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March 2, 2007 


Pakistani Police Deny Reports Of Taliban Leader's Arrest
March 2, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- A police official in Pakistan's southwestern city of Quetta is denying reports that a high-ranking Taliban leader has been captured there in recent days, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reported.

Quetta deputy police chief Azhar Rashid told RFE/RL today that reports about the arrest of Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, the former defense minister of Afghanistan's Taliban regime, are erroneous.

Rashid confirmed that nine Afghans, all suspected militants, have been arrested in Quetta in recent days. But he said none are senior Taliban leaders or commanders with ties to Al Qaeda.

AP and Reuters today both quoted an unnamed Pakistani intelligence official as saying that Mullah Obaidullah was arrested in Quetta during the past week.

News agencies have pointed out that intelligence services are more likely than the police force to be involved in the handling of a senior Taliban suspect.

Also today, three people were killed and at least seven wounded, including a local judge, when a roadside bomb exploded in the eastern Pakistani city of Multan. The three people slain were guards for the judge, whose court often hears cases against militants and suspected terrorists.

Pakistan has seen a series of bombings in recent weeks, and is under international pressure to step up efforts against Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants operating in its border regions.
(with material from AP, Reuters, dpa)
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Taliban rejects reports of Obaidullah arrest
KANDAHAR CITY, Mar 1 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The Taliban on Friday rejected as baseless reports of arrest of their defence minister and a key aide to Mullah Omar.

 Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, who often speaks for the Taliban, said the former defence minister Mullah Obaidullah was a free man living currently in Afghanistan and not in Pakistan, where he was reported to have been captured.

I have contacted him and he is free and in good health, said Ahmadi, terming reports of his arrest as absolutely false.

Mullah Obaidullah is considered to be an important military leader for the Taliban movement. He is a member of the 10-strong leadership council of the group.

Pakistani media quoted anonymous officials there as saying that Obaidullah was among the five senior Taliban officials arrested in Quetta city of Balochistan province on Monday.

Ahmadi, talking to Pajhwok Afghan News by phone from an undisclosed location, said those detained in Quetta were ordinary Afghans and that none of them was a Taliban member.
Saeed Zabuli
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Former Taliban defense minister arrested
By MUNIR AHMAD, Associated Press Writer
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistani security forces captured the former Taliban defense minister, Pakistani intelligence officials said Friday, in what would be the highest-ranking leader from the Afghan insurgency to be arrested since it lost power in 2001.

There was no immediate official confirmation from the Pakistani government about the arrest of Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, regarded as one of the two top deputies of Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar. A Taliban spokesman dismissed the report as a "rumor."

Akhund was nabbed with four other suspects in a raid on a home in the southwestern city of Quetta on Monday, three intelligence officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to journalists.

The arrests came amid growing international pressure on Pakistan to crackdown on Taliban militants and coincided with a visit to Islamabad on Monday by Vice President  Dick Cheney.

During his visit, Cheney had expressed concern to President Gen. Pervez Musharraf over al-Qaida regrouping inside Pakistan's tribal regions and an expected Taliban spring offensive in neighboring  Afghanistan.

One of the intelligence officials said Akhund's arrest was a planned operation following a tip from U.S. officials and was not linked to Cheney's visit. He said that seven more Taliban suspects had been arrested, also in Quetta, later in the week. He had no information about the identities of the other suspects.

Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, a senior Interior Ministry official handling counterterrorism issues, denied late Thursday that a top Taliban figure had been arrested and was not answering calls Friday. Tariq Khosa, police chief of Baluchistan province where Quetta is located, said he was not aware of Akhund's arrest.

Afghan and  NATO officials could not confirm the arrest either.

"To the best of my knowledge we were not involved in anything associated with him," Col. Tom Collins, the spokesman for the NATO's International Security Assistance Force, said in Kabul. "We were not involved in that operation."

Akhund's arrest was also reported by the New York Times and Pakistan's respected Dawn daily newspaper. Dawn cited an unnamed federal official, who was quoted as saying that two of the suspects captured with him "could be" Amir Khan Haqqani, a Taliban commander in Afghanistan's southern Zabul province, and Abdul Bari, the former Taliban governor of Helmand province.

Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, who claims to speak for the Taliban, denied Akhund had been captured.

"It's just a rumor," Ahmadi told The Associated Press by phone from an undisclosed location. "Mullah Obaidullah is in Afghanistan, he's not in Pakistan."

Ahmadi confirmed Akhund's stature inside the Taliban movement as one of Omar's two top lieutenants, along with Mullah Biradar. He said the two men had been appointed by Omar to command the militia's jihad, or holy war, inside Afghanistan.

Taliban-led militants have staged a resurgence over the past year, threatening the elected Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai. Bitter fighting with Afghan, NATO and U.S. forces during 2006 left thousands dead, and militant leaders are threatening a new wave of attacks as winter subsides in the coming weeks.

Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, spokesman for the Afghan defense ministry, said Akhund's arrest, if confirmed, would affect the command and control system of the Taliban.

"He was a very important person in the Taliban movement," Azimi said. "It will be a big blow to Taliban morale."

The surge in violence, particularly in southern Afghanistan, has badly strained Pakistan's relations with Afghanistan, which claims the Taliban movement is commanded from Quetta. Karzai has claimed that Omar himself is staying in Quetta.

The presence of Taliban leaders in the southwestern city, which is heavily populated by Afghan migrants, is hard to substantiate. The clearest public sign, prior to Akhund's reported capture, was the arrest there in October 2005 of a Taliban spokesman, Latif Hakimi, who lived in the city with his family.

In recent months, NATO has reported a string of successes in killing or arresting Taliban commanders in Afghanistan: most significantly, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani — another top Omar lieutenant — who was killed in an airstrike in southern Helmand province, just across the border from Pakistan, in December.

Musharraf and U.S. officials have said that Pakistan — a former supporter of the Taliban regime but now a key ally of Washington in its war on terror — helped in the operation to eliminate Osmani, a top military commander for the insurgents in their southern Afghan heartland.

Speaking in early February, Musharraf also said another top militant commander, Mullah Dadullah, had been inside Pakistan three times but evaded capture. He didn't give details, but described it as a "a combined failure" of Pakistan and anti-terror allies who shared the intelligence.

In an interview with an Al-Jazeera TV journalist last week, Dadullah claimed he had deployed more than 6,000 fighters for a spring offensive. He said the fighters were hidden in tunnels and elsewhere in preparation the assault.
___

Associated Press writers Matthew Pennington in Islamabad, Abdul Sattar in Quetta, Noor Khan in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and Amir Shah in Kabul contributed to this report.
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U.S. forces pursue Taliban into Pakistan
By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer Thu Mar 1, 9:31 PM ET
WASHINGTON - American forces on  Afghanistan's eastern border routinely fire upon and pursue Taliban enemies into Pakistan, defense officials told Congress on Thursday, offering the most detailed description to date of U.S. action in that region.

They said the Taliban threat is greater now than it was a year ago, and they agreed that the Pakistan government can and must do more to get at the large, ungoverned sectors along the remote Pakistan border that are safe havens for Taliban insurgents.

"We have all the authorities we need to pursue, either with (artillery) fire or on the ground, across the border," said Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute told the  Senate Armed Services Committee. Lute, who is chief operations officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said soldiers can respond if there is an imminent threat. But he said they would have to seek the Pakistan government's permission to go after a munitions factory further inside the Pakistani border.

The discussion came just days after Vice President  Dick Cheney met with Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, in an effort to urge a more aggressive Pakistani effort to hunt al-Qaida and Taliban fighters who are expected to increase attacks into Afghanistan this spring.

The Pakistani military has been more aggressive in going after al-Qaida than the Taliban, who are more protected by tribal leaders in some of the border regions.

Musharraf has insisted that his forces have done all they can against the extremists, but senators said it's simply not enough. And they quizzed Lute and undersecretary of defense for policy, Eric S. Edelman, about what more the U.S. can do if Pakistan won't or cannot do more.

"I think we really have no alternative but to continue to work with him as best we can to encourage him to do more," Edelman said under repeated questioning from Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass. "It means he has to face some difficult political choices at home and we have to encourage him to face up to those."

There have been suggestions that Congress could cut off some aid to Pakistan, but there was no discussion of that Thursday.

Lute, meanwhile, provided a detailed description of when U.S. forces can fire on and pursue insurgents across the border into Pakistan. He said they can respond when faced with a hostile act, or anyone "demonstrating hostile intent." The final decision is made by the commander at the scene.

He would not say, however, if there are restrictions on how far into the country soldiers can go. He said the decision is based not on distance, but on the immediacy of the threat involved.

"If just across the border, inside Pakistan, we have surveillance systems that detect a Taliban party setting up a rocket system which is obviously pointed west, into Afghanistan, we do not have to wait for the rockets to be fired. They have demonstrated hostile intent and we can engage them," Lute said.

He added that if U.S. forces learned of a munitions factory inside Pakistan, they would have to share that intelligence with the government, and would have to get permission to strike the building. Asked if Pakistan had ever turned down such a request, Lute said he would have to answer that in a closed, classified setting.

Asked about  Iran's involvement in roadside bombs in Afghanistan, Edelman said it is not the same situation as in  Iraq. Military officials have displayed weapons and other equipment they said is evidence that Iran is deeply involved in deadly explosives being used in Iraq.

"We do not have the body of evidence in Afghanistan as we do in Iraq," Edelman said. "So the sophistication of the (explosive devices) is, sort of, in a different order of magnitude."
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Twelve Taliban killed in Afghanistan
Fri Mar 2, 3:29 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - The  NATO force in  Afghanistan said Friday its soldiers and warplanes had killed 12 Taliban in a battle in the south while a "known terrorist" was arrested separately.

The battle was in Zabul province on Tuesday and kicked off when 30 militants attacked an International Security Assistance Force and Afghan patrol with gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades, ISAF said in a statement.

The military struck back with heavy-weapons fire and close air support, it said. An ISAF soldier was wounded. Most foreign soldiers in Zabul are US nationals.

The US-led coalition, which works alongside ISAF, announced meanwhile it arrested a "known terrorist" and seven other people Friday suspected of "aiding terrorist fighters and facilitating terrorist operations" in Paktika province.

In other violence linked to the Taliban insurgency, gunmen attacked a convoy of trucks carrying food and other supplies from Pakistan to the US military base at Bagram, near Kabul, late Thursday, police said.

Three Pakistan drivers were wounded and three trucks were set ablaze, police said.

The extremist Taliban launched the insurgency after being removed from government in 2001 by the coalition and Afghan resistance factions.

The US Defence Department expects the offensive will be stronger this year than last, which was the deadliest since their ouster.

The Taliban's top military commander, Mullah Dadullah, said in an interview with British television released Thursday that the militia have hundreds of suicide bombers waiting to attack NATO troops this spring.
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US Drug Report Stresses Problems in Afghanistan, Venezuela
By David Gollust 01 March 2007 Voice of America
The U.S. State Department's annual report on illicit drug trade worldwide, issued Thursday, said Afghanistan's opium production hit a record high last year while there was backsliding on anti-drug efforts in Venezuela and Bolivia. Iran's counter-narcotics efforts were commended.  VOA's David Gollust reports from the State Department.

The two volume report of more than 1,000 pages is mandated by Congress, and it sketched a generally bleak picture about soaring opium output in war-torn Afghanistan and backsliding in the fight against the cocaine trade in South America.

The report said despite four years of anti-narcotics aid to Afghanistan by the United States, Britain and others, the country's opium output jumped 25 percent last year.

It valued the illicit opium crop at over three billion dollars, a third of the country's total economic output, and said it has produced a surge in heroin traffic to Europe, Russia and the Middle East.

Briefing reporters, Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Anne Patterson said the role in the opium trade by the Taleban is a particular worry for the United States, which believes that drug profits are funding attacks on U.S. and NATO forces.

Much of the Afghan opium crop is said to be shipped out through Pakistan, despite what were said to be several promising Pakistani anti-drug initiatives.

Patterson said of Afghanistan's neighbors, Iran has been the most aggressive in efforts to interdict the traffic in heroin, which she said is severely affecting Iranian society.

"They have the world's highest addiction rate," she noted.  "It's some six times what it is in the [United] States, maybe more. They've been very active on the border in interdicting shipments coming in from Afghanistan. I think the Iranians view this, as well they might, as a major social and law enforcement problem."

The report said cocaine consumption in the United States has been on a decade-long decline, and praised the coca eradication and law enforcement efforts of the government of Colombia, which remains the source of about 90 percent of the cocaine reaching U.S. and other world markets.

However, Assistant Secretary Patterson said U.S.-backed anti-drug efforts in Colombia and the Andean region have pushed some trafficking flights and other smuggling operations into Venezuela.

She said while some U.S.-Venezuelan anti-drug cooperation continues, the government of leftist President Hugo Chavez has been noticeably less vigilant in this area than its predecessors:

"The Venezuelans for years did a great job on counter-narcotics, one of the best in the entire Hemisphere," she added.  "If you grew coca in Venezuela, you went to jail. They vigorously enforced their laws. And frankly, that's all stopped, for reasons that aren't entirely clear to me."

The report also criticized the performance of the government of Bolivian President Evo Morales, a former leader of the country's coca growers federation who has advocated some legal uses of coca leaves.

It said while Bolivia's total coca cultivation in 2005 was only half of what it was in the late 1980's, initial U.S. estimates are that it increased last year and that the trend in Bolivia is "disquieting."

In Asia, the report said Burmese opium production continued to fall, but that the military-led government's efforts were still below international standards, and that Burmese rebel groups were a major source in the region for the synthetic drug methamphetamine.
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Negotiation with Taliban best chance for Afghanistan peace: study
Thu Mar 1, 2:45 PM ET
OTTAWA (AFP) - Western governments must negotiate with the Taliban to end their guerrilla war against  NATO forces in  Afghanistan and allow a peaceful state to emerge, said a Canadian report released Thursday.

The study by a small team of Afghanistan geopolitical experts from across Canada said negotiations with the Taliban are not guaranteed to succeed, but "failure to negotiate will almost certainly cede the field to them."

"I think it's the best chance for success and the least bad option," said lead author Gordon Smith (news, bio, voting record), a former Canadian ambassador to NATO and now director of the Centre for Global Studies at the University of Victoria.

"Negotiating with the Taliban would be very difficult and very distasteful. These are not people I would want around my dining table. But I don't see any alternative. We need some form of political resolution," he told AFP.

Canada has deployed 2,500 troops in the volatile Kandahar region of southern Afghanistan, hunting down Taliban militants. Since 2002, 44 Canadian soldiers and one senior diplomat have died in attacks or roadside explosions.

Ottawa has already refused to negotiate with the Taliban.

But Smith's team said: "We do not believe that the Taliban can be defeated or eliminated as a political entity in any meaningful time frame by Western armies using military measures, and certainly not with the relatively small increases in force strength that are currently planned."

As well, reconstruction efforts aimed at winning the support of local Pashtuns tribes against the Taliban have been stalled by insecurity in several parts of the war-torn country.

"A massive troop surge is not going to happen and relying solely on development assistance is naive," Smith told AFP.

The Taliban may not be universally accepted as a legitimate force, he noted, but most Pashtuns now believe the Taliban will remain long after NATO forces withdraw from Afghanistan.

The best hope for peace is for "back channel negotiations" with the Taliban leadership and local tribal leaders to draw the Taliban into greater participation in central and provincial governments, the study said.
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Pakistan makes a deal with the Taliban
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Online / March 1, 2007
KARACHI - The Pakistani establishment has made a deal with the Taliban through a leading Taliban commander that will extend Islamabad's influence into southwestern Afghanistan and significantly strengthen the resistance in its push to capture Kabul.

One-legged Mullah Dadullah will be Pakistan's strongman in a corridor running from the Afghan provinces of Zabul, Urzgan, Kandahar and Helmand across the border into Pakistan's

Balochistan province, according to both Taliban and al-Qaeda contacts Asia Times Online spoke to. Using Pakistani territory and with Islamabad's support, the Taliban will be able safely to move men, weapons and supplies into southwestern Afghanistan.

The deal with Mullah Dadullah will serve Pakistan's interests in re- establishing a strong foothold in Afghanistan (the government in Kabul leans much more toward India), and it has resulted in a cooling of the Taliban's relations with al-Qaeda.

Despite their most successful spring offensive last year since being ousted in 2001, the Taliban realize they need the assistance of a state actor if they are to achieve "total victory". Al-Qaeda will have nothing to do with the Islamabad government, though, so the Taliban had to go it alone.

The move also comes as the US is putting growing pressure on Pakistan to do more about the Taliban and al-Qaeda ahead of a much-anticipated spring offensive in Afghanistan. US Vice President Dick Cheney paid an unexpected visit to Pakistan on Monday to meet with President General Pervez Musharraf.

The White House refused to say what message Cheney gave Musharraf, but it did not deny reports that it included a tough warning that US aid to Pakistan could be in jeopardy.

A parting of the ways

The Taliban saw that after five years working with al-Qaeda, the resistance appeared to have reached a stage where it could not go much further.

Certainly it has grown in strength, and last year's spring offensive was a classic example of guerrilla warfare with the help of indigenous support. The application of improvised explosive devices and techniques of urban warfare, which the Taliban learned from the Iraqi resistance, did make a difference and inflicted major casualties against coalition troops.

However, the Taliban were unable to achieve important goals, such as the fall of Kandahar and laying siege to Kabul from the southern Musayab Valley on the one side to the Tagab Valley on the northern side.

Taliban commanders planning this year's spring uprising acknowledged that as an independent organization or militia, they could not fight a sustained battle against state resources. They believed they could mobilize the masses, but this would likely bring a rain of death from the skies and the massacre of Taliban sympathizers. Their answer was to find their own state resources, and inevitably they looked toward their former patron, Pakistan.

Al-Qaeda does not fit into any plans involving Pakistan, but mutual respect between the al-Qaeda leadership and the Taliban still exists. All the same, there is tension over their ideological differences, and al-Qaeda sources believe it is just a matter of time before the sides part physically as well.

Pakistan only too happy to help

Ever since signing on for the US-led "war on terror" after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US, Pakistan has been coerced by Washington to distance itself from the Taliban. The Taliban were, after all, enemy No 1 for harboring Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda's training camps.

So when the opportunity arose, Islamabad was quick to tap up Mullah Dadullah. This was the perfect way in which Pakistan could revive its contacts in the Taliban and give the spring uprising some real muscle, so the argument went among the strategic planners in Rawalpindi - in fact, so much muscle that forces led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would be forced into a position to talk peace - and who better than Pakistan to step in as peacemaker and bail out its Western allies?

The next logical step would be the establishment of a pro-Islamabad government in Kabul - delivering a kick in the strategic teeth of India at the same time. After all, Pakistan invested a lot in Afghanistan after the Soviet occupation in the 1980s yet it received little in return. Whether it was former Afghan premier Gulbuddin Hekmatyar or Taliban leader Mullah Omar, they refused to be totally Pakistan's men.

A man for all seasons

Mullah Dadullah, 41, comes from southwestern Afghanistan, so he is "original Taliban", and has a record of being a natural leader in times of crisis.

Mullah Dadullah made a name for himself during the Soviet occupation, during which he lost a leg. And with victories against the Northern Alliance after the Taliban took over Kabul in 1996, he pushed the alliance into the tail end of Afghanistan. This made him Pakistan's darling from Day 1.

He was Mullah Omar's emissary in the two Waziristan tribal areas before the spring offensive of last year. Here he brokered a major deal between the Pakistani armed forces and the Pakistani Taliban. Pakistan had lost more than 800 soldiers in operations against the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaeda and it needed a face-saving way to extricate itself from the mess.

Mullah Dadullah's peace deal provided this, and the army made an "honorable" withdrawal from the volatile semi-independent region. Whenever the ceasefire was violated, Mullah Dadullah would settle things down.

The 2006 spring offensive was veteran mujahideen fighter Jalaluddin Haqqani's show. Nevertheless, the main areas of success were not Haqqani's traditional areas of influence, such as southeastern Afghanistan's Khost, Paktia and Paktika. The Taliban secured major victories in their heartland of the southwest, Helmand, Zabul, Urzgan and Kandahar. And their leader was Mullah Dadullah, whose men seized control of more than 12 districts - and held on to them.

Pakistani strategic circles are convinced that as a proven military commander, Mullah Dadullah will be able to work wonders this spring and finally give the Taliban the edge over the Kabul administration and its NATO allies.

This, ultimately, is Pakistan's objective - to revive its role in Kabul - and Islamabad is optimistic that Dadullah's considerable diplomatic skills will enable him to negotiate a power-sharing formula for pro-Pakistan Afghan warlords.

Even if Mullah Omar disagrees about any major compromise, Islamabad believes that Dadullah would by then have made such a name for himself in the battle against NATO that Omar would have little option but to accept whatever terms were agreed on.

A new string in the Taliban bow

A notable addition to what can only be described as a limited Taliban arsenal this year is surface-to-air missiles, notably the SAM-7, which was the first generation of Soviet man-portable SAMs.

The Taliban acquired these missiles in 2005, but they had little idea about how to use them effectively. Arab al-Qaeda members conducted extensive training programs and brought the Taliban up to speed. Nevertheless, the SAM-7s, while useful against helicopters, were no use against the fighter and bomber aircraft that were doing so much damage.

What the Taliban desperately needed were sensors for their missiles. These detect aircraft emissions designed to misdirect the missiles.

And it so happened that Pakistan had such devices, having acquired them from the Americans, though indirectly. The Pakistanis retrieved them from unexploded cruise missiles fired into Afghanistan in 1998, targeting bin Laden. They copied and adapted them to fit other missiles, including the SAMs.

Now that the Taliban and Pakistan have a deal, these missiles will be made available to the Taliban. Much like the Stingers that changed the dynamics of the Afghan resistance against the Soviets, the SAMs could help turn things Mullah Dadullah's, the Taliban's and Pakistan's way.

Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief.
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AL-QAEDA'S RESURGENCE, Part 1
Ready to take on the world By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Online / March 2, 2007
KARACHI - Al-Qaeda will this year significantly step up its global operations after centralizing its leadership and reviving its financial lifelines. Crucially, al-Qaeda has developed missile and rocket technology with the capability of carrying chemical, biological and nuclear warheads, according to an al-Qaeda insider who spoke to Asia Times Online.

While al-Qaeda will continue to operate in Afghanistan and Iraq, it will broaden its global perspective to include Europe and hostile

Muslim states, Asia Times Online has learned. For the first time since its attacks on the US on September 11, 2001, this could be al-Qaeda's year on the offensive.

According to the contact, "The time has come for a message to be communicated to Europe." Asked what kind of message this would be, the contact simply smiled.

Nevertheless, he stated that with Western forces trapped in Afghanistan and Iraq, it was time to open up new fronts in Somalia, Algeria, Egypt, Palestine and other places.

"In each place, al-Qaeda has its own command and control apparatus, including Palestine, and all those fronts will be opened up very soon," the contact said.

At the same time al-Qaeda is planning this offensive, it has received something of a setback in Afghanistan, where its alliance with the Taliban is under strain. The Taliban have struck a deal with Pakistan over mutual cooperation, which is anathema to al-Qaeda (see Pakistan makes a deal with the Taliban, Asia Times Online, March 1).

Osama in the shadows

Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has not appeared in a video since October 2004 or on an audio tape since January 2006. He is by no means out of the al-Qaeda picture, although his deputy, Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, claims the media spotlight.

Reportedly recovered from ill health, bin Laden - possibly even sporting a trimmed beard - is active in al-Qaeda's planning, according to the contact Asia Times Online spoke to. "He could be in Chechnya, Somalia or Iraq," the man said coyly, obviously not about to divulge bin Laden's whereabouts. Or even in Iran, some insiders hint.

Over the course of many hours of conversation and information exchanges in several locations, the contact - who has a sound track record of being informed of developments within al-Qaeda - explained how bin Laden and Zawahiri had rebuilt al-Qaeda over the past year or so.

Since 2005, the al-Qaeda leadership had been talking to many groups, including Egyptians, Libyans and the takfiri camp (which calls all non-practicing Muslims infidels). Al-Qaeda paid for differences in tactics and ideology among these groups as its structure unraveled and the organization developed into an "ideology" rather than a cohesive group.

As a result, al-Qaeda's global agenda was largely shelved and the international community's financial squeeze definitely hurt. This problem has been overcome, according to the contact, although he would not give any details. Even US intelligence agencies concede that the group's finances have improved, but they have no idea how. All the same, they have pressured Pakistan to clamp down on some charitable organizations in that country.

The Jamiatul Muqatila (Libyan) led by Sheikh Abu Lais al-Libby, the Jabhatul Birra of Ibn-i-Malik, also Libyan, the Jaishul Mehdi, founded by slain Abdul Rahman Canady, an Egyptian, and now led by Abu Eza, the Jamaatul Jihad, an unnamed Libyan group once led by Sheikh Abu Nasir Qahtani from Kuwaiti, who has now been arrested, and the takfiris under Sheikh Essa, an Egyptian, have once again joined forces with "Jamaat al-Qaeda" under the leadership of bin Laden.

The contact insisted that since two major tasks - regrouping and finances - had been completed, major operations could now be planned. But in addition to this, to ensure that 2007 would be "the year of al-Qaeda", a "great compromise" had to be made.

Deal with the devil

Before the "Mother of all Battles", the Gulf War of 1991, bin Laden offered to help the Saudi monarchy fight Saddam Hussein's forces in Kuwait. The Saudi royalty ignored the offer and opted instead for US military assistance. The presence of these troops in the land of the sacred cities of Mecca and Medina inflamed bin Laden, and he split with the Saudi royalty.

Nevertheless, the growing influence of Shi'ite Iran in the Middle East, especially in Iraq after the US invasion of 2003 and Lebanon, concerned al-Qaeda and the anti-Shi'ite Salafi Saudi oligarchs, which included the royal family, scholars, tribes and the state apparatus.

In this environment, a speech by bin Laden was aired on Al-Jazeera television in which he called the Saudi monarchy extremely corrupt, the most contemptuous aspect of which was its alliance with US interests. Having said that, he asked the Saudi monarchy to step aside, saying that the mujahideen did not at that stage want to confront it. Rather, the Saudis should leave al-Qaeda alone to fight against Americans in Iraq.

The speech was, in fact, the beginning of dialogue between al-Qaeda and the Saudi royal family through various Muslim scholars at numerous places in the Middle East. Eventually, the Saudis agreed to turn a blind eye to Maaskar al-Battar (al-Qaeda's training camp) in Saudi Arabia on condition that the fighters would not carry out any operations in Saudi Arabia and go straight to Iraq.

The contact Asia Times Online spoke to said that al-Qaeda is so powerful in Saudi Arabia that the monarchy had no choice but to strike a deal. Similarly, it was al-Qaeda's choice, he said, that it concentrate this year on Iraq.

The way that al-Qaeda sees it, it will consolidate in Iraq to the extent that it and the "coalition of the willing" have their respective and identified occupied areas from which to fight each other.

The Saudi front is thus only deferred until al-Qaeda gains sufficient ground in Iraq.

The "arrangement" between al-Qaeda and the Saudis reveals a diplomatic double-step by Saudi Arabia, which Washington considers an important ally in the "war on terror" and in helping establish a Sunni front against rising Shi'ite power in the region, led by Iran.

Preparing for war

Al-Qaeda uses Maaskar al-Battar in Saudi Arabia to train youths in guerrilla warfare, including the use of SA-7 surface-to-air missiles. Research is also conducted at the camp, as well as in Afghanistan.

This includes work on "Abeer" rockets to carry nuclear or chemical weapons. Last October, the insurgent group Islamic Army in Iraq claimed to have successfully built and tested a rocket with a range of 120 kilometers. It was named Abeer after the 14-year-old Iraqi girl raped and killed by a US soldier who last month received a jail sentence of 100 years.

In video footage released online, the group said the Abeer rocket could carry a payload of 20 kilograms. Iraqi engineers linked to resistance groups are now developing Abeer rockets with upgraded accuracy and payload capabilities.

According to the Asia Times Online contact, basic work on nuclear, chemical and biological weapons has now been completed and the main task now is to mount them on suitable missiles - which it is hoped the upgraded Abeer now is.

In the meantime, the Maaskar al-Battar camp is preparing to send an additional 10,000 trained youths into Iraq by the middle of the year.

This coincides with al-Qaeda organizing all segments of the Iraqi resistance under its umbrella. It has already declared an "Emir of the Islamic Emirates of Iraq" comprising Baghdad, Anbar, Diyala, Kirkuk, Salah al-Din and Ninawa, and in other parts of the governorate of Babel. Abu Omar al-Baghdadi has been declared the emir of the state.

This development signifies that in the coming months, al-Qaeda's epicenter will shift from the Pakistani tribal areas of South Waziristan and North Waziristan to Iraq and its neighborhood, including parts of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria.

It also means that the almost-independent "al-Qaeda in Iraq", once headed by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killed by the US, will not function as an entity.

Although many Arab fighters left Afghanistan and Pakistan after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 to join hands with the Iraqi resistance, others are now following. These include al-Qaeda's Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi, who moved from Waziristan.

This will further weaken the link between al-Qaeda and the Taliban after the latter's decision to strike a deal with Pakistan. According to al-Qaeda sources, it is only a matter of time before the entire al-Qaeda leadership abandons its bases in the Pakistani tribal areas and moves to the Middle East.

Something holding them back at present is a logistical matter. Previously, Iran allowed al-Qaeda members to pass through its territory on the way to Iraq or other places. But in the wake of the sectarian troubles in Iraq, Tehran is somewhat hostile toward al-Qaeda.

So it remains unclear whether Iran will facilitate al-Qaeda entering Iraq and destabilizing a Shi'ite government that is pro-American, but certainly also friendly with Iran.

Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief.
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Cheney meets a general in his labyrinth
By M K Bhadrakumar Asia Times Online / March 1, 2007
Is US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice no longer in the loop on Washington's Pakistan policy?

At any rate, Rice appeared altogether unaware of the leak to the New York Times last Sunday that President George W Bush has finally decided to send "an unusually tough message" to Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf that unless the latter played ball with grit and sincerity in curbing Taliban activities inside Pakistani territory, Washington would be constrained to cut aid.

Rice wasn't prepared to pay attention to the leak. On the contrary, in an interview with American Broadcasting Co television on Sunday, she paid her most handsome tribute ever to Musharraf. She spared no effort to let it be known that Washington regards him as a gallant soldier.

Rice said: "This has been a stalwart fighter, Pakistan's Musharraf, in this fight. Let's remember that al-Qaeda tried to kill him a couple of times [actually, according to Musharraf, five times] and the Pakistani leadership knows that al-Qaeda would like nothing better than to destabilize Pakistan and to use Pakistan as a base rather than Afghanistan for its operations."

A day later, US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack repeated Rice's warm sentiment. Lauding Musharraf's new border strategy in the lawless Pakistani tribal agencies bordering Afghanistan, McCormack said, "Let me reiterate and underline that President Musharraf is a good ally in the war on terror, Pakistan is a strong fighter in the war on terror ... Steps have been taken, cooperation has improved." He wasn't to be drawn into the "leak" either.

Rice was justified in ignoring the leaks in the New York Times. After all, the daily carried so many leaks in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq that the venerable newspaper finally ended up apologizing.

War clouds in the Persian Gulf

Besides, with another war looming, there are leaks galore in Washington. The frequency of these is increasing in almost direct proportion to the descent of the fog of war in the Persian Gulf region. Everyone, or almost everyone, including great powers, has begun hedging. It is difficult to recall another instance in recent memory when the Kremlin chose to release to the media excerpts of a sensitive cabinet discussion anticipating an impending war.

At that meeting presided over by President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov referred to "the increasingly frequent and worrying predictions that air strikes will be launched against Iran. In particular, the US vice president [Dick Cheney] mentioned such a possibility."

Whereupon Putin asked: "What are we talking about here - strikes that do not have United Nations Security Council authorization?"

Lavrov replied: "None of those who are talking about such a possibility have mentioned any such authorization. While he was in Australia, Cheney said recently that he does not rule out such a possibility because Iran cannot be allowed to ignore the international community's opinion."

The Afghan angle

So, what was Cheney's surprise halt in Islamabad on Monday all about?

Without doubt, there was an Afghan angle to Cheney's mission. The threshold of US defeat in Afghanistan is nowhere near being reached. There is bipartisan support in Washington for the "war on terror" in Afghanistan. Military commanders see the Taliban as a "defensive insurgency" and the war as eminently "winnable". But all the same, Washington faces a grave challenge in Afghanistan.

The message from the recent meetings of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) defense and foreign ministers in Seville and Brussels is that there is a real danger of the Afghan war transforming as an Anglo-Saxon war, with major NATO allies from "Old Europe" looking in. The latest British decision to augment troop strength in Afghanistan to 7,000 soldiers testifies to the fence-sitting by major NATO allies Germany, Italy, France, Spain and Turkey. Here the problem is also of geopolitics. There are serious misgivings in Europe that the secretive Anglo-American agenda is to inveigle the Euro-Atlantic community in a new cold war with Russia.

China too has begun expressing disquiet lately about the geopolitics of the Afghan war - US global strategy of "taking control of the Eurasian continent and proceeding to take the helm of the entire globe" by establishing a military presence on an "unstable arc from the Caucasus, Central and South Asia down to the Korean Peninsula" (emphasis added), to quote the People's Daily.

It is against this background that Cheney was called on to weigh the cruciality of Pakistan's role in Afghanistan. On the face of it, Musharraf enjoys seamless maneuvering space vis-a-vis the United States. But having said that, a continued US presence in Afghanistan is vital for Pakistan's national interests. Ideally, the war must roll on.

The Pakistani economy does well only when US capital flows become available. The highly respected former Pakistani finance minister and vice president of the World Bank, Shahid Javed Burki, warned recently that the specter that haunts the Pakistani economy is that out of sheer war fatigue, US troops may soon pack their bags and take leave of the Hindu Kush and head for home.

Writing in the Pakistani daily Dawn, Burki substantiated that whenever the US "poured economic and military assistance" into Pakistan as a quid pro quo for serving US geostrategy, the Pakistani economy had a windfall, and, conversely, whenever Washington became indifferent toward Pakistan, its economy slumped.

Thus during president Ayub Khan's rule when Pakistan took pride of place in the US Cold War strategies toward the Soviet Union, Pakistan's gross domestic product (GDP) grew by more than 6.5% annually. This was a significant jump from the annual 2.7% GDP growth in the first 10 years of Pakistan's independence after 1947. Again, when the Afghan jihad of the 1980s against the Soviets brought Washington and Islamabad close together and US aid resumed, Pakistan's GDP shot up 6.5%, as against less than 4% previously.

However, with the end of the Cold War and the decline in Pakistan's geopolitical importance in the 1990s, US aid declined and its GDP growth rate dropped to an average of 4.7% during the period 1988-99. Then came the attacks of September 11, 2001. The commencement of the "war on terror" has turned out to be a bonanza for the Pakistani economy. Burki concluded, "There is a direct relationship between Pakistan's economic performance and its foreign policy."

That is to say, there is a degree of merit in the tendentious assumption underlying the New York Times story about Cheney's mission to Islamabad. But that is about it.

One thing is clear. There is a sense of urgency in Cheney's decision to travel across the globe. Cheney doesn't stir out of the US easily - not, certainly, as a courier transmitting an odd message over the Taliban spring offensive.

The Iranian angle

In the usual course, there are only two items on Cheney's calendar - oil and war. He is not a presidential hopeful in next year's election. He has about 18 months until retirement, and is at

the pinnacle of an enviable career in public life. Seldom has a US president allowed himself to be so entirely led by his deputy. He is a 1,000-pound gorilla within the Bush administration. The departure of Donald Rumsfeld from Bush's cabinet as defense secretary hasn't debilitated him. In fact, Cheney's finest hour has just about come - sorting out Iran, the "last frontier" in the energy war, before he retires.

It is this sense of urgency that brought Cheney to Pakistan during an extended tour of the two of the United States' staunchest remaining allies - Australia and Japan.

Cheney's visit to Pakistan signifies an extraordinary moment in the diplomatic history of the Southwest Asia region. Washington expects Musharraf to stand up and be counted if a confrontation ensues with Iran. Musharraf is already allowing US intelligence to stage covert operations against Iran from Pakistan's Balochistan province.

Washington has great use for Pakistan's stature in the Islamic world. Musharraf is doing all he can in rallying the Sunni Muslim world. Last weekend's conclave of the foreign ministers of the Organization of Islamic Conference in Islamabad was exclusively of select Sunni Muslim countries. Iran was pointedly excluded, even though the subject under discussion was the cascading tensions in the Middle East.

The meet's odd lineup prompted Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan to issue a public denial, saying that Turkey was not about to join any "anti-Shi'ite alliance". Turkey certainly cannot annoy Tehran when Iran's cooperation is vital during the coming months as tensions build up over the November referendum on northern Iraq's autonomy and at a time when Kurdish separatist militancy is deeply worrying Ankara.

In the turbulent period ahead, Musharraf may have a greater role to play if the security of Saudi Arabia is threatened in any armed conflagration in the Persian Gulf region. Pakistan has fulfilled such roles in Saudi Arabia and Jordan in the past on different occasions. Indeed, if Iran gets seriously destabilized as a result of the incessant pressure from the US, especially if Washington were to apply military pressure, Pakistan's role in neighboring Iran could become extremely important.

Equally, Washington needs Islamabad to ensure that the Afghan war remains on track in its present state of animation, while it moves against Iran. Pakistan is being called on to ensure that the Taliban do not raise the ante within Afghanistan at a time when US eyes are trained on Iran. Whether it is within Musharraf's capacity to do so is another matter.

The fact is that Tehran has considerable levers of influence inside Afghanistan. Senlis Council, a British think-tank, last week assessed that Iran might have begun reaching out to the Afghan resistance.

The mujahideen rises

It is not particularly difficult for Iran to heat up the Afghan situation. Within the Afghan jihadist constituency, Iran continues to wield considerable influence. The impressive public rally by mujahideen commanders in Kabul on Monday must be a wake-up call for those who thought the jihadis had been branded as "warlords" and conclusively discredited in Afghan opinion, and mothballed and put away for good.

The rally shows that the mujahideen's shelf life has far from expired. The rallyists chanted, "This is a mujahideen nation. We want the law of Islam, and the government of the mujahideen."

Significantly, mujahideen leaders who participated in the rally included national figures who have worked very closely with Tehran over the years - Hazara Shi'ite leader Karim Khalili; the "czar" of western Afghanistan, Ismail Khan; former defense minister Qaseem Fahim; and former president Burhanuddin Rabbani.

The rally has given an unspoken message as well to Washington - that the Taliban is a generic name, after all. Indeed, who is a Talib? Anyone could be a "Talib" or a "mujahid" in today's Muslim world when civilizations have begun clashing. He needn't be necessarily Wahhabi or anti-Shi'ite. Curiously, the Kabul rally signifies in a peculiar Afghan way that the terms "Talib" and "mujahid" can become interchangeable in certain circumstances if push comes to shove.

It is a warning that Washington (or the NATO capitals) can ignore only at great peril. The developing intra-Afghan equations hold the potential to place the US in a highly delicate position within Afghanistan if it chooses to embark on a misadventure against Iran.

From the perspective of US geostrategy, the Afghan war has been a success story. Washington has managed to get an unwilling NATO to come and slouch in a region that is the soft underbelly of Russia and China. Washington would like NATO to remain there for a long time to come. And if tomorrow NATO becomes part of the US missile-defense system, its occupation of the Afghan high plateau gives it a huge strategic advantage by overlooking the back yards of four of the world's eight nuclear powers.

The congruence of interests between the Bush administration and the Musharraf regime has no parallel in the chronicle of US-Pakistan relations. To belittle the general, to chastise him like an errant schoolboy, to ridicule him or to send him sulking to a corner - this was the last thing Cheney had in mind.

Five years ago, Washington threatened that it would reduce Pakistan to the Stone Age, and thereby got Musharraf's support for the "war on terror" in Afghanistan. Along the line, the Pakistani economy has done rather well, thanks to the estimated US$20 billion in US assistance that may have flowed into Pakistan during the past five years. But Washington's dependence on Musharraf's cooperation has also increased.

And a point comes when no matter who you are, you can't threaten anymore. Nothing could have brought this home more poignantly than when a suicide bomber blew himself up within earshot of Cheney in Bagram Air Base outside Kabul on Tuesday.

M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for more than 29 years, with postings including ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-98) and to Turkey (1998-2001).
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US Lawmakers Meet President to Discuss Afghanistan
By Dan Robinson 01 March 2007 Voice of America
A bipartisan group of congressional leaders has met with President Bush, Wednesday, to discuss the situation in Afghanistan and the need for ongoing U.S. and international economic and military support for the government of President Hamid Karzai. VOA's Dan Robinson reports on this, and updates developments regarding congressional debate over funding for U.S. military operations in Iraq.

The meeting came as lawmakers take steps, as early as next week, to move the president's request for $93 billion in emergency spending for Afghanistan and Iraq for the 2007 fiscal year toward full consideration by the House and Senate.

In recent hearings on Capitol Hill, military officials have testified about military challenges in Afghanistan, including an expected Taleban spring offensive, and what the U.S. and NATO forces are doing to prepare.

Congress has also heard about difficulties hampering reconstruction efforts and slowing progress toward stability.

Emerging after meeting with the president, Senate majority leader Harry Reid said he and others discussed the need for more progress. "We are not going to win Afghanistan unless we have a strong component of our being good at what we do well, building hospitals, and schools and roads. [And] the administration, all the officials there [in the meeting] indicated that they recognize this," he said.

The meeting also came in the wake of visits by Vice President Dick Cheney to Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan to discuss ongoing military efforts.

Pakistan is coming under new criticism in US Congress, with many asking harder questions about the effectiveness of Pakistani government measures against Taleban and al-Qaeda elements along the border with Afghanistan and in tribal areas inside Pakistan.

Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell predicts lawmakers from both parties are likely to find wide areas of agreement when they consider the president's latest funding request. "I think there is a broad bipartisan agreement that we need to win in Afghanistan. A win obviously means supporting President Karzai, the Afghan National Army, and doing everything we can to destroy both Taleban and al-Qaida elements there in the country," he said.

Discussions on Afghanistan come as lawmakers continue to maneuver for position on the question of funding for military operations in Iraq.

After the House approved a non-binding measure opposing the president's 21,000 troop surge, Senate Democrats have delayed a debate on Iraq.

House Democrats continue to consider the approach they will take in the coming debate on the funding request

After meeting with the president, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had this response when asked again about initial plans by Democrat John Murtha to tie troop deployments for Iraq to equipment and training readiness. "They were never conditions, they were just a call to follow the policy that exists now. What Mr. Murtha put forth were three principles that are the law now, and he was focusing on them, but they were never to be considered conditions for funding the effort that is on the ground there now, and that was on the ground [in Iraq] on January 10th and prior to that," she said.

January 10 was the day President announced his plan to send an additional 21,500 U.S. troops to Iraq as part of efforts to secure Baghdad and al-Anbar province.

Democratic leaders face criticism from conservatives within their own ranks of Congressman Murtha's proposals, as well as pressure from the far left of the party to support his approach.

Republicans meanwhile continue to condemn what they call Democratic efforts to slow bleed the ability of the president to manage the war in Iraq, asserting Democratic steps will harm troops in the field.
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The Star of Afghanistan's Jihad
SPIEGEL (Germany) March 1, 2007 By Matthias Gebauer in Peshawar, Pakistan
The Taliban are gearing up for their "spring offensive" in Afghanistan. A series of brutal propaganda films is heralding thousands of suicide attacks. And the Taliban have a new bloodthirsty leader, whom Western intelligence agencies are taking very seriously: Mullah Dadullah.

If Osama bin Laden likes being in the global spotlight, he's likely a bit depressed in his hideout these days. The leader of the al-Qaida terrorist organization hasn't made an appearance on the evening news for quite some time. What's more, the Taliban no longer need bin Laden as a figurehead. Western intelligence agencies warn that the Taliban now have "their own star" in their struggle against Western soldiers and the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai. The new nightmare from the Hindu Kush Mountains is called Mullah Dadullah. He sports a pitch black beard, always wears a military jacket and these days, he is omnipresent in the media.

Bloodthirsty propaganda is everywhere in northern Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan. Virtually every CD salesman in Peshawar is selling the latest films released by the Taliban leader. "Oh, you want the Dadullah tapes," says one. "They're very popular right now." He disappears for barely a minute and then returns with an entire stack. He charges about €3 ($4) per film. Those who buy several get a discount. But he doesn't want his picture taken. He says Pakistani police already causes him enough trouble when they find terror DVDs in the suitcases of journalists at the airport.

The images on these DVDs reveal the Taliban's self confidence and new professionalism. The films herald a bloody spring in Afghanistan, one in which Western troops will face a newly strengthened Taliban army under a re-organized leadership. Well armed and better logistically organized than ever before, the Taliban are preparing for their fight against the hated NATO troops, whose alliance has recently shown signs of internal division. "They say it will be the decisive summer," says a man who occasionally drinks tea with the Taliban commanders.

Western intelligence agencies believe the Taliban have used the winter to thoroughly tighten their organizational structure. Some Taliban commanders are even reporting that Taliban leader Mullah Omar -- who disappeared from the scene entirely for years -- is once again writing letters to his supporters, congratulating successful commanders and the parents of suicide bombers and reminding militants of their "Islamic duties" via audio recordings. For years, one-eyed Omar had disappeared without a trace -- likely afraid of being tracked down by the CIA.

But Mullah Omar seems to be feeling more secure these days -- as does Mullah Dadullah, who only recently outlined his vision for the coming months. Behaving almost like any normal politician, he invited al-Jazeera journalists to visit him in the mountains. His words were alarming despite being full of rhetoric and propaganda. Dadullah said he commands 6,000 men who have volunteered for suicide attacks, and that their offensive is "imminent." He added that some of his men are already set off on their mission, which he described as a "bloodbath for the occupiers." This week's symbolic attack on US Vice President Dick Cheney is reason to fear that Dadullah is issuing more than just empty threats.

Live decapitations

Dadullah's films serve to provide the Taliban with present-day legends. They're professionally produced in al-Sahab, the Taliban's media center in Qetta, southern Pakistan. Hundreds of Taliban fighters are seen performing military exercises with machine guns. Then they fire grenade-launchers -- of which they seem to have plenty. Every shot is accompanied by a chorus of voices emphatically shouting: "God is great!" Next, the films show footage of wrecked US military vehicles. "We will hit them again," a voice-over announces triumphantly.

Perhaps the main message conveyed by these films, however, is that the Taliban is no longer afraid of being chased down. Only some of the militants' faces have been pixelated. Many others give their full names as they sign up for the holy war. Almost all the DVDs feature footage of the brutal execution of alleged CIA spies. The "helpers of the infidels" have their heads removed while still alive. About 250 such murders have occurred in recent months.

Mostly, however, the films show the new hero -- the new face of resistance. Mullah Dudallah, a stocky man, about 40 years old, is worshipped like a saint. Although he lost a leg in battle during the 1990s, he is seen vigorously pacing up a mountain with his fighters. Once at the top, he can't resist firing a rocket into the distance himself. Then he kneels down to pray with his men, his AK-47 next to him the whole time. The sun sets blood-red behind the mountains. It's hard to imagine a more effective propaganda film.

Legends surrounding the new Taliban figurehead

Mullah Abdullah has been a genuine nightmare for the foreign troops and intelligence agencies in Afghanistan for quite some time. The videos are analyzed with a meticulousness that matches their menacing character. "We know from experience that many of his pronouncements are not propaganda," says one Western anti-terrorism agent. "He's carried out most of his threats." Dadullah already threatened a wave of suicide attacks in 2006. No one took him seriously at first. By the end of 2006, the CIA's statisticians counted about 139 such attacks throughout the country -- five times more than in 2005. 2007 could be even bloodier.

More than anything, it is Dadullah's biography that has propelled him to the Taliban leadership. He escaped a trap organized by the warlord Dostum following the US invasion: Dostum lured thousands of Taliban to northern Afghanistan, near Kunduz, and massacred them. Legend has it that Dadullah escaped on horseback. Then he spent several years devoting himself to rebuilding and re-arming the Taliban. He's now considered the top commander in the region surrounding the provincial capital Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan. The Taliban have gained the upper hand there, more or less controlling the area despite many losses.

Dadullah's merciless violence fascinates many of his younger followers, who already respect him as a great authority. When they kidnapped a South American worker in late 2006, they turned to him for advice. His instructions were clear, and it wasn't long before the hostage's massacred corpse was found. Such violence impresses young would-be holy warriors.

Not long ago, the United States unwittingly contributed to the Dadullah legend. After an operation in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan, intelligence agents told the media that Dadullah and one of his closest followers had been killed. It only took half a day for him to appear on al-Jazeera via satellite phone. "He can always be reached somehow and loves to play with journalists," says Afghanistan expert Rahimullah Yusufzai, who himself sometimes speaks to Dadullah. The Taliban leader doesn't seem concerned that the signals from the Thuraya phones he uses can be traced. He feels invincible.

NATO expects a rough year

Experts on the conflict believe the new Taliban tactic will cause serious difficulties for NATO. "If suicide attacks are carried out all over the country, it becomes difficult to decide on how to allocate troops," Pakistani Taliban expert Ahmed Rashid points out. NATO could quickly be demoralized, like the United States in Iraq, since it is already internally divided and disposes of no military reserves, much less a rapid reaction force. "2007 will be a very serious year," Rashid predicts.

In a reaction to the wave of Taliban propaganda, NATO generals have announced their own offensive. The message from Kabul is that the troops will not wait for the Taliban to attack. Rather, they will strike hard themselves. Whether that will be enough to master the onslaught of suicide attacks is doubtful. "The Taliban don't need more training camps or military camps for their new strategy," Rashid fears. The only remaining option would be that of attacking presumed houses of the fighters, which would cost civilian lives.

Such attacks merely provide the Taliban with new recruits for their struggle. In the fall of 2006, US military officer Chris Cavoli concluded from his experiences in Kunar province that: "Every Afghan killed by a bomb leads to two new militants, regardless of whether the person killed is a civilian or a militant." This means a military offensive against Mullah Dadullah's men would only serve the interests of the new Taliban hero.

"Our sources will never run dry," he says self-confidently in one of his many propaganda films.
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Hicks first detainee to face tribunal
By ANNE FLAHERTY Associated Press Writer Thu Mar 1, 5:50 PM ET
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration filed charges Thursday against an Australian captured in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks and held ever since without trial, the first terror-war suspect to face prosecution under a new system of military tribunals.

David Hicks, a 31-year old former kangaroo skinner now held at the Guantanamo Bay military prison, was charged with providing material support for terrorism and could face life imprisonment if convicted. Court challenges are certain before any trial.

Hicks' case, which has attracted broad attention in the U.S. and overseas, could well become the one that opponents of the new military tribunal system use to challenge the system at the Supreme Court. Opponents of the military commissions say they are illegal because they do not afford many legal rights guaranteed under the Constitution.

"It all seems to be an intermingling of politics and pressure," said Jumana Musa, advocacy director for Amnesty International. "But none of it screams to me to be in the interest of justice."

Proponents of the new system say they expect the federal courts to rule in favor of the military commissions.

"I trust the system to judge Mr. Hicks fairly," said Sen. Lindsey Graham (news, bio, voting record), R-S.C., a cosponsor of the commissions legislation. "It's long overdue this case be brought forward."

Meanwhile, Australia, a steadfast U.S. ally in the war on terror, has been pressuring the Bush administration to send Hicks back to his native country. But that apparently wouldn't come until after a trial, at Guantanamo.

Last month, Sandra Hodgkinson, the State Department's deputy director for war crimes issues, told reporters that "it's certainly believed that Mr. Hicks may be able to carry out his incarceration, after the appeals process is complete, in Australia."

President Bush and Congress established the new legal system last fall. Lawmakers set up the tribunals after the Supreme Court ruled an older version established by Bush was unconstitutional because it lacked Congress' blessing and violated international agreements.

"This is an important milestone for military commissions," said Cmdr. J.D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman.

There are an estimated 385 detainees remaining at the Guantanamo prison in Cuba. None of the men held there on suspicion of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban has ever gone to trial.

Hicks was among 10 detainees who had been charged with crimes under the earlier law that the court struck down. Then, he had been charged with conspiracy, attempted murder and aiding the enemy.

Another of the 10 was Salim Ahmed Hamdan of Yemen, whose case ended up being the one the Supreme Court used to throw out the previous tribunal system.

According to Pentagon documents, Hicks went to Afghanistan in January 2001 to attend al-Qaida terrorist training camps. He also traveled to the southern city of Kandahar, the former Taliban stronghold, and stayed in an al-Qaida guest house where he met "shoe bomber" Richard Reid and other al-Qaida associates.

The Pentagon says that for about a year starting around December 2000, Hicks provided "support or resources to be used in preparation for, or in carrying out, an act of terrorism" and that he "knew or intended" for the support to be used for terrorism.

Last month, military prosecutors recommended that Hicks be charged with attempted murder for fighting coalition forces in Afghanistan, and with providing support for terrorism.

On Thursday, Susan Crawford, the head of the military commissions, formally charged Hicks only with providing material support for terrorism.

The Pentagon announcement did not explain why the attempted murder charge was dropped. But a package of talking points written for officials to answer questions on the announcement, suggested Crawford didn't believe the evidence warranted it.

Hicks' Pentagon-appointed lawyer, Marine Corps Maj. Michael Mori, said in Australia that the charge of providing support for terrorism was a fabrication that had not previously existed under the laws of war, and he said Australian officials should not accept it.

"The Australians should demand that David be treated the same as an American citizen and that retrospective legislation should not be applied to him and he should be returned," Mori told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

The military eventually hopes to charge 60 to 80 of the Guantanamo detainees. Once formal charges are filed, a timetable requires preliminary hearings within 30 days and the start of a jury trial within 120 days at Guantanamo.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard discussed Hicks' case with Vice President Dick Cheney when Cheney visited Australia last month. Under growing public pressure and with elections due later this year, Howard has begun pushing U.S. officials to deal with Hicks' case more quickly.
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Associated Press Writer Pauline Jelinek contributed to this story.
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Taliban commander vows new wave of suicide attacks
Fri Mar 2, 3:02 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - The Taliban have hundreds of suicide bombers waiting to attack  NATO troops during the coming spring offensive in  Afghanistan, the Islamic militia's top military commander has warned.

In an interview with Britain's Channel Four News released Thursday, Mullah Dadullah also said the Taliban were in regular contact with  Osama bin Laden but that he had not personally seen the Al-Qaeda leader since 2001.

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

"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."

The one-legged Dadullah is one of the most influential Taliban leaders. He joined the movement at its birth in the early 1990s and is close to fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

He has a reputation for extreme brutality and is considered the mastermind of the current insurgency.

NATO is bracing for a fierce Taliban onslaught when the snows melt in the weeks ahead, and Britain this week announced it was sending another 1,400 troops to bolster the 32,000 NATO troops already in Afghanistan.

Over 4,000 people died in Afghanistan in insurgent-linked violence last year including 170 foreign soldiers. The number of suicide attacks went up four-fold, according to US military figures.

In the Channel Four interview, Dadullah said he communicated with bin Laden on a regular basis and worked directly with Al-Qaeda in the field.

"We exchange messages with each other to share plans," he said.

"His comrades stand shoulder to shoulder with us," he said, referring to Al-Qaeda fighters. "We also go to the battlefield together."
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Cheney warns against hasty Iraq pullout
By TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - A quick withdrawal of U.S. forces from  Iraq could allow victorious Muslim extremists to fan out into other countries, with some militants going to  Afghanistan to fight alongside a resurgent Taliban, Vice President  Dick Cheney says.

The vice president, just back from a trip that included unannounced stops in Afghanistan and Pakistan, addressed a conservative conference Thursday night where he sharply criticized efforts by some Democrats to restrict funds for  President Bush's troop buildup in Iraq or to place restrictions on their deployment.

While noting that the House already had passed a nonbinding resolution voicing opposition to Bush's Iraq policy, Cheney said that "very soon both houses of Congress will have to vote on a piece of legislation that is binding."

The legislation would, among other things, help pay for the additional 21,500 troops Bush is sending to Iraq.

"I sincerely hope the discussion this time will be about winning in Iraq, not about posturing on Capitol Hill. Anyone can say they support the troops, and we should take them at their word. But the proof will come when it's time to provide the money and the support," Cheney said. "We expect the House and the Senate to meet those needs on time and in full."

The vice president spoke at an annual dinner of the Conservative Political Action Conference. The audience included conservative activists, leaders and policymakers.

Earlier on Thursday, Democratic officials said House Democratic leaders had coalesced around legislation that would require troops to come home from Iraq within six months if that country's leaders fail to meet promises to help reduce violence there.

The plan would retain a Democratic proposal prohibiting the deployment to Iraq of troops with insufficient rest or training or who already have served there for more than a year. Under the plan, such troops could only be sent to Iraq if Bush waives those standards and reports to Congress each time.

The proposal is the latest attempt by Democrats to resolve deep divisions within the party on how far to go to scale back U.S. involvement in Iraq. Rep. James Moran (news, bio, voting record) said the latest version has the support of party leadership and said he believes it is final and has the best chance at attracting broad support.

"We're going to report out" a war spending bill "that's responsive to the will of the voters last November and brings our troops home as soon and safely as possible," Moran, D-Va., said in an interview.

During his visit to Pakistan, Cheney expressed concern to President Gen. Pervez Musharraf over al-Qaida's regrouping inside Pakistan's tribal regions and an expected Taliban spring offensive in neighboring Afghanistan.

"If our coalition withdrew before Iraqis could defend themselves, radical factions would battle for dominance. The violence would likely spread throughout the country and be very difficult to contain. Having tasted victory in Iraq, the (militants) would look for new missions. Many would head for Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban," Cheney said.

He said others would head for capitals across the Middle East and work to undermine moderate governments. "Still others would find their targets and victims in other countries on other continents. Such chaos and mounting danger does not have to occur. It is, however, the enemy's objective," Cheney said.

"In these circumstances, it's worth reminding ourselves that, like it or not, the enemy we face in the war on terror has made Iraq the primary front in that war," he added. Then, to laughter and applause, Cheney said, "To use a popular phrase, this is an inconvenient truth."

It was a play on the Academy Award-winning environmental documentary featuring former Vice President  Al Gore, "An Inconvenient Truth."

"If you support the war on terror, then it only makes sense to support it where the terrorists are fighting us," Cheney said.
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Associated Press writer Ann Flaherty contributed to this report.
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Afghanistan regroups for Taleban offensive
KABUL, March 1 (Reuters) - Afghanistan and its allies were stretched to breaking point by last year’s surprise Taleban resurgence but have spent the winter regrouping for a new guerrilla offensive, its defence minister said on Thursday.

Last year was the bloodiest since US-led forces ousted the Taleban’s Islamist government in 2001 -- more than 4,000 people, a quarter of them civilians, died in fighting.

Both sides warn this spring, after the snows melt in a few weeks, could be even bloodier.

“Last year, we were surprised. We were surprised by the amount of support which they were receiving, by the amount of their supplies, by their numbers,” Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak told Reuters at the sprawling military headquarters on the banks of the Kabul River.

“We were stretched ... to our limits during that fighting. But now we are much better prepared.”

Wardak said last year’s surge in violence, which saw the Taleban take on the US and NATO in conventional pitched battles, had been aimed at scaring foreign countries into pulling troops out early.

“They thought that if they inflicted enough casualties it would influence the decision of some countries concerning the deployment of their forces,” he said.

Conventional guerrilla tactics

While inflicting heavy losses on NATO and US forces last year -- almost 200 in combat or from other causes -- the Taleban also took a big hit, he said.

Fighting jumped dramatically as British-led NATO forces pushed into the Taleban’s southern heartland for the first time.

Analysts say the Taleban and their al Qaeda allies will shift back to conventional guerrilla tactics this year, using roadside and suicide bombs, after losing badly on the battlefield.

Virtually unknown until 2005, when there were 21, suicide bomb attacks jumped to 139 last year and are expected to soar this year as the rebels copy tactics, drafting poor recruits from Afghanistan, Central Asia, Pakistan, Chechnya and beyond.

On Tuesday, 23 people including two Americans and a South Korean, died when a suicide car bomber attacked the main US base in Afghanistan during Vice President Dick Cheney’s visit.

Cheney was pressing Afghanistan and Pakistan to do more to seal the porous border that divides fiercely loyal Pashtun tribes.

The Taleban say they have 2,000 suicide bombers ready for action, plus more than that number again still in training.

NATO has 33,000 soldiers in the country, but that is about 10 percent short of what was pledged. Almost all the fighting is being done by US, British, Canadian and Dutch soldiers in the south and east, bordering Pakistan.

Britain this week said it would send another 1,400 soldiers, soon -- making its deployment here greater than its Iraq force -- because other NATO countries would not. As well as keeping their forces in safer areas, many NATO counties restrict how they can fight, including banning operations at night or in the snow.

The United States last month also committed an extra 3,200 soldiers, Poland is bosting its forces and the Afghan army and police are being strengthened and given more and better weapons.

“We are still trying to be prepared for the worst possible scenario,” Wardak said. “I don’t think that we will be surprised this year and I think we will have much better results.”

President George W. Bush recently announced a new focus on the Afghan army and police as a critical way of allowing the United States to draw down its own forces.

Opium and jobs

But while the army is seen as a professional and multiethnic success in a country where tribes count more than anything, the police are distrusted and seen more as a problem than a solution.

Even in Kabul, they illegally arrest and detain people and loot restaurants, witnesses say. Wardak, whose department does not cover the police, said reforms are continuing.

But security is only half the problem or solution.

The Taleban’s resurgence is fuelled not so much by real support as money from record opium crops, safe havens in Pakistan and the failure of the government and its Western allies to provide jobs and basic services such as water and power.

In Kabul, well-paid middle class Afghans have no water and power only for an hour or two a day.

“Definitely, we could have done much better in the reconstruction field but also I can claim sincerely that a lot has been achieved,” Wardak said.
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Talibanization Takes Root in Pakistan
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS March 2, 2007
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Barbers are too scared to shave their customers' chins. Alleged thieves are paraded before jeering crowds. People suspected of spying for Americans are found beheaded.

Tales of Taliban-style justice in the tribal belt along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan are proliferating, a sign the region, which already serves as a rear base for militants fighting in Afghanistan, is slipping further out of government control.

The United States voiced growing concern this week that al-Qaida was regrouping in the same region. U.S. intelligence chief Mike McConnell said Tuesday in Washington that Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, were believed to be hiding in northwestern Pakistan and trying to establish an operational base there.

A day earlier on a visit to Islamabad, Vice President Dick Cheney delivered that message of concern to Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, whose recent strategy to seek 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 International Crisis Group, a non-governmental organization that works toward conflict resolution. ''They seem to be dictating the agenda.''

For instance, in Miran Shah, the main town in the North Waziristan border region and a militant stronghold, residents say the Taliban run an office where locals can file complaints and receive a quick ruling based on Islamic law from a 10-member committee that includes a rebellious militant commander, Sadiq Noor.

The committee has reputedly dealt with family feuds and seized suspected thieves. Shopkeepers report that three men accused of stealing cars were driven through jeering crowds in the nearby town of Mir Ali last week, their faces blackened and their heads shaved.

The committee has not yet dealt with any major crimes, partly as 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 region said in January that they would no longer shave customers' beards after receiving a warning that it was ''un-Islamic'' and threatening unspecified punishment.

The warning echoed a decree issued under Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime ordering all men to grow beards.

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 mujahideen 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, and found refuge in the fortress-like houses of sympathetic tribes and Afghan refugee communities.

Under U.S. pressure to pursue the militants, Musharraf sent troops into the semiautonomous region for the first time in Pakistan's 60-year history. Hundreds have been killed in the operations, most since 2004.

Then Musharraf changed tack. A truce struck in North Waziristan in September demanded militants stop attacks into Afghanistan and halt 'Talibanization' in return for troops moving out of towns like Miran Shah, while retaining a presence along the border. A peace agreement was signed in neighboring South Waziristan in 2005.

Ali Mohammed Jan Aurakzai, the top official in northwestern Pakistan, defended the government's strategy. He recently told reporters that the reports of barbers refusing to shave beards and Taliban-style courts were isolated incidents that reflect ethnic Pashtun tribal tradition rather than a fundamentalist takeover.

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

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

It remains very difficult to verify that intelligence, and Pakistani Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao on Wednesday denied it, saying the U.S. had shared no such information with Pakistan.

Perhaps the most ominous sign on the ground that the peace deal is not working are the scores of individuals accused of being aligned with the government or working as foreign agents who have been found shot or beheaded.

The latest case came Tuesday, when the body of a school teacher was discovered in a sack by a road in South Waziristan.

A note found with the corpse identified the slain man as ''Akhtar Usman, the one who spied for America.'' The single word ''Hypocrite'' was scrawled on the temple of his severed head in Urdu, Pakistan's main language.
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Canada loses track of Afghan detainees
Military investigators unable to locate three men allegedly abused by troops
PAUL KORING Globe and Mail, Canada
WASHINGTON -- The three detainees at the heart of multiple probes into allegations of abuse by Canadian soldiers have disappeared while in Afghan custody, a seemingly grave breach of the Canada-Afghan pact on detainee treatment, The Globe and Mail has learned.

That poses significant challenges for the criminal probe and raises new doubts about government assurances that all detainees are properly treated and accounted for.

Major Robert Bell, senior operations officer for the Canadian National Investigation Service, said in a brief telephone interview that NIS investigators have been unable to determine what happened to the three men, but said they are still working on the case.

When asked to confirm information that Military Police have been unable to find the three men Canadian troops handed over to Afghan National Police on April 8, 2006, Major Bell said: "No we haven't."

 For almost a month, the NIS criminal investigation has been trying to locate the three prisoners as part of its investigation into allegations that detainees were physically abused by Canadian soldiers before being handed over.

Possible explanations for their disappearance run the gamut from inept prison record-keeping by Afghan guards to undocumented release -- commonplace in Afghanistan and often accompanied by payment of bribes -- to torture or even killing, a fate repeatedly documented by numerous human-rights groups.

Unlike the Dutch, British and Danish detainee-transfer agreements, Canada has no right of follow-up to make sure detainees it hands over are humanely treated or -- of equal concern -- set free to rejoin Taliban units.

"We need that sort of provision in our agreement to ensure that detainees are not transferred to be tortured or killed," NDP defence critic Dawn Black said yesterday. "Obviously, whatever the Red Cross does or doesn't do hasn't been good enough because these men can't be found."

Alex Neve, secretary-general of Amnesty International Canada, said "an essential element in protecting the rights of prisoners is good record-keeping so they can be located."

The fact that detainees can't apparently be accounted for "is very troubling because it means we cannot ascertain their fate," Mr. Neve added.

"It does illuminate the shortcomings of the original agreement," said Joel Bakan, a constitutional law expert and University of British Columbia professor. "It would be ludicrous if there were a loophole that . . . allowed for extrajudicial execution."

The December, 2005 deal signed by General Rick Hillier, Chief of the Defence Staff, stipulates that detainees won't face capital punishment after Canadian troops hand them over to Afghan authorities. Among other things, it requires that "accurate written records accounting for all detainees" be kept by both Canada and Afghanistan.

"Nothing in the agreement prevents Canada from determining the fate of prisoners so there is no need to make any change in the agreement," Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor said last spring when it was being compared to the Dutch model.

Mr. O'Connor has said repeatedly that a provision in the agreement makes the International Committee of the Red Cross responsible for ensuring that detainees are humanely treated and properly accounted for. "If there is something wrong with their treatment, the Red Cross or Red Crescent would inform us and we would take action," the minister said.

Yet nothing in the actual agreement seems to oblige the ICRC to report back to Canada, even if ICRC monitors were aware that detainees were going missing -- or worse -- in Afghan hands.

The ICRC didn't respond to The Globe's efforts to contact it, but the tight-lipped Swiss-based committee doesn't, as a matter of policy, make public statements about how individual countries treat detainees.

Marc Raider, the Defence Department civilian designated as spokesman on detainee policy issues, said the reason the ICRC was named in the handover deal was so Canada "could have a measure of assurance that they [detainees] would be treated in accordance with Geneva," referring to the Geneva Conventions that safeguard the rights of prisoners of war.

Although successive Canadian governments insist that battlefield captives in Afghanistan aren't entitled to Geneva protections -- because, among other things, they don't wear uniforms nor fight for a recognized state -- they have nonetheless said they were committed to providing treatment equal to Geneva requirements and insuring that the Afghan authorities do the same after detainees are handed over.

Mr. Raider was unable to say whether the ICRC would report to Canada if it found problems with Afghan treatment of detainees originally captured by Canadian troops.

Nor is it clear whether Mr. O'Conner was ever told by the ICRC that it couldn't account for detainees turned over to Afghan police. Last month he told the Commons, "I can assure this House that at no time was I aware of any abuse of prisoners."

His spokeswoman, Isabelle Bouchard, didn't immediately respond yesterday to queries asking whether the inability to find the detainees pointed to deficiencies in the Canada-Afghanistan agreement.

Ms. Bouchard did, however, send an e-mail to say the "NIS is in the process of locating witnesses including the three detainees and these things take time."

She suggested "you wait for the reports to be released."

However, all of the probes -- including the NIS criminal investigation and the board of inquiry ordered by Gen. Hillier to examine detainee handling -- were launched after The Globe published the allegations of abuse. Prior to that, Canadian Forces spokespeople had insisted that "appropriate force" was used on the detainees and no investigations were needed.

The independent Military Police Complaints Commission has also launched two "public interest" probes. One involves the allegations of abuse against the three Afghan men captured last April. The other deals with the broader issue of whether the policy of turning detainees over to Afghan authorities violates international law and the Canadian Charter of Rights because military police know -- or should know -- that Afghan police are widely known to torture and abuse prisoners.
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INCB warns of counterfeit medicines flooding markets in Afghanistan
Tehran, March 1, IRNA
The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) warned that the flood of counterfeit medicines now available in many countries could have fatal consequences for consumers, at the launch of its Annual Report today in Vienna, Austria.

The danger is real and sizeable. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 25-50 per cent of medicines consumed in developing countries are believed to be counterfeit. The problem is further compounded by the fact that counterfeit drugs are easy to manufacture and resemble genuine drugs in packaging and labelling, a press release issued by the UN Information Center (UNIC) said here Wednesday.

"It is important for consumers to realize that what they think cut-price medication bought on an unregulated market may have potentially lethal effects whenever the consumed drugs are not the healing, they can take lives," said Dr. Philip O. Emafo, President, INCB.

The Board is especially concerned about the existence of unregulated markets where substandard, and sometimes even lethal medication is sold to unsuspecting customers. Unregulated markets are often supplied with stolen and diverted drugs,illicitly manufactured pharmaceuticals or through illegal sales on the Internet. There is also evidence that an increasing number of licensed individuals an/or entities are contravening laws to sell controlled drugs without a prescription.

"The problem of counterfeit medication and abuse of pharmaceuticals containing controlled substances bought without prescriptions has been in existence for some time. However, the rapid expansion of unregulated markets has dramatically worsened the situation," said Dr. Emafo.

The Board is calling on Member States to enforce legislation to ensure that narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances are not illegally manufactured or diverted from licit manufacture and distribution channels to unregulated markets.

Prescription Drug Abuse to Surpass Illicit Drug Abuse The abuse and trafficking of prescription drugs is set to exceed illicit drug abuse, according to the Board. In fact, medication containing narcotic drugs and/or psychotropic substances has become a drug of first choice in many cases, rather than being abused as a substitute. The demand for these drugs is so high, that it has given rise to a new problem, "that of counterfeit products. Abuse of prescription drugs can have lethal effects and the number of deaths related to the abuse of narcotic drugs is on the rise."

According to Dr. Emafo, President of the Board," the very high potency of some of the synthetic narcotic drugs available as prescription drugs presents, in fact, a higher overdose risk than the abuse of illicit drugs.

Slimming Craze Fuelled by Drugs

The Board warned that the trend of abusing anorectics for slimming is increasing, despite the risk of potentially fatal consequences.

Anorectics, used against obesity, as well as for the treatment of narcolepsy and attention deficit disorder (ADD), are meant to be prescribed and monitored by doctors. However, given their ability to suppress the sensation of hunger, an alarming number of people have begun to abuse them in the hope of losing weight. Governments and concerned parties should take appropriate measures to ensure that the use of anorectics is limited to medical purposes.

Drug Situation in Afghanistan Deteriorating Rapidly

Illicit opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has reached record high levels in 2006, causing grave concern to the Board. One third of the Afghan economy remains illicit opium based, creating a situation that needs to be urgently addressed by the Government of Afghanistan, with assistance from the international community. In particular, the Board believes swift action needs to be taken to address the problem of corruption, otherwise Government efforts in drug control will be undermined, further hindering political progress, economic growth and social development in the country.

Regional Highlights

The Report discusses, region by region, major trends in drug abuse and trafficking worldwide. In Afghanistan, illicit opium poppy cultivation increased by 59 per cent in 2006 and the level of production increased by nearly 50 per cent to a record 6,100 tons.

There are concerns that Afghan opiate trafficking is having a destabilizing effect in neighbouring countries as well as in Central Asia and the Russian Federation, where organized crime, corruption and high illicit demand for opiates are on the rise.

In Europe, the Board notes the continent has become the second largest illicit market for cocaine in the world. Europe also continues to be one of the main illicit markets in the world for stimulants.

Methamphetamine abuse is the fastest-growing drug threat in North America, bringing with it a host of health and law enforcement issues. The Board is also particularly concerned about the high and increasing level of prescription drug abuse in North America.
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Feature: Afghanistan recovering from war devastation
Xinhua / March 1, 2007
Afghanistan has been gradually recovering from war devastation as road building and booming housing construction attract the eyes of onlookers almost everywhere in the country, particularly in the capital Kabul.

More than 3,000 km of roads have been built with a cost of some 4 billion U.S. dollars over the past five years while more than 2, 000 km more are under construction, according to officials.

Moreover, housing construction by private companies and individuals is booming. The war-torn capital is rapidly changing its face as the newly constructed cottages and mansions and those under construction attract travelers' attention.

Taliban-led insurgency to some extent has undermined the reconstruction process particularly in the southern provinces.

"Really, I feel happy when I see the booming housing construction in the capital," said Mohammad Akram, a Kabul resident.

"Peace is the source of progress, prosperity, economic recovery and in one word peace is everything. When you have peace you have development, you have honor and prestige," the war-weary Akram noted.

Like others in the war-torn areas, the residents of Kabul had suffered a lot. In one month thousands of innocent people were killed and thousands of others were forced to leave for safer places, the 49-year-old Akram recalled, referring to the bloody factional fighting that ruined the capital city in 1992-96.

Kabul today houses more than 4 million people, mostly former refugees who have returned home since the collapse of Taliban regime five years ago.

More than 0.4 million residents of Kabul city, according to capital police, have their own cars.

In efforts to make the city clean and bring it at par with metropolitans in the neighboring states, the Kabul Municipality has began renovating old streets, constructing new roads and building parking lots with the support of government and involvement of private sectors.

A number of national and international firms have dared Taliban militancy and invested billions of U.S. dollars to change the face of the war-ravaged Afghanistan.

The U.S.-based Century Land Corporation has been constructing a town ship in downtown Kabul close to Kabul International Airport.

The firm, according to its Sales Director Nesaar Ahmad, has planned to build 350 residential blocks with each having 40 apartments in the post-Taliban nation.

Like the Centaury Land Corporation, Salim Caravan has also invested millions of U.S. dollars to build houses for the war- weary Afghans.

However, the prices of apartments built by both the housing firms are almost beyond the reach of ordinary Afghans as the Century Land Corporation sells two-room apartments at 29,500 U.S. dollars while a 4-room apartment in Salim Caravan costs 72,000 U.S. dollars.

The ongoing insurgency, mostly in the southern provinces, had claimed the lives of some 4,000 people in 2006 and thus undermined the development projects and rendered many jobless.

One of the poorest countries in the world, Afghanistan still depends on the international community's assistance.

To alleviate poverty and lower the prices of houses in the war- battered Afghanistan, the government launched a Housing Complex early last month.

Speaking at the inaugural ceremony of the 500 million U.S. dollar project, Vice President Ahmad Zia Masoud stressed that providing shelter to citizens is one of the prime objective of government.

Despite of continued militancy and Taliban threat to sabotage peace in the post-Taliban nation, more than 6,000 national and international firms have registered with AISA (Afghanistan Investment Support Agency) since the fall of Taliban regime five years ago.

So far, they have invested 4.5 billion U.S. dollars in the country, including 3 billion U.S. dollars in housing construction, Director of AISA Omar Zakhilwal told Xinhua.

In the post-Taliban Afghanistan, constructing mansions, cottages and new houses has been considered as a fashion of the day.

Besides, considerable investment had also taken place in the field of communication. so far, the sector has attracted some 600 million U.S. dollars of investment.

In the past, Afghans trying to contact their relatives and friends abroad had to go to Pakistan to make a phone call. Since the fall of Taliban regime and induction of new administration in early 2002, majority of Afghans, particularly in the cities, own cellular phones.

So far, three companies, namely, Afghan Wireless Communication Company (AWCC), ROSHAN and Areeba, have been providing cellular phone services while the Dubai-based Etisalat will soon launch its service here.

Etisalat, according to AISA chief, will invest 300 million U.S. dollars over the next two years in Afghanistan.

Only in 2006, between 600 million to 700 million U.S. dollars were invested in the war-battered Afghanistan, Zakhilwal stressed.

He added that the post-war Afghanistan had already been self- sufficient in producing soft drink and mineral water and would try to achieve the goal in all fields through establishing industrial parks and attracting investments.

Commenting on AISA's 2007 target, Zakhilwal said that the government-backed investment support body would try to attract 1.5 billion U.S. dollars this year.

Per capita income in the landlocked post-Taliban nation, according to an official at the World Bank's country office, has increased from 180 U.S. dollars in 2002 to 300 U.S. dollars in 2006. The figure is expected to reach 500 dollars by 2010.

Rebuilding Afghanistan takes longer time than expected as destroying a house takes one day while its construction requires months, if not years. So, recovering from 25 years of war needs more years, 65-year-old carpenter Mohammad Najib said.
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EU defense ministers to launch police missions in Kosovo, Afghanistan
People's Daily Online, China
European Union defense ministers planned on Thursday in Berlin to launch police operations in Kosovo and Afghanistan.

German Minister of Defense Franz Josef Jung said that ministers from 27 EU nations was discussing the deployment of EU police mission in Kosovo and Afghanistan at their informal meeting in Wiesbaden, Germany.

The force in Kosovo could be 600 officers with full executive powers to handle possible violence and unrest, German news agency DPA quoted officials as saying. But details of the mission are to be worked out.

Police trainers and magistrates who will help to improve the rule of law in the territory will be among the mission, the officials said.

Jung, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, said that NATO's 16,000-strong force would remain in Kosovo after an expected United Nations Security Council decision on the territory 's final status.

He said that the reduction of NATO's presence in Kosovo would send a wrong signal as concerns of unrest in the breakaway province are high after the UN resolution.

Belgrade insists on retaining sovereignty over the territory has rejected the proposal but the plan has been accepted by ethnic Albanians in the province.

Jung and EU high representative of foreign affairs Javier Solana confirmed that the EU would reduce its troops in Bosnia from 6,500 to 2,500 this year.

"The security situation in Bosnia is very much better," said Solana, who also attends the meeting.

On Afghanistan, Jung said that approval of the plan to dispatch six Tornado surveillance aircraft to boost NATO operations in southern Afghanistan was pending next week in the German parliament.

Besides, the EU was ready to train Afghan policemen to help stabilize the war-torn country, Jung said, adding, "Security and reconstruction go hand in hand in Afghanistan."

Defense ministers from the 27 EU nations were discussing current security policy issues at the two-day meeting. NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer attended the first working day as the EU ministers are studying plans for stronger partnerships with NATO, the UN and the African Union.
Source: Xinhua
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Arrest in Afghan's slaying
Woman was shot to death on street
By LISA FERNANDEZ MediaNews The Monterey County Herald
Capping a four-month murder mystery that shook the Bay Area's Afghan community, prosecutors charged a 28-year-old Fremont felon Thursday with murdering an Afghan mother walking to pick up her children from elementary school.

Manuel David Mares, who also goes by the last name of Urango, is the same "person of interest" police picked up on unrelated charges hours after Alia Ansari's Oct. 19 shooting on a tree-lined Fremont sidewalk.

Authorities acknowledged Thursday that their case is circumstantial and they have no idea why Mares allegedly killed her.

Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Colton Carmine told the San Jose Mercury News that gunpowder residue found on Mares' palms and a witness identification from a suspicious incident the day before the killing are among the evidence against the six-time convict.

"They got him?" said Rona Popal, who heads the Afghan Coalition in Fremont and has helped Ansari's husband and family move back home to Afghanistan. "Great. We're very happy justice was served. But we want to understand the motivation better of what's really going on."

Colton said prosecutors have no motive for the attack, which took the life of a woman described as a happy mother of six children.

As many devout Muslim women do, Ansari, 38, covered her hair with a scarf, signifying humility. Her dress raised questions about whether she was the target of racism.

Admitting the holes in the case -- Mares had not confessed and has no known relationship to Ansari -- Carmine stressed: "There is no evidence that this is a hate crime."

Ansari walked to Glenmoor Elementary School that day, clutching her 3-year-old daughter's hand, even after she was shot in the head and lay bleeding to death in a neighbor's driveway a few blocks from her apartment complex. She usually drove to pick up her children. But her minivan had broken down, and her husband, Ahmad, a mechanic, hadn't had time to fix it.

On Thursday, little was known about Mares other than his criminal past. He has been in custody on unrelated parole violation charges since Ansari's death. Until Thursday, he hadn't been formally named by police in her killing. Court papers show he failed to report to his parole officer and comply with drug tests after being imprisoned for a 2005 hit-and-run felony, in which he struck a 71-year-old man.

Before Thursday's arraignment at the Fremont Hall of Justice, Carmine said he has known for "some time" that tests showed gunpowder residue on Mares' palms. And he has long known about a delivery truck driver who came to police shortly after Ansari's death and said he saw someone shooting a gun from a car in Fremont the day before Ansar's killing. The man looked similar to the police's description of a Latino man they had apprehended, whom they now identify as Mares.

However, Carmine said he wanted the luxury of time in this case, since Mares was going nowhere on his parole hold.

There was no specific reason why Carmine decided to charge Mares this week with the murder, other than he was able to tie up some "loose ends" and Mares was due to be released from jail in about two weeks.

Alameda County Superior Court Judge Daniel Grimmer read out loud Mares' prior convictions from Santa Clara, Alameda and Stanislaus counties, including six for crimes such as burglary, using drugs and car theft. Mares furrowed his brow, which is tattooed with the words "No Remorse," as he read his own copy of the court documents. At other times he yawned, bit his bottom lip, and rolled his eyes during the brief proceeding. He also asked the judge a few questions to clarify the charges.

He did not enter a plea, and was sent to be interviewed by the Public Defender's Office Thursday afternoon. He was ordered to reappear at the Fremont Hall of Justice Friday.

Mares did not respond to a prior written Mercury News request seeking comment while he was in jail. His mother, whom authorities said was living with in Fremont, could not be reached for immediate comment.

In court, Mares had no friends or family there to support him.

And there were no members of the Afghan community in attendance either. Carmine said he was trying to find family members since Ahmad Ansari flew home to Mazaar-e-Sharif a week after his wife's death with his six children. Not wanting to burden family in the Bay Area with helping him raise his young brood, Ahmad Ansari decided to move in with his parents back home. Family said he has since remarried.

He and his wife immigrated from Afghanistan in the 1980s seeking a better life. But friends and family say living in the high-priced Bay Area was hard, especially on a mechanic's salary.

Still, there are dozens of Ansari relatives who live and work mostly in Fremont _ a city with the nation's largest concentration of Afghan immigrants. None of them, however, had been called by authorities of Mares' arrest.

Cousin Hashmat Ansari, who owns Pamir Travel in Fremont, was alerted to the arrest by the Mercury News.

"It's good news," he said. "But it doesn't make us feel much better."
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Wardak briefs senators on security situation
KABUL, Feb 28 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak has said that the country's security forces were fully prepared to thwart any disruptive plans by the enemies of the country.

Wardak said this while briefing members of the Internal Security Commission of the Meshran Jirga on Wednesday.

Referring to the possible surge in Taliban-related insurgency, Wardak said insecurity in some parts did not mean that security situation was not satisfactory in the country. He said intelligence network had been strengthened to counter any threat from the enemies of the country.

About the situation in Musa Qala district of Helmand, the minister said military action in that part had been delayed for political reasons. The security forces were fully prepared to expel the militants from the district, he added.

When senators from the southern provinces complained that other districts were also under the virtual control of the Taliban, the minister said they would soon liberate those areas from the militants.

The minister informed the senators about inclusion of three thousand more soldiers in the ANA next month. He said it would increase the ANA strength from the existing 43,000 to 46,000.
Makia Monir
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19 Afghans released from Bagram
KABUL, Feb 28 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Nineteen Afghan prisoners, detained for their links with Taliban, were set free from the US Bagram detention centre on Wednesday.

The detainees were released with the help of the Peace Strengthening Commission led by elderly politician and Chairman of the Meshrano Jirga Sibghatullah Mujaddidi.

The newly-release men are belonging to the central capital Kabul and Kandahar, Paktika, Khost, Kapisa, Kunar, Zabul and Ghazni provinces. Their period of detention at Bagram ranging from six months to two and a half years.

The released men were shifted to Kabul, where they met Sibghatullah Mujaddidi. Some of the prisoners, during their meeting with Mujaddidi, complained that they were arrested by the US forces despite their assurances of parting ways with the Taliban or other anti-government groups.

Hazratullah, 40, and Rahmat Gul, 35, from the Manogai district of the eastern Kunar province, said they had once given up armed resistance and obtained certificates from the Peace Strengthening Commission, but still detained by the US forces and kept for six months under detention.

Narrating his ordeal, Hazratullah said he along with Rahmat Gul, had gone to visit the house of a person who owed some money to them. As they came out of the house, the US troops arrested them, said Hazratullah.

"They blindfolded and handcuffed us," said the aggrieved man, who added the US troops did not pay heed to the certificates they had received from the commission.

In response to their complaints, Mujaddidi said they had no control over the foreign troops. He said there was confusion and they could not stop foreign troops from arresting people.

Without naming any individual or a group, Mujaddidi said there were some elements in the government and some ministers, who were creating hurdles in release of the detainees.
Habib Rahman Ibrahimi
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