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March 26, 2007 


Afghanistan taking back madrassas: education minister
by Bronwen Roberts Mon Mar 26, 1:48 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - Afghanistan's government is setting up its own madrassas, or religious schools, to counter the Taliban's use of education as a "weapon of terrorism," Education Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar says.

The first will be established in two months, with one eventually to open in each of Afghanistan's 34 provinces, the minister said in an interview with AFP.

"The enemies of democracy in this country, the enemies of stability in this part of the world, are actually using education as a weapon of terrorism. They have established for some time now across the border hate madrassas," he said.

Afghans from poor backgrounds who are enrolled into these free boarding schools are ripe for recruitment into the Taliban insurgency.

"They teach them hate and they teach them the kind of things that have no consistency with our religion.

"And as a result they get suicide bombers recruited from these madrassas and they get Taliban fighters from these madrassas," said the 39-year-old minister, one of the youngest in President Hamid Karzai's cabinet.

The fundamentalist Taliban were students at madrassas in Pakistan before the government there helped them to seize power in  Afghanistan in 1996. They were ousted in a US-led invasion in late 2001.

Atmar said it was now the government's "ethical responsibility" to offer a tolerant and modern Islamic education, as many parents wanted religious schooling for their children.

The planned schools, which Atmar said should initially accommodate up to 50,000 children, are to offer 40 percent religious education, 40 percent general education and 20 percent computer science and foreign languages.

The curriculum would produce graduates who are more employable than those from traditional madrassas whose students could become teachers in religious schools, mullahs or even "join the Taliban ranks," Atmar said.

The schools would be supervised by the ministry and community boards to ensure that teachers did not deviate from teaching a moderate version of Islam, he said.

The minister wants to recruit the best educators for the madrassas but faces a severe shortage of qualified teachers, with a poorly skilled labour force one of the many legacies of 25 years of war.

Around 80 percent of the existing teaching force of about 143,000 is not qualified, he said.

"We have to work on two fronts: one, to train a new generation of teachers with a special focus on female teachers and second to provide in-service training to our existing teachers," he said.

A priority is to boost the attendance of girl pupils with their numbers still far lower than for boys five years after the expulsion of the Taliban regime that did not allow girls to go to school.

"At the moment for every two boys, I have one girl in primary school. But in secondary, for every five to six boys I have one girl," Atmar said. "That ratio must change."

The minister conceded Taliban attacks, such as burning schools, had undermined his ministry's efforts in "small pockets in the country," primarily in the south where the insurgency is the most active.

A total of 44 teachers had been killed in such attacks in 12 months, he said, with most of the killings in the south.

"Six months ago, there was every day two to three incidents happening to our schools, teachers and students. These days it is only two to three incidents a week."

He attributed the fall in part to the establishment of local councils to protect schools and education, both through providing security and increasing public awareness.

And in a country where most people are illiterate -- the statistic rising to 90 percent of rural women, according to the  United Nations -- the importance of education takes on particular significance.

"Democracy will never be fully operationalised if people are not able to read and write and if the human capital is not there," Atmar said.
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Afghan army sweep kills 99 rebels in four days
KABUL (AFP) -  NATO warplanes called in by the Afghan army bombed and killed 19 militants in southern  Afghanistan, taking the toll from a four-day operation to 99, the defence ministry said Monday.

The 19 were killed in the southern province of Helmand on Sunday, it said in a statement.

The Afghan army launched the sweep of the Gereshk area of the province on Thursday, the second day of the Afghan new year.

Operation Nawrozi (New Year) is the first large operation launched by Afghan forces with NATO air support but not ground troops.

The fiercest clashes were on Thursday and left 69 militants and seven policemen dead, Afghan officials said.

The ministry said nine suspected militants were also arrested in the Gereshk area Sunday, two of them carrying the bodies of their dead comrades.

The forces also seized light weapons, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and land mines.

Helmand has seen some of the biggest attacks on militants this year, with officials admitting that parts of the province are in the control of militants allied with traffickers of Afghanistan's world-topping opium crop.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) launched a separate operation in the province three weeks ago called Achilles. It says "several Taliban extremists" have been killed but will not give numbers.

Taliban are being prevented from moving reinforcements into the area from bases across the border by increased Pakistan army patrols, ISAF commander for southern Afghanistan, Major General Ton van Loon, said Sunday.

Officials say the Afghan-led operation in Helmand shows the growing capacity of the Afghan security forces which are being built from scratch with international help costing billions of dollars.

Afghanistan's army and air force was destroyed during the 1992-1996 civil war that was ended with the take-over of the extremist Taliban regime, itself toppled in 2001.
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U.S. wants Europe to send more troops to Afghanistan
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The United States urged European countries on Monday to provide more troops for  Afghanistan and to free them up for combat, as well as to provide further aid to the war-shattered country.

Nicholas Burns, U.S. undersecretary of state, said Washington was grateful to European countries such as Britain, Estonia, Romania and the Netherlands which have troops operating in combat zones in Afghanistan.

"There is a need for a greater number of troops from Europe, for a greater degree of flexibility in how those troops are allowed to operate," Burns told reporters in Brussels.

"The caveats, that limit the tactical deployments of troops inside the country, in our view should be lifted. All states should lift them and there should be additional economic and humanitarian aid," he said.

The United States provides about 27,000 of the 45,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan.

Some European countries have resisted previous U.S. calls for their troops to be deployed in southern Afghanistan, the heartland of the Taliban insurgents, where the heaviest fighting has taken place.

Last year saw the worst violence in Afghanistan since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban from power in late 2001. More than 4,000 people died in fighting in 2006, including about 1,000 civilians.

Fighting is expected to be heavy in 2007. The Taliban have said they have prepared thousands of suicide bombers.
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90 percent of heroin in Britain comes from Afghanistan, UK attorney general says
The Associated Press Sunday, March 25, 2007
KABUL, Afghanistan: Ninety percent of the heroin in Britain comes from Afghanistan's booming poppy trade, Britain's attorney general said, warning that the fight against the drug would not be won overnight.

"Drugs are one of the gravest long-term threats to the development and security of Afghanistan," Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith said during a visit to Kabul's Criminal Justice Task Force, which investigates and prosecutes drug traffickers.

"And the drugs trade in Afghanistan also hurts my country. Ninety percent of heroin in the U.K. comes from Afghanistan," he said, without elaborating.

Goldsmith announced US$18 million (€13.5 million) in funding over the next four years for the task force, which has investigated more than 800 cases and convicted 350 people since May 2005, though it has yet to convict a top-tier trafficker.

Bashhir Ahmad Fazli, general director of the task force's prosecution team, said the unit has a strategy in place to go after major traffickers, but needed a stronger intelligence and police unit to complement its 33 prosecutors and 14 judges.

Fazli said that "some generals" have been prosecuted, but that he could not release their names until the cases had wound through the appeals process. Some people from Nigeria and Nepal have also been convicted, he said.

The U.N., in its drug reports, has accused top commanders in Afghanistan's Interior Ministry, which oversees the country's police, of turning a blind eye to the drug trade in exchange for bribes from traffickers.

"I can assure you that if we are able to get information on the big traffickers, we will try to convict them as well," Fazli said.

Fueled by the Taliban, a powerful drug mafia and poor farmers' need for a profitable crop that can overcome drought, opium production from poppies in Afghanistan last year rose 49 percent to 6,700 tons — enough to make about 670 tons of heroin. That is more than 90 percent of the world's supply and more than the world's addicts consume in a year.

The booming drug economy, and the involvement of government officials and police in the illicit trade, compounds the many problems facing Afghanistan's fledgling democracy as its struggles with stepped-up attacks by insurgents loyal to the former Taliban regime.

Abdul Jabar Sabet, Afghanistan's attorney general, said his office would prosecute anyone in government involved in drugs if investigators could gather evidence to support the charge. He said he had seen no evidence that President Hamid Karzai's brother, Wali Karzai, was involved in the drug trade despite rumors in Kabul to the contrary.

"I think that's a part of an anti-Karzai campaign going on these days," said Sabet, who appeared alongside Goldsmith at a news conference. "If anybody had brought such a report to my attention I would have investigated."
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Taliban 'invite' 10,000 Uzbeks to Helmand
By Massoud Ansari, Sunday Telegraph (UK) March 25, 2007
Islamic militants linked to Osama bin Laden have been offered a safe haven by the Taliban in Afghanistan, bringing them into conflict with British troops patrolling the lawless province of Helmand.

Uzbek gunmen, who fought a series of bloody battles last week with Pakistani tribesmen in the border region of Waziristan, where they had been living, have been told they should join the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan instead.

The move raises the prospect of a major upsurge in violence in Helmand, where 43 British soldiers have been killed in clashes with militants over the last five years.

The group of around 10,000 Uzbeks are led by Tahir Yuldashev, a close associate of the al-Qaeda terrorist chief, who is believed to be hiding out in the mountainous border area with his chief henchman Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The members of the Islamic Movement Union of Uzbekistan fell out with their Pakistani hosts after accusing some tribal leaders of acting as agents of the Pakistani government, which is under huge pressure from the US to crack down on Islamic militants. Pakistan government officials said that nearly 160 people, including 130 Uzbeks, were killed in the battle.

Taliban fighters intervened to broker a ceasefire but local officials have told The Sunday Telegraph that neither side is likely to back down. Taliban sources have revealed that they have offered the Uzbeks safe passage into Afghanistan in order to bring an end to the violence.

The militant group are wanted by the Uzbek government of President Islam Karimov and cannot return to their own country.

Lateef Afridi, a tribal leader and former national assembly member from the Frontier province, who is privy to details of the discussions, said: "These tribesmen are quite determined to flush them out. Given that these Uzbeks cannot be extradited back to their own country because they are all wanted there, one way they are considering to accommodate them is to send them to Afghanistan."

Mr Afridi said the Taliban felt compelled to give the Uzbeks a way out because if the battle continued between the local tribesmen and the foreign fighters, the Taliban elements would have to choose which side to back, unleashing further bloodshed. Another source added: "Both the sides are led by highly trained militants and if the fighting is not stopped, there will be massive killings."

A second tribal leader said the local and Afghan Taliban forces had already approached the Uzbeks and asked them to continue their jihad in Taliban-dominated areas in Afghanistan, in a bid to "reinvigorate their campaign of violence against Nato troops". They have been offered safe passage to either Kunar, Paktia or Helmand, where British troops are braced for a spring offensive from the Taliban.

Britain has announced plans to raise the UK military presence in Afghanistan to more than 7,000 troops. But the presence of a new wave of heavily armed guerrilla fighters is likely to leave troops stretched further and strengthen calls for an even greater military presence.

For Pakistan, forcing out the Uzbeks has the advantage of undermining support for Osama bin Laden.

His deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has been spotted in Waziristan several times. If the local tribesmen succeed, it will deny bin Laden one more safe haven for his associates, according to one western diplomat.

The Uzbeks are believed to have killed more than 1,500 local tribesmen in the past two years and are blamed for kidnapping others.

Mr Afridi said: "The partial ceasefire was achieved only for a time being, when the Taliban leaders intervened, but it did not give both the parties enough time to carry out the dead. The corpses and broken limbs of the dead are scattered all over the area."
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U.N. calls for release of Afghan reporter held by Taliban
The Associated Press Monday, March 26, 2007
KABUL, Afghanistan: The United Nations mission in Afghanistan called on the Taliban on Monday to release an Afghan reporter kidnapped along with an Italian journalist captured earlier this month in the country's south.

Ajmal Nashqbandi, a freelance reporter, was working as a translator for Daniel Mastrogiacomo of the Italian daily La Repubblica when they were kidnapped in Helmand province on March 5.

Mastrogiacomo was released in exchange for five Taliban prisoners on March 19. His driver, Sayed Agha, was beheaded by militants. Nashqbandi's family and journalist associations have demanded that militants release him.

"We call upon those holding him to immediately release him and respond positively to the calls from his family, journalists, and many other Afghans who have called for his safe return," said Aleem Siddique, a U.N. spokesman.

"Ajmal has no connection with either Afghan or international military forces," he said.

Italy pressed Afghanistan to meet the kidnappers' demands, leading to the release of the five prisoners, reportedly including two high-level Taliban — a former spokesman and the brother of the militia's top ground commander, Mullah Dadullah.

Afghan lawmakers, analysts and international workers have criticized the government's decision to release the prisoners for the Italian journalist and also for not securing Nashqbandi's release.
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Afghan police officer asks Canada for shelter
Man linked to killing of Canadian envoy Glyn Berry out of custody
Monday, March 26, 2007  CBC News
The Afghan police investigator who made the only arrest in connection with the killing last year of Canadian diplomat Glyn Berry in Afghanistan now fears retribution for his police work and is appealing to Canadian authorities for protection.

Capt. Sher Ali Farhad has fled with his family from Kandahar and has sought safe haven in Kabul after receiving death threats and learning on Saturday that the suspect he locked away is now a free man.

"My reaction, of course, is that I'm worried," Farhad told the CBC through an interpreter. "I feel like I'm in danger."

Police had twice arrested Pir Mohammed, most recently in December 2006 for attempting to pass through a Kandahar City checkpoint in a car flagged by Afghan intelligence as a potential bomb threat.

He was detained for the first time in early 2006 after police found a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, a Kalashnikov rifle and a picture of a Taliban leader in his home, but Mohammed walked out of prison two days later because influential tribal leaders persuaded authorities and Kandahar's governor to release him.

Farhad believes Mohammed's connections to those powerful tribal leaders in Kandahar could endanger him and his family. He is seeking protection or even asylum in Canada.

Afghan National Police chief Asmatullah Alizai also urged Canada and other countries to heed his officer's request for help, saying it would "send a positive signal that with the problems we face here, the international community is supporting us."

Still, Farhad is far from being the only police officer seeking help from Canada because of his efforts to bring law to his country, and officials at the Canadian Embassy in Kabul have so far refused to comment on his case.

For the time being, Farhad said he is on the run — moving often from shelter to shelter.

"I am just living one week at one friend's house, one week in another, just a few days in each place," Farhad said.  "It's too dangerous for us to stay in one place for too long. I am living like a refugee in my own country."

Last month, in an exclusive interview with the CBC, Mohammed maintained he played no part in the January 2006 suicide car bombing that killed Berry, the 59-year-old Canadian envoy. Mohammed said the minivan used in the attack, which was last registered under his name, was sold before the bombing, although he admitted he had no documents to prove the sale.

Three Canadian soldiers were also wounded in the same attack.
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Afghanistan’s Wild West
Herat, once the most stable of Afghan provinces, is now becoming increasingly dangerous, and analysts say not all the violence is sponsored by the Taleban.
Institute for War & Peace Reporting
By Sadeq Behnam and Sudabah Afzali in Herat (ARR No. 247, 23-Mar-07)

When Abdul Rauf, the head of the government revenue department in the western province of Herat, was shot dead at his home on the morning of March 18, family members disputed the police’s story that the murder was motivated by personal vengeance.

“Abdul Rauf had no enemies,” said Noor Ahmad Sultani, who believes relative was killed because of his job. “I think his death was connected with administrative issues. The gunmen were hired to kill him.”

He continued, “We have no faith in our security forces any more, because the situation has deteriorated to the point where people can be killed even in broad daylight.”

Herat, Afghanistan’s western jewel, has always been famed for its culture and architectural beauty. As the local poet Ali Sher Navoi remarked more than 500 years ago, “You can’t stretch your legs in Herat without kicking a poet.”

The city stands at the crossroads of history, bordering Iran and Turkmenistan. Because of its location, it has been buffeted by various ethnic and religious influences which, while giving the city a welcome air of sophistication, are now contributing to rising tensions.

In the past 12 months, more than 50 people have been killed and at least 100 wounded in suicide bombings and other attacks, and the normally complacent Heratis are starting to grumble.

“People have no guarantee even for their own lives,” said Shahjan Karimzada, a businessman who owns a soft-drink plant in the city. “How can we protect our factories and shops? There are armed robberies and murders almost every day, and the police aren’t able to capture the criminals.”

Karimzada said many companies had already shipped out of Herat because of the deteriorating security situation.

“If this continues, there will be no more investment in Herat,” he said. “People are really worried.”

The Afghan government has sought to blame much of the violence on the Taleban-led insurgency.

“Of course it’s the Taleban who are behind these crimes, because they oppose the government,” said Sayed Hussain Anwari, the governor of Herat.

But local analysts and residents are not convinced.

“Herat contains jihadi elements who hate the government because they have lost their jobs,” said Muhammad Rafik Shaheer, a political analyst and head of the Council of Professionals, a non-government body in Herat. “We have recently witnessed a series of problems, including explosions, robberies, kidnappings and assassinations.”

The term “jihadis” applies to the various armed factions which emerged from the anti-Soviet mujahedin to fight first against each other in the early Nineties, and later against the Taleban. Many of their leaders are still prominent political figures.

According to Shaheer, Taleban activity in Herat province is at a much lower level than elsewhere in the country.

“People who have designs against the government are able to cover their tracks, so everything gets blamed on the Taleban,” he said.

“The most worrying aspect of this is that the police and army also contain elements that are against the government. They have links with the opposition, and must be cleared out.”

Herat is no stranger to political ambition and ethnic tension. Ismail Khan, the strongman who controlled Herat on and off for decades, is a Tajik who clashed with a Pashtun commander, Amanullah Khan, before being removed from office and brought to Kabul as energy minister.

Iranian influence can be felt in the Shia community, and there has been some violence on religious grounds. Last year’s Ashura festival, the holiest day in the Shia religious calendar, was marred by violence that left at least six people dead.

But the kind of bloodshed that has become common in the south, including the increasingly frequent suicide attacks, was relatively rare in Herat until a year ago.

The worst incident to date came in September, when a suicide bomber struck outside Herat’s famous mosque, killing 11 and wounding 18.

These attacks have been attributed to the Taleban, but some, including the local chief of police, accept that the blame may lie elsewhere.

“There are political groups besides the Taleban who are attempting to destabilise the situation in Herat,” said police spokesman Colonel Norkhan Nikzad.

He pointed to recent arrests in Herat province, in which police and intelligence forces rounded up six individuals suspected of bomb attacks.

“One is a citizen of Pakistan, and the others are Afghans with no ties to the Taleban,” said Nikzad.

Perhaps most worrying, added the spokesman, is that some of the violence has been perpetrated by men wearing police uniforms.

“We are trying to determine which groups they belong to,” he said.

Qari Mohammad Yusuf, a spokesman for the Taleban, has denied that the insurgent group had been involved in attacks on civilians.

“Not every act of sabotage or terrorism is attributable to the Taleban,” he told reporters.

Sadeq Behnam and Sudabah Afzali are freelance reporters in Herat.
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Art in Afghanistan undergoes its own revolution
By ALISA TANG Associated Press Sunday, March 25, 2007
KABUL, Afghanistan - For 25 years, Mohammed Akbar Salam painted the style that he and his colleagues knew - realism. Under the ultra-restrictive Taliban regime, depictions of the human figure were forbidden, and their work shriveled to an austere repertoire of calligraphy and still life.

Now, Afghanistan is emerging from decades of war and Taliban rule to a new world and the information age, and its art is undergoing a revolution to find an identity that is both fresh and distinctly Afghan.

"After the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan's borders opened up, and we had access to the Internet. We could connect with people abroad, so everyone is now looking for a new style," Salam said as he served tea huddled next to an electric heater in his small, cold studio.

"We're part of the 21st century. Realism is done by cameras. An artist should do something new," said Salam, 50, who teaches painting at Kabul University.

The flood of images and ideas from the outside have triggered a new wave of art and paintings that resemble European works from the early 20th century, but that are a radical change for Afghanistan. This art with its distinctly Afghan themes - war, corruption and violence - provides a rare glimpse of the country's creative psyche.

Salam's work shifted from dry, realist images of street scenes and landscapes into sad and often angry critiques of life through Afghan eyes, in a color palette and style evocative of Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse and their contemporaries.

His most striking painting, which was part of an exhibit in neighboring Iran, depicts a Chinook helicopter - commonly used by the U.S. military - flying menacingly above a pair of scared, fleeing chickens. Military aircraft and American and NATO forces are common sights in this war-torn country.

One of Salam's colleagues at Kabul University, 40-year-old Eaniyatullah Niazi, portrays the violence through the traditional Afghan game of buzkashi, in which players on horses wrangle for a headless goat carcass.

"It's a very hard, cruel game. It is a kind of tyrant's game - the poor goat is beheaded and everyone tries to grab for it," Niazi said, sitting on cushions in a red carpeted, sunlit room in his apartment where he displays his paintings. To him, the game symbolizes the violence in Afghan society today.

Niazi, whose work has been published by UNESCO in a book called Refugee Painters, turned sharply away from realism to abstraction.

A buzkashi painting from 2004 is a frenzy of curved black lines, with horse's heads, men and a carcass in the fray. His work has become increasingly abstract, and now, though the subject is still buzkashi, the figures are barely discernible.

His work is appreciated and purchased mainly by foreigners, and his asking prices for two of his buzkashi paintings are $350 and $500 - a fortune for most Afghans, who earn only about $50 a month.

Compared with the collection at Afghanistan's National Gallery, the work of Salam and Niazi are apparently entirely new genres here.

The National Gallery's collection includes blatant copies of Western masterpieces - such as a wood-chip mosaic of the iconic Liberty Leading the People by Eugene Delacroix. Works by Afghanistan's best known 20th-century painters, two of whom were trained in Germany, show European pastoral scenes. One painting shows a Tudor cottage.

Several artists adopted this classical style, without adding any personal interpretation or expression, for more than half a century, said Rahraw Omarzad, founder of the Center for Contemporary Arts Afghanistan.

During the Soviet occupation of the 1980s, Afghan artists were encouraged to create propaganda posters, he said. Artists fled the country during the ensuing civil war. Then, in the mid-1990s, came the Taliban, which infamously destroyed two ancient Buddha statues at Bamiyan despite an international outcry.

A display case tucked away under a staircase on the ground floor of the National Gallery contains the torn-up remains of hundreds of figurative artworks that were also destroyed by the militia.

"They wanted to stop art completely," said Omarzad, who is also a photographer and video artist. "They were against art. Artists were allowed only to do calligraphy and nonfigurative paintings, like still life."

Omarzad hopes the contemporary arts center will nourish and encourage budding artists through workshops with foreign artists and exhibits of Afghan artwork abroad. The center has helped organize shows in New York, Istanbul and Frankfurt, he said.
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Strength of Afghan forces will reach 64,000 this year: Spokesman
Monday March 26, 2007 PakTribune.com, Pakistan
KABUL: Spokesman of the Interior Ministry has said that the current strength of the forces would be increased to 46,000 thus year which would reach 64,000.
Addressing a press conference, he said that number of Afghan forces is increasing day by day. Afghan and foreign forces supported to people who were facing problems in many provinces due to floods.

He added that starting operation in Helmand at the beginning of this year have given a good message.
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Afghan border security put on high alert
Monday March 26, 2007 PakTribune.com, Pakistan
KABUL: Afghan Security forces have been put on high alert in Patika province to stop infiltration of armed militants from Pakistan.
The Afghan official alleged that armed militant enter from Pakistan and return to the country after carrying out subversive activities in Afghanistan, Radio Mashed reported.

Pakistan Government says it has deployed more than 80,000 troops at borders with Afghanistan to check entry of armed militants.
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Afghan farmers insist on more aid
Canadian compensation can't satisfy everybody
Graham Thomson, CanWest News Service Monday, March 26, 2007
ZHARI DISTRICT, Afghanistan - It would seem money can't buy happiness, not even in a dirt-poor country like Afghanistan.

One month after Canadians paid farmers here $1 million in compensation for land bulldozed to make a combat road, some are not at all happy. They say they weren't paid enough or were cheated by fellow landowners or were left off the list of owners altogether.

Now, whenever there's a tribal meeting involving Canadian soldiers, the disgruntled farmers seek out the one person they think can help them get more money -- Sgt. Nicky Bascon.

They flock around her like seagulls after a fishing boat, an alien experience in a patriarchal society where women are treated as second-class citizens and who are rarely allowed outside the home.

Bascon is a foreigner and as such is given a respect and deference unknown to Afghan women.

Farmers here know her well because it was Bascon who handed out the original compensation payments last month in a day-long shura, or meeting, where the money -- all of it in the local currency, Afghanis -- was tied in bricks as thick as a fist and stuffed into envelopes.

These long-awaited payments were for land disturbed by Route Summit, a combat road built under combat by Canadian soldiers during Operation Medusa.

For months afterwards, Canadians worked with local village elders and the Kandahar governor to figure out a fair compensation package for farmers whose livelihoods had been disrupted by the road.

Last month's deal seemed to please everybody. Some farmers received as much as $30,000, making them instant millionaires in the local currency. But some are not satisfied.

"We dealt with them directly, we paid them out directly," says an exasperated Bascon, a reservist from Toronto who acts as a liaison between local residents and Canada's Provincial Reconstruction Team.

"We keep telling them over and over again we paid out, we're not paying out any more payments for that." The farmers nod and smile when Bascon explains the situation -- and then ask again for more money. They are relentless, she says.

Some will threaten to go to the Taliban. She calls it a half-empty threat, and manipulative, but knows it must be dealt with, since the area has traditional connections to the enemy.
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20,000 Afghan flood victims receive food and other emergency aid from UN agencies
UN News Centre
26 March 2007 – United Nations agencies are stepping up relief efforts for flood victims across Afghanistan, with assistance already on its way to nearly 4,000 families, or some 20,000 people.

“As we speak there is a huge effort taking place by UN agencies, including UNICEF (UN Children’s Fund), the World Food Programme (WFP) and UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) with the Government and provincial authorities to ensure that essential humanitarian relief supplies reach the affected populations,” UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) spokesman Aleem Siddique told a news briefing in Kabul, the capital.

Ahead of this season’s flooding, the WFP has already pre-positioned 350,000 tons of mixed foods in five different locations for distribution to the most vulnerable families. UNICEF trucks are carrying essential food, medicine, warm clothing for children and shelter material.

In another UN-backed initiative, tens of thousands of vaccinators are fanning out across the mountainous country to deliver the life-saving oral polio vaccine to children in every region as part of a four-stage immunization campaign targeting 7.3 million children. The huge effort is being undertaken by the Afghan government, UNICEF and the UN World Health Organization (WHO).

“In a country with limited health care infrastructure, no clinics or doctor's offices, these immunization campaigns are essential to UNICEF’s work to save children’s lives and preventing lifelong disability,” UNICEF Canada President Nigel Fisher said. The campaign is being funded by a $1.5-million donation from the Canadian Government.

In yet further efforts to help the strife-torn country, UNICEF and the Ministry of Education are preparing to train 4,000 teachers on new teaching methods. The agency has set itself a target of enrolling 400,000 more girls in basic education, providing learning materials to 5.4 million youngsters up to grade 9, and supplying teaching materials for over 100,000 teachers.

The Ministry of Culture and Youth Affairs has awarded UNICEF the title of top UN agency for its work in the field of education in the Eastern region of Afghanistan by providing assistance with school construction, teacher training, school and child protection, provisions for teaching and learning materials along with support for community-based schools.

For its part, the UN refugee agency reported that over 18,000 Afghans returned home from Pakistan since its voluntary repatriation operations resumed at the beginning of March after a break for the harsh winter months.

This is the sixth year of UNHCR-facilitated returns to Afghanistan, the largest such operation in the agency’s history, which has already seen over 2.89 million Afghans return from Pakistan where they had fled a decade of Soviet occupation followed by nearly two decades of civil war and factional fighting.

Pakistan still hosts one of the largest groups of refugees in the world; there are 1 million Afghans living in camps and more than 1.4 million living in urban areas. Since 2002 over 1.5 million Afghans have also returned home from Iran, 850,000 with UNHCR help. More than 1 million others are still estimated to be living there.
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Suspected militant recruiter, police officer killed in battle at Pakistani school
The Associated Press Monday, March 26, 2007
TANK, Pakistan: Police shot dead a suspected militant recruiter at a boys school in northwestern Pakistan after hearing he was trying to sign up students for suicide bombings and holy war, police said. One police officer was killed by a hand grenade during the brief clash.

Three suspected militants turned up at the privately run Oxford Public School in Tank, a town about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the Afghan border, on Monday morning, local police chief Mumtaz Khan said.

"We heard that they were looking for children to prepare them for jihad and for suicide attacks," Khan told The Associated Press.

The school teaches English language to boys aged between 5 and 17. It was closed when a reporter visited later Monday, and its administrators could not be reached for comment.

Police said the militants had asked the school's administrators to assemble the students so they could address them, but ran outside the school grounds when officers arrived at the scene.

One of the militants, identified as Ahsan Burki, threw a hand grenade that fatally wounded one police officer, Khan said. The officers opened fire, killing Burki and injuring one of his companions. The third suspect was arrested.

Police originally reported that five militants were killed, but Khan said that information had been incorrect.

Soon after, a grenade attack on a police patrol in Tank wounded three police and seven bystanders. Khan suspected members of the same network were responsible.

He described the militants as "local Taliban," a term commonly used to describe militants in the tribal belt along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan.

Tank is on the edge of South Waziristan, a stronghold of militants aligned with the Taliban movement fighting in neighboring Afghanistan and of foreign militants linked with al-Qaida.

Officials have suggested that militants from the region were behind a string of suicide attacks earlier this year, including one at a five-star hotel in the capital, Islamabad, but have announced no breakthrough in their investigations.

Militant groups also recruit young Pakistani men to fight against U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, and in some cases, become suicide bombers.
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Canadians work for change inside Afghanistan's prisons
Graham Thomson CanWest News Service; Edmonton Journal Saturday, March 24, 2007
SARPOZA PRISON, Afghanistan - To step inside the Kandahar penitentiary that holds Taliban prisoners is to stumble backwards into the Middle Ages.

This is a dark place of open pit fires and heavy stone walls where inmates hang dried meat from hooks and grope their way by candlelight.

If you have ever toured the dungeons of an ancient English castle then you have visited an Afghan prison.

The conditions are appalling and would, at first glance, seem to lend credence to allegations back in Canada that Taliban prisoners suffer abuse at the hands of Afghan authorities.

However, these prisoners are not being singled out for special punishment. This is how prisoners live in Afghanistan whether they staged an ambush against a NATO convoy or knifed someone in a fight.

Next door to the Taliban wing is the section holding the common criminals. The two are identical. Teenage boys live in slightly better conditions in the segregated juvenile section.

Then there is the women's wing which echoes with the heartbreaking sound of children. There are 22 children here, the youngest five months old, incarcerated with their mothers because they have nowhere else to go. This prison doesn't know whether it's medieval or Dickensian.

What's just as shocking to Western sensibilities is learning women are jailed here for simply disobeying their husbands or rejecting an arranged marriage.

It is into this world two guards from Canada's Correctional Service have stepped, hoping to improve life not only for the prisoners but also the prison guards whose living conditions are as dreadful as the inmates'.

This, after all, is a Third World prison.

"The conditions are terrible," says Ric Fecteau, who is taking a 12-month leave of absence from his job as a supervisor at the Edmonton Maximum Institution to work here. "They're sleeping on a concrete floor with an Afghan-type mattress that needs to be replaced. The walls are crumbling and need to be replastered and rebuilt, so the actual conditions, the sanitary conditions, everything, is terrible."

Since arriving here on Feb. 2, Fecteau and Linda Garwood-Filbert from the Stony Mountain Institute in Manitoba have laid the foundations for a training program - and have discovered a crucial aspect of life in here, the treatment of prisoners, is surprisingly enlightened.

"The relationship between the prison police and the inmates tells an entirely different story because you would see guards walking right in and having conversations with the prisoners," says Fecteau. "Here are guards and prisoners being very polite with each other."

They are also polite to Garwood-Filbert, the only woman allowed inside the male wings. The guards treat her with deference and respect as they accompany her through the dank hallways where peering prisoners stand idly behind locked gates apparently as curious about the Canadians as the Canadians are of them. There is no tension. Some inmates smile shyly.

Fecteau credits a large part of the relaxed atmosphere to Afghanistan's complex world of inter-tribal relationships where many people - including the guards and prisoners - are related by blood, tradition or geography.

That goes for the Taliban prisoners. These are not the hard-line "Tier 1 Taliban" who are shipped off to the maximum security Pul-i-Charkhi prison near Kabul. These are the low-level fighters who likely picked up a gun or fired a rocket because they needed a job and the Taliban pays well by Afghan standards - about $12 a day.

Fecteau is still finding his way around the Afghan system and acknowledges he can't know everything that goes on in this medium-security prison which he visits unannounced at least three times a week. But so far he has seen no evidence of abuse and has even taken a few of the prisoners off to the side and questioned them through his own interpreter.

"Does your family know you're here?" he'll ask them. "Is everything OK? Is there something you need to tell me? Are you being beaten?" The answer, he says, is: "no."

"Some look quite insulted when I ask them if they're getting enough to eat or if the staff are treating them well. They start looking a little irritated that you actually asked that question. Now, when you ask them about the conditions they're perfectly willing to show you the damp floor, the mattresses, the blankets, the things that desperately need to get fixed. But at no point has any one of them ever raised that question (of abuse)."

After 26 years as a jail guard, Fecteau says he'd know pretty quickly if the prisoners were lying or if guards were trying to hide something from him. His relationship with his counterparts here certainly seems friendly and open.

"We try our best to treat everyone equally," says Col. Mohammed Ismail, a giant of a man with a quick smile who is eager to show off the prison. "It doesn't matter whether they are Taliban, political prisoners or other criminals."

As a journalist, I am not allowed to interview the Taliban prisoners. Speaking through an interpreter, Ismail says the "national-security" prisoners are not fanatics and don't cause trouble. The message from him is everybody gets along about as well as can be expected under Third World conditions.

Indeed, the life of prisoners is on par with conditions for many struggling Afghans on the outside.

The real hardship cases are the women who are jailed for disobeying sharia laws and who bring their children here if there's no family to look after them.

"I don't pretend to understand why they're there but I have to respect that that's part of the Afghan culture," says Garwood-Filbert. "The more the we respect the culture the better we can move forward with our issues."

Those issues include training the guards, fixing up the prison and providing supplies as basic as flashlights for the guards and prisoners to use in the largely sunless cells. Canada will also provide money to expand the prison's fledgling apprentice programs to teach inmates employable skills such as carpet-weaving and carpentry.

It is all part of the monumental task of helping build a working judicial system in a country with a patchwork of traditional, religious and codified laws where many people are illiterate. Developing a humane correctional system is as important to a functioning judicial system as are the police and the courts - and all are crucial to bringing Afghanistan into the 21st century.

"Right now the system is not perceived by the people as being impeccable and impartial," says Gavin Buchan, the main political adviser with Canada's Provincial Reconstruction Team in Kandahar. "If it was that would significantly increase the government's credibility."
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Private radio station opens in Panjsher
BAZARAK, Mar 24 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The first-ever private radio station - Panjsher - was formally inaugurated in the central province of Panjsher on Saturday.

Fund for the establishment of the FM (frequency modulation) radio station was provided by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), while the project was implemented through Internews.

In the initial stage, listeners in the districts of Rokha and Bazarak will receive the transmissions of the newly-inaugurated radio station.

Rohullah, director of the radio station, told Pajhwok Afghan News the four hour broadcasting would consist of news bulletins, music and religious programmes.

Speaking on the occasion, USAID representative Alexiou Butaler said they would help extend the sphere of the transmissions to other districts of the province in the days ahead.

She said their agency had established 30 such radio stations in provinces. She said the USAID had allocated a fund of six million US dollars for promotion of media in Afghanistan.

Abdul Muqeem Halimi, head of the provincial information and culture department, said inauguration of the radio station was an important step for promotion of media in the province.
Farid Tanha
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The Truth About Talibanistan
By Aryn Baker / Kabul, Afghanistan The Time Magazine Thursday, Mar. 22, 2007
The residents of Dara Adam Khel, a gunsmiths' village 30 miles south of Peshawar, Pakistan, awoke one morning last month to find their streets littered with pamphlets demanding that they observe Islamic law. Women were instructed to wear all-enveloping burqas and men to grow their beards. Music and television were banned. Then the jihadists really got serious. These days, dawn is often accompanied by the wailing of women as another beheaded corpse is found by the side of the road, a note pinned to the chest claiming that the victim was a spy for either the Americans or the Pakistani government. Beheadings are recorded and sold on DVD in the area's bazaars. "It's the knife that terrifies me," says Hafizullah, 40, a local arms smith. "Before they kill you, they sharpen the knife in front of you. They are worse than butchers."

Stories like these are being repeated across the tribal region of Pakistan, a rugged no-man's-land that forms the country's border with Afghanistan--and that is rapidly becoming home base for a new generation of potential terrorists. Fueled by zealotry and hardened by war, young religious extremists have overrun scores of towns and villages in the border areas, with the intention of imposing their strict interpretation of Islam on a population unable to fight back. Like the Taliban in the late 1990s in Afghanistan, the jihadists are believed to be providing leaders of al-Qaeda with the protection they need to regroup and train new operatives. U.S. intelligence officials think that Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, may have found refuge in these environs. And though 49,000 U.S. and NATO troops are stationed just across the border in Afghanistan, they aren't authorized to operate on the Pakistani side. Remote, tribal and deeply conservative, the border region is less a part of either country than a world unto itself, a lawless frontier so beyond the control of the West and its allies that it has earned a name of its own: Talibanistan.

Since Sept. 11, the strategic hinge in the U.S.'s campaign against al-Qaeda has been Pakistan, handmaiden to the Taliban movement that turned Afghanistan into a sanctuary for bin Laden and his lieutenants. While members of Pakistan's intelligence services have long been suspected of being in league with the Taliban, the Bush Administration has consistently praised Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for his cooperation in rooting out and apprehending members of bin Laden's network. But the Talibanization of the borderlands--and their role in arming and financing insurgents in Afghanistan--has renewed doubts about whether Musharraf still possesses the will to face down the jihadists.

Those doubts are surfacing at a time when Musharraf confronts his biggest political crisis since grabbing power eight years ago. Since March 12, Pakistani streets have been the scene of clashes between police and thousands of lawyers and opposition activists outraged by Musharraf's decision to suspend the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, for alleged abuse of office. Musharraf's critics say the President is attempting to rig the system to ensure he stays in power. Their ire boiled over when Pakistani police raided a television station to prevent it from covering protests outside the Supreme Court. Some Pakistanis who have excused Musharraf's authoritarianism in the past now portray him as a jackbooted dictator. "I think he has ruined himself," says retired Lieut. General Hamid Gul, former director general of the Pakistani intelligence organization Inter-Services Intelligence. "He's not going to be able to placate the forces he has unleashed."

Because Musharraf also heads Pakistan's army, it's unlikely that he will be forced from office. But a loss of support from his moderate base could deepen his dependence on fundamentalist parties, which are staunch supporters of the Taliban. If the protests against Musharraf continue, he will be even less inclined to crack down on the militants holding sway in Talibanistan--grim news for the U.S. and its allies and good news for their foes throughout the region. Says a senior U.S. military official in Afghanistan: "The bottom line is that the Taliban can do what they want in the tribal areas because the [Pakistani] army is not going to come after them."

In fact, the territory at the heart of Talibanistan--a heavily forested band of mountains that is officially called North and South Waziristan--has never fully submitted to the rule of any country. The colonial British were unable to conquer the region's Pashtun tribes and allowed them to run their own affairs according to local custom. In exchange, the tribesmen protected the subcontinental empire from northern invaders. Following independence in 1947, Pakistan continued the arrangement.

After 9/11, Islamabad initially left the tribal areas alone. But when it became obvious that al-Qaeda and Taliban militants were crossing the border to escape U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Pakistan sent in the first of what eventually became 80,000 troops. They had some success: the Pakistani army captured terrorist leaders and destroyed training camps. But the harder the military pressed, the more locals resented its presence, especially when civilians were killed in botched raids against terrorists.

As part of peace accords signed last September with tribal leaders in North Waziristan, the Pakistani military agreed to take down roadblocks, stop patrols and return to their barracks. In exchange, local militants promised not to attack troops and to end cross-border raids into Afghanistan. The accords came in part because the Pakistani army was simply unable to tame the region. Over the past two years, it has lost more than 700 troops there. The change in tactics, says Gul, was an admission that the Pakistani military had "lost the game."

The army isn't the only one paying the price now. Since Pakistani forces scaled back operations in the border region, the insurgency in Afghanistan has intensified. Cross-border raids and suicide bombings aimed at U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan have tripled, according to the senior U.S. military official. He concedes that "the Pakistanis are in a very difficult position. You could put 50,000 men on that border, and you wouldn't be able to seal it."

The troop drawback has allowed Pakistani militants allied with the Taliban to impose their will on the border areas. They have established Shari'a courts and executed "criminals" on the basis of Islamic law. Even Pakistani-army convoys are sometimes escorted by Taliban militants to ensure safe passage, a scene witnessed by TIME in North Waziristan one recent afternoon. "The state has withdrawn and ceded this territory," says Samina Ahmed of the International Crisis Group. "[The Taliban] have been given their own little piece of real estate."

The militants are using sympathetic mosques in Talibanistan to recruit fighters to attack Western troops in Afghanistan, according to tribal elders in the region. With cash and religious fervor, they lure young men to join their battle and threaten local leaders so they will deliver the support of their tribes. Malik Haji Awar Khan, 55, head of the 2,000-strong Mutakhel Wazir tribe of North Waziristan, was approached a year ago to join the Taliban cause. When he refused, militants kidnapped his teenage sons. "They thought they could make me join them, but I am tired of fighting," says Khan, who battled alongside the Afghan mujahedin in the war against the Soviets. "This is a jihad dictated by outsiders, by al-Qaeda. It is not a holy war. They just want power and money."

Tribal leaders interviewed by TIME say they do not support the aims of the jihadists. But the Taliban's campaign of fear has worn down local resistance. Malik Sher Muhammad Khan, a tribal elder from Wana, says, "The Taliban walk through the streets shouting that children shouldn't go to school because they are learning modern subjects like math and science. But we want to be modern. It's not just the girls. In my village, not a single person can even sign his name." Khan estimates that only 5% of the inhabitants of Waziristan actively support the militants. Others benefit financially by providing services and renting land for training camps. The rest, he says, acquiesce out of fear. A few months ago, militants stormed his compound in retaliation for his outspoken criticism of their presence in the area. During the melee, a grenade killed his wife. "If I had weapons, maybe I could have saved her," he says. "We have no way to make them leave."

The emergence of Talibanistan may directly threaten the U.S. Locals say the region The emergence of Talibanistan may directly threaten the West too. Locals say the region has become one big terrorist-recruitment camp, where people as young as 17 are trained as suicide bombers. "Here, teenagers are greeted with the prayers 'May Allah bless you to become a suicide bomber,'" says Obaidullah Wazir, 35, a young tribesman in Miranshah. National Intelligence Director John McConnell told the Senate Armed Services Committee last month that "al-Qaeda is forging stronger operational connections that radiate outward from their camps in Pakistan to affiliated groups and networks throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Europe." Muzafar Khan, a headman from one of the local tribes, told TIME that Uzbek commander Tahir Yuldashev, leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and a suspected confidant of bin Laden's, commands some Uzbeks, Chechens, Arabs and local fighters from his base in the borderlands. "We know they are al-Qaeda," says Khan. "They are foreigners, they have different faces, and they don't speak Pashto." He claims that "their camps are easy to find. Even a child could show you."

The camps hold from 10 to 300 militants and are usually hidden deep in the forest, according to local residents. They have simple structures, low concrete-and-brick buildings with high walls. Some have underground bunkers for protection in case of attack. Outsiders easily mistake them for traditional village housing. "We know they exist," says the U.S. military official in Afghanistan. "But it's like finding a needle in a haystack." A Pakistani intelligence official says there are training camps in the region and that Pakistan is doing everything it can to find them and destroy them. "I don't say that [foreigners] are not here, but wherever we know of their presence, we go after them and take action," he says. The best hope for dislodging al-Qaeda from the region may be local tribesmen, who have recently engaged in heavy clashes with foreign and local militants around the town of Wana.

Will Musharraf join the fight? Though the U.S. is pressing Musharraf to do more to rout terrorists in Pakistan, his political survival still depends on parties that resent his ties to Washington. There is a widespread view in Pakistan that Vice President Dick Cheney, during his trip to Pakistan two weeks ago, reprimanded Musharraf for failing to rein in the militants. But officials on both sides say the partnership between Bush and Musharraf remains solid. "Is it doing more? Well, yeah, it's doing more. We all gotta do more, do better, do different. It's a war," says a senior Western diplomat in Pakistan. "But for folks to sit there in Washington or London or wherever and say, 'Damn it! We're tired of this. Go fix it,' is not hugely helpful."

That may be true. But the Bush Administration is beginning to recognize that to stabilize Afghanistan and prevent the rebirth of al-Qaeda, it has to contain the growth of Talibanistan. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher announced in Islamabad that the U.S. intends to give an extra $750 million to Musharraf over the next five years to support development in the tribal areas. "I think this commitment to the development of Pakistan, this commitment to a long-term relationship, is another example of the very broad and deep relationship we have and that we are developing with Pakistan," Boucher said. "We have a fundamental interest in the success of Pakistan as a moderate, stable, democratic Muslim nation."

That infusion of U.S. money would go far toward developing a region nearly devoid of civil infrastructure. There's no doubt that in the long run, schools, hospitals, roads and electricity would do much more to quell militancy than would an increased military presence. But that kind of development takes years. As the militants consolidate power, Musharraf needs to take bolder steps. The judicial crisis and the resulting protests have weakened Musharraf's credibility among the moderate, secular Pakistanis who could provide a bulwark against the threat of jihadism. Musharraf has pledged to hold general elections at the end of the year, but regaining the support of moderate groups may require him to go further and open up the vote to opposition leaders Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, who have both been exiled. If Musharraf can prove that he is committed to democracy, Pakistanis may well choose to keep him in power. Armed with such a mandate, Musharraf would be better poised to tackle militancy in the tribal areas. Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri concedes that the peace agreement with the tribes in Waziristan has "weaknesses" that the government is addressing. An official says Islamabad intends to send two new brigades of troops to seize back the initiative.

Last month the same mountain passes used by militants set on attacking U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan served as passage for an unlikely delegation of 45 tribal elders from Pakistan's borderlands. They were headed for a meeting with Hamid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan, who has openly criticized Musharraf's failure to stem Pakistani support for the Taliban. "We have had too many years of war, too many widows, too many orphans, too many amputees. If this jihad continues, it will destroy Afghanistan and Waziristan," said an elder. "We need help, and we no longer trust the Pakistani government." The leader of the delegation presented Karzai with a traditional Waziri turban, a great soft-serve swirl of butter-yellow silk. As he placed it on the President's head, he said, "You are our President. You can free us from this disaster. We are at your service, and we support you." That the tribesmen would turn to one of Musharraf's rivals for help against the Taliban is a telling indictment of his leadership. And if Musharraf doesn't find a way to re-establish control over Talibanistan, he may find his backers in Washington giving up on him too.

With reporting by WITH REPORTING BY SIMON ROBINSON/ ISLAMABAD, GHULAM HASNAIN / DARA ADAM KHEL
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