems that much of what has been touted as building a pluralistic, open democracy is at risk."

Tuesday's attack comes at a time of relative peace around Kabul, which has not seen a suicide attack for months.

Mr. Cheney was staying at Bagram Air Base, about 40 miles north of the capital. When the bomber was unable to get beyond the front gate because of security, he blew himself up, according to coalition officials. At press time, casualty figures were uncertain, but at least 23 were killed.  NATO reported that at least one US soldier, an American contractor, and a South Korean solder were among the dead. President Hamid Karzai's office said that some 20 Afghan workers at the base lost their lives.

Cheney said that the attackers were trying "to find ways to question the authority of the central government." The Taliban, who have claimed responsibility for the attack through a spokesman, say that Cheney was the intended target.

It is not yet clear whether this attack heralds an expansion of the Taliban offensive into the relatively stable north. The Taliban are strongest in Afghanistan's southern provinces, where they are widely believed to receive haven and support in neighboring Pakistan.

Their offensive in the region last year created lawless enclaves - with much of the area still controlled by neither the government nor the insurgents. The situation has jolted the West - and the US in particular - into action. "Last year seemed to wake the international community to the fact that this war was not a complete success," says a Western diplomat, who would discuss the issue only on condition of anonymity. "In fact, it was a potential failure."

The US has responded with the $10.6 billion aid package, with some $8 billion of that earmarked for the Afghan Army and police. The White House and Congress alike have increased pressure on Pakistan to control its borders. And a month ago, the US gave the Afghan Army 800 military vehicles and 12,000 guns, in hopes of gradually making it more self-sufficient.

In some respects, Afghanistan might benefit from America's mounting weariness with the Iraq war. Just after becoming Speaker of the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record) (D) of California traveled to Afghanistan and commented that the country needs "much more of an effort" from the US and NATO - in contrast to her position that the US should withdraw from Iraq.

While Mr. Bush has not shown any signs of lessening his commitment to Iraq, he has clearly made more room for Afghanistan on his foreign-policy platform. When the issue of the Iraq troop surge was recently before Congress, Bush took the opportunity to deliver a speech solely about Afghanistan.

It was more than just a diversion. Frustrated by most NATO nations' unwillingness to commit troops to the volatile south, the US this month decided to send a brigade to Afghanistan that was scheduled to go to Iraq. Britain has increased its troop levels in Afghanistan by 1,400 to 7,700 - meaning it will soon have more troops in Afghanistan than Iraq.

But in Italy, Prime Minister Romano Prodi resigned after dissension over Italy's involvement in Afghanistan, something he continued to defend as he opened a Senate debate ahead of a confidence vote on his government scheduled for Wednesday. Italy has about 1,800 troops in the country.

And in Canada, which has some 2,500 soldiers in Afghanistan, a fourth probe was opened Tuesday into whether soldiers knew about possible torture of detainees after they were handed over to Afghan authorities.

Most government officials and nongovernmental organizations welcome US help. But some analysts worry that the US will continue to throw money and manpower at effects, while ignoring the causes of Afghanistan's problems.

Top among those they say, is reforming the Afghan government, which is increasingly controlled by warlords and drug money from the illegal poppy trade.

As in Iraq, the United States rushed to install a democratic government in a place not prepared for it, they add, ignoring what were, perhaps, larger problems.

After the Taliban, "Afghans were not jumping up and down, saying, 'We want to vote for a president,' " says an aid expert who has worked in the region for decades but requested anonymity because he was not cleared to speak with the media. "They wanted jobs. They wanted services."

In the end, many say, it not only let in criminals and warlords but created unrealistic expectations, as both Afghans and the international community believed Afghanistan was further along than it was.

"The excessive focus on the elections as an indictor for success was misleading," says Mr. Fishstein.

Even now, the notion of giving $10.6 billion to a government with neither the means nor the expertise to spend it strikes some as well-intentioned, but fruitless.

Regarding the Afghan government's ability to act, the aid expert says, "You're navigating glaciers here because they are so slow."
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Britain to withdraw troops from Bosnia as Afghan force boosted
by Katherine Haddon Thu Mar 1, 4:52 AM ET
LONDON (AFP) - Britain was expected to announce Thursday the withdrawal of all its 600 troops from Bosnia amid opposition claims it is being forced to "scratch around" for extra manpower to send to  Afghanistan.

The announcement to lawmakers at the House of Commons comes after the  European Union confirmed this week it was cutting its peacekeeping contingent from 6,500 to around 2,500 as security improves in the Balkan nation.

But the main opposition Conservative Party says that the move again illustrates the "overstretch" plaguing Britain's armed forces.

On Monday, Defence Secretary Des Browne said that 1,400 extra troops would be sent to Afghanistan to bolster the  NATO force, taking to 7,700 the number of British soldiers there.

Most will go to Helmand Province in the south ahead of an expected spring offensive by the Taliban.

And Prime Minister  Tony Blair said last week that 1,600 British personnel were being pulled out of southern  Iraq.

"It's clear that, as overstretch hits hard, the government is having to scratch around to find anywhere from which it can withdraw troops to then send to Afghanistan," Liam Fox, the Conservative defence spokesman, said.

"Our armed forces are carrying a heavy and disproportionate burden in Helmand. As our deployment increases, more and more of our servicemen and women are feeling the pressure."

Fox previously linked the Iraq pullout to the need to boost troop numbers in Afghanistan, saying that the two announcements showed that the army was "so over-stretched we can't carry two conflicts".

NATO countries including Germany, France, Italy and Spain have faced criticism for not contributing enough to the campaign, and last week Browne called for more nations to commit extra resources to the Afghan mission.

"NATO must respond to this request, or we will put at risk everything we have achieved across Afghanistan in the last five years: the stability which has brought five million refugees home, the advances in democracy, the economy, human rights and women's rights, " Browne said.

Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram was to make a statement on the Bosnian deployment Thursday explaining what the EU's decision on peacekeepers in Bosnia "is going to mean for the United Kingdom", a ministry spokesman told AFP.

Britain, which has had a presence in Bosnia for 15 years since the civil war, has troops involved in peacekeeping and reconstruction based near Banja Luka in the northwest.
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Iran and Afghanistan Pledge Better Cultural Ties
March 1, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Iran and Afghanistan have vowed to expand their cultural ties.

Iranian Education Minister Mahmud Farshidi and his Afghan counterpart Azam Dadfar made the announcement today at a joint news conference in Kabul.

Farshidi, who is in Afghanistan for an official visit, said Iran would increase the number of scholarships for Afghans wiling to complete their higher education studies in Iran.

"We made a commitment about scholarships, currently about 600 students are using the scholarships in Iran. It will continue. I now commit myself and promise 50 more [scholarships]," Farshidi said.

Dadfar said Iran has donated $800,000 to Kabul University's dentistry faculty.

Iran and Afghanistan have been expanding their ties since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
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Ambassador stresses resolution of Taliban problem in Afghanistan 
Thursday, 01 March 2007 
WASHINGTON, Feb 28 (APP): Defending Pakistan's counterterrorism  efforts, Ambassador Mahmud Ali Durrani has urged resolution of problems inside Afghanistan since the Taliban problem overwhelmingly lies in that country.  

He told CNN in a live programme that the Taliban are based in Afghanistan and carrying out raids every day.

Durrani pointed out the need to realize that that "90 percent of the problem is in Afghanistan, not in Pakistan."

He rejected the suggestion that last year's agreement with tribal elders in North Waziristan has helped extremists and terrorists.
Responding to a question he emphasized that the problem would not go away until it is resolved inside Afghanistan. The Taliban are in Afghanistan, carrying out raids every day and also recently captured two district headquarters, he added.
Ambassador Durrani welcomed President George Bush's recent speech in which he expressed the US commitment to resolve problems in Afghanistan through a five-point strategy.

The envoy told the channel that about 200,000 people cross Afghanistan-Pakistan border on a daily basis and it becomes very difficult to discern who is a fighter, who is just going to meet family and agreed that there could be a possibility of extremists crossing the border.

In response to another question, he said Pakistan does not bear responsibility for 300 percent increase in the Taliban attacks in eastern Afghanistan. He said the attacks have shot up because there is no control in Afghanistan.

"Afghanistan is 20 times larger that the total tribal area ------. The number of troops in Afghanistan is 20,000. We have twice that number in 1/20th the area," he said, adding that the Taliban are free to move in Afghanistan and can hide in all the places. 
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112 Afghan nationals held
By Our Staff Correspondent Dawn (Pakistan)
QUETTA, Feb 28: Police on Wednesday arrested 112 Afghan nationals in different areas of the city. Sources said that police conducted raids on several localities and hotels in the city and apprehended scores of Afghans living in the country illegally.

“All arrested Afghans have been booked under the Foreigner Act,” said City SSP Qazi Abdul Wahid and added that they were living without legal documents.

He said that 40 of them were suspects of subversion activities and they were being interrogated in connection with bomb blasts, rocket attacks and other such activities.
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