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March 7, 2007 


6 terror suspects arrested in Afghanistan
By RAHIM FAIEZ, Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan soldiers caught a senior Taliban commander at a checkpoint who was wearing a burqa, while     NATO forces on Wednesday fought Taliban militants in the second day of the alliance's largest-ever offensive in  Afghanistan.

Mullah Mahmood, who is accused of helping the Taliban detonate suicide bombs, was caught Tuesday in Kandahar province while wearing the all-encompassing Islamic veil worn here by women, NATO said.

Meanwhile, some 5,500 NATO and Afghan soldiers fought Taliban militants in southern Afghanistan's Helmand province, the world's biggest poppy-growing region. NATO hopes the operation can help establish security in a lawless region ruled by a Taliban shadow government and drug traffickers.

"We've established a presence and in some areas it's a heavy presence, and we're trying to disrupt the Taliban's senior leadership in the area and try to separate them from trying to rally" the Taliban's locally recruited soldiers, said Col. Tom Collins, the spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force.

One British soldier and four Taliban fighters were killed on Tuesday, the operation's opening day.

On Wednesday, Afghan and U.S.-led coalition forces arrested a suspected al-Qaida bomb expert and five other terrorist suspects in eastern Afghanistan.

The U.S.-led coalition had information indicating "a suspected terrorist with strong ties to al-Qaida" and to a group that helped militants along Afghanistan's border region was inside an eastern Afghan compound near Jalalabad, it said.

"The suspected terrorist was a (bomb-making) expert and logistics officer for the Tora Bora Front, which facilitates the movement of fighters from Pakistan to Afghanistan," the U.S. said. No shots were fired and no one was hurt during the raid.

Separately, U.S.-led coalition troops detained five men suspected of involvement in anti-government activities and "known terrorist groups," in the eastern city of Khost, the coalition said without elaborating.

The troops uncovered a cache of grenades and armor-piercing rounds during their search, the statement said. No injuries occurred during the raid.

In southern Zabul province, Taliban militants attacked a police checkpoint and wounded four policemen Wednesday, said provincial police chief Abdul Ghafar. The militants fled after the attack, which occurred near Qalat, Zabul's capital.
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Burqa-clad Taliban leader caught as NATO attacks
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan soldiers have captured a Taliban leader who tried to flee a security operation in the south dressed in a burqa,  NATO said on Wednesday.

Tuesday's capture in Kandahar province came as NATO launched a major offensive in neighboring Helmand to secure a key hydroelectric dam and combat the opium trade.

The man was named as Mullah Mahmood and described as an expert bomb-maker. U.S.-led coalition forces also detained five more suspected militants in eastern Khost this week.

Fighting is expected to be heavy in 2007 after the bloodiest year since the Taliban's ouster in 2001. The Taliban warn they have thousands of suicide bombers ready for action.

More than 4,000 people died in fighting last year, including about 1,000 civilians. Suicide bombings jumped to 139 from 21 as insurgents copy tactics from  Iraq and shy away from pitched battles that saw them suffer heavy losses.

Operation Achilles in Helmand will eventually involve about 4,500 NATO troops and 1,000 Afghan security personnel in what the alliance says is its biggest operation.

NATO says the operation's main purpose is to create enough security for sorely needed reconstruction and development.

"We will continue our operations on enemy forces to defeat and confuse the Taliban leadership and their narco-trafficking associates and establish the conditions for reconstruction and development," NATO spokesman Colonel Tom Collins told reporters.

Many Afghans are becoming increasingly frustrated at the lack of development and failure to create jobs, complaining billions of dollars in aid money are being wasted or seeping out of the country through aid agencies and foreign contractors.
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Taliban claims kidnapping of journalist
By NOOR KHAN, Associated Press Writer Wed Mar 7, 3:07 AM ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - The Taliban claimed Wednesday that it had kidnapped an Italian journalist, three days after an Italian newspaper lost touch with a veteran correspondent in southern  Afghanistan.
A spokesman for the militia said its "higher authorities" would decide what to do with the journalist and two Afghans it captured.

"We are investigating whether they are British spies," Qari Yousef Ahmadi, a man who claims to speak for the Taliban, told The Associated Press by satellite telephone from an undisclosed location.

Ahmadi claimed that the militia had captured a man who introduced himself as a Briton who worked for Italian daily La Repubblica — the same paper that raised the alarm about its reporter, Daniele Mastrogiacomo.

"The man we arrested is an Italian and he told us he worked for the Rome-based La Repubblica newspaper," Ahmadi said. Asked to identify the Italian, Ahmadi sent a text message with the name "Danikel."

In Italy, the paper said it had not heard from Mastrogiacomo since Sunday. The reporter had been on assignment in Kandahar, the Taliban's former stronghold in southern Afghanistan, editor-in-chief Ezio Mauro said according to La Repubblica's Web site.

Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema said on Italy's Tg1 television news on Tuesday that officials did not believe Mastrogiacomo was "in the hands of a bunch of stragglers, but was effectively captured by the Taliban's military structure."

The ministry and the Italian Embassy in Kabul were trying to find the reporter.

Ahmadi said the journalist had been captured on Monday along with two Afghans as they traveled together by vehicle in Nad Ali district of Helmand province.

Ahmadi said the captured reporter had introduced himself as a Briton who had worked for La Repubblica in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, but had been living with British forces in Helmand and gathering information for them.

The British Foreign Office said Tuesday it appeared unlikely that the missing journalist was one of its nationals.

La Repubblica newspaper said Mastrogiacomo, 52, was born in Karachi, Pakistan, where his father was an engineer for an Italian company. He has dual Italian-Swiss citizenship, but was traveling only with his Italian passport, the paper said.

Mastrogiacomo, who speaks English, has worked since 2002 as a staff correspondent in Afghanistan,  Iran,  Israel, Gaza, Lebanon and  Iraq.

The Committee to Protect Journalists said it was "greatly concerned about the welfare of our colleague Daniele Mastrogiacomo, who was doing his job documenting the news."

"We call on those holding any members of the press to release them unharmed immediately," CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon said in a statement issued in New York.

Afghan officials said they had no information on the alleged kidnapping.

Most of the  NATO-led troops in Helmand province are British, and the alliance on Tuesday launched an offensive against militants in the northern part of Helmand, a Taliban stronghold.

Mastrogiacomo's disappearance comes four months after the release of Italian photographer, Gabriele Torsello, was kidnapped Oct. 12 while traveling by bus from Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, to neighboring Kandahar. When he was released Nov. 3 Torsello said he did not know who was responsible for his kidnapping.
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Associated Press writer Maria Sanminiatelli in Rome contributed to this report.
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Swiss to return Afghan national treasures kept away from fighting
The Associated Press Wednesday, March 7, 2007
GENEVA: A dog's head gargoyle. A hand-woven carpet defying the Taliban. A foundation stone laid by Alexander the Great. Piece by piece, these and other priceless objects from Afghanistan were painstakingly assembled in Switzerland as civil war raged in Afghanistan.

Distraught at the destruction of precious artifacts during two decades of fighting against Soviet occupation and then each other, warring parties in Afghanistan asked Switzerland in 1998 to provide a "safe deposit" to protect the remaining national treasures.

Even the Taliban — who later were to destroy the gigantic Buddha statues at Bamiyan — joined in the concern about losing the country's national heritage — that ranged from the daily implements of Afghan life to rare masterpieces.

Now, it is time for the treasures to go home. International and Afghan authorities have declared Kabul to be safe enough for their return and they are to be flown back on March 15, said Paul Bucherer, director of the Afghanistan Museum in the northwestern town of Bubendorf.

"It was a joint-request from the Taliban and the Northern Alliance at that time," said Bucherer, an expert in Afghan history and culture who has frequently visited the country and had high-level contact with both sides.

Getting the objects out of Afghanistan was extremely difficult.

A cargo flight that would have brought thousands of artifacts to Switzerland in 2000 had to be canceled because of problems in obtaining international legal authorization to move such objects from their country of origin, according to Bucherer.

The delay resulted in the destruction of those artifacts in fighting the following January, he said.

But individuals had already started bringing artifacts to the Swiss museum. Among them were Afghans on trips to Europe and Europeans who contributed objects they had collected while living in Afghanistan in the 1960s and 1970s.

The first objects were brought "by Taliban and other Afghans carried in their hand-luggage in 1999," Bucherer said.

Some of the objects had been illegally excavated or ransacked.

"We didn't want to ask questions," said Bucherer. "Anyone who brought something was welcome."

Once donated, the objects were destined to eventually be returned to Afghanistan's national museum.

The showpiece of the collection is a phallic-shaped foundation stone laid by Alexander the Great when starting to build the ancient Greek city of Ai-Khanum in northern Afghanistan in about 300 B.C.

The collection includes a dog's head-shaped stone whose mouth served as shower head for athletes in Ai-Khanum. It had been stolen from Afghanistan's national museum and was later given to the Swiss by a private collector. Among the hand-woven carpets is a particularly outstanding piece depicting animals — a protest by Afghan women against an ultra-restrictive Taliban ban on representing living creatures.

Other objects include an ornamented copper water pipe and a wooden pitchfork — the daily implements of life.

The collection, which consists of around 1,500 objects, is worth millions of Swiss francs (dollars, euros), but Bucherer declined to give an estimate. "We don't really care about the market value," he said.

The museum, which received an estimated 50,000 visitors since its creation in 2000, has already closed its doors for good.

"This is the second biggest repatriation of cultural heritage since (the beginning of) World War II," said Bucherer.

The biggest one he said, was the 1939 return of the most important works of Madrid's Prado museum from Geneva to Spain's capital after the Spanish civil war.

Bucherer, who has been studying Afghan culture and history since the 1960s, also heads the private Swiss-based foundation named Bibliotheca Afghanica, which collects information on the country's history, culture and environment.

The foundation assisted a team of Swiss-based scientists who created a computer model that could be used to rebuild the Buddha statues that were destroyed in March 2001 by the Taliban in Bamiyan Valley on the ancient Silk Route linking Europe and Central Asia.

The artifacts in Bubendorf will be shipped to Afghanistan by the German air force, which has direct flights from Germany to Kabul. The repatriation is being funded by the Swiss government.

The security situation in Kabul is considered good enough for the objects to be handed back, said Laurent Levi-Strauss, who heads the section for cultural property and museums at the Paris-based UNESCO.

"Last summer, we received the request (for repatriation) from the Afghan authorities. After consultation with the U.N. in Kabul, we decided that it would be possible to authorize the return," Levi-Strauss told the AP.

Bucherer said he agreed with the repatriation.

"It will help to strengthen the self-confidence of the Afghan people," he said.
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Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan
Tue Mar 6, 11:28 PM ET
STELLARTON, Nova Scotia - A Canadian soldier was killed in  Afghanistan on Tuesday, and Canada's military said the death was not the result of enemy action.

Cpl. Kevin Megeney, 25, was a reservist who had been in Afghanistan since Dec. 8, his sister Lisa said. He was killed at the Canadian base in Kandahar, she said.

The military wouldn't release any details of the circumstances of the death.

"We are looking hard at this," said Col. Mike Cessford, deputy commander of Task Force Afghanistan. "No further details are available at this time regarding the exact circumstances surrounding this accident, however, enemy action has been ruled out."

Lisa Megeney said her brother was apparently in his tent when he was shot.

"It was friendly fire, that's all I know," she told The Canadian Press from the family home in Stellarton, in the eastern province of Nova Scotia, as military officials briefed the family.

Six Canadian soldiers have been killed in accidental or friendly fire incidents since 2002.

Canada has about 2,200 soldiers involved in Afghan operations, mainly in the southern Kandahar region.
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String of Afghan deaths cause outrage
By JASON STRAZIUSO, Associated Press Writer Wed Mar 7, 2:37 AM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - On a trip to the market, Haji Lawania says he drove his gray SUV into a hail of U.S. gunfire that shattered his windshield and killed his father, nephew and a village elder.

The three companions, who died Sunday in the aftermath of a suicide bombing in eastern Nangarhar province, are among 40 civilians whose deaths this year could be attributed to  NATO or U.S. action, according to an Associated Press tally based on figures from military and Afghan officials.

The high number of casualties and fresh accusations that Marines fired on civilians along miles of highway have sparked rage everywhere from dusty streets to the halls of parliament, threatening to turn the support of wavering Afghans against U.S. and NATO troops and, more ominously, President Hamid Karzai's fledgling Western-backed government.

NATO spokesman Col. Tom Collins said civilian casualties are caused "overwhelmingly" because militants operate in populated areas, hiding in civilian homes after attacks and setting off suicide bombs in public.

But he acknowledged the harm the deaths do to the international mission's image.

"It would seem to me that the enemy benefits when (NATO) forces take what we consider appropriate action against threatening behavior," Collins said. "Nonetheless, the enemy is able to gain from that because there is this perception that we're shooting people, civilians."

Karzai has pleaded repeatedly for Western troops to operate with care, but the long list of civilian deaths since 2001 seems only to grow. The U.S.-based Human Rights Watch estimates that more than 100 Afghan civilians died as a result of NATO and coalition assaults in 2006.

In three separate incidents Sunday and Monday, Afghan witnesses and officials said U.S. military action may have killed up to 20 civilians — up to 10 shot by Marines after the suicide bombing, nine killed in an airstrike after Taliban fighters sought refuge in a home, and one shot and killed after driving too close to a convoy.

At the site of the suicide bombing and gunfire in Nangarhar province, police estimated that 4,000 Afghans staged an angry but peaceful demonstration Tuesday. One sign read: "Killer Bush! Stop the Killing of Afghans. Down with America."

"Afghan civilians are angry about the security situation today," said John Sifton, a researcher on terrorism for Human Rights Watch. "All parties need to work harder to ensure that the conflict doesn't fall heavy on civilians."

Lawmakers in  Afghanistan's upper house of Parliament expressed outrage Tuesday at the recent killings, and lawmaker Mohammad Hassan Otak said they would summon the NATO commander, the defense and interior ministers and a U.N. representative to address the matter.

"If it happens again, we will not sit by quietly," Otak said. "This kind of action ruins the dignity of the government, and if it is repeated the coalition will lose the trust of the Afghan people, and they may not sit by quietly either."

A senior Afghan official said the government has repeatedly told the U.S. and NATO that civilians must not be harmed during operations, and that top generals have always agreed with those demands.

"To what extent that is followed through down the chain of command I can't say," the official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The militant attacks are specifically designed to provoke an overreaction that proves counterproductive, said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University.

"The suicide attacks, I believe, are calculated to raise tensions, place troops in the desperate life-or-death situations that give rise to random fire," he said.

Afghan witnesses in Nangarhar province say Marines opened fire along a six-mile stretch of road, wounding 34 Afghans, including Lawania, in addition to the 10 killed.

"We were about to turn onto the main road when we heard the suicide explosion," Lawania, 45, said by telephone from the hospital. "Suddenly on the main road I saw the Humvees. They opened fire on us even though we'd stopped on the side road.

"Maybe the Americans thought we were a second suicide attacker, so they opened fire. Otherwise there's no reason to shoot up civilian cars."

The U.S.-led coalition says militant gunmen shot at Marines and may have caused some of the casualties, but no Afghan officials or witnesses have yet corroborated that account.

"Did I see any militants? If you want to ask me this question, you must trust me first," said Lawania, who may lose his right hand because of the bullet injury. "No single shot was fired from our village or vehicle toward the Americans."

Lawania's SUV took about 100 bullets. A U.S. soldier made four Afghan journalists — including two AP cameramen — erase photos and videos of the car.

Still, new revelations about an attack later Sunday night in Kapisa province suggest that militants are indeed using civilian homes for cover.

Militants fired rockets at a U.S. base, then dashed into a nearby home. A U.S. airstrike then destroyed that home in an attack which killed nine people including four young children.

Sayed Mohammad Dawood Hashimi, the deputy governor of Kapisa province, said the house's owner was a known militant named Mirwais who had fired rockets at the U.S. base. He was hurt in the strike but managed to flee.

Before the airstrike, Afghan elders had asked Mirwais and his associates to stop attacking the base, "but they're Taliban and they didn't listen. So the result is that Mirwais lost his family," Hashimi said Tuesday.

"We didn't know who was in that building, but we saw fighters move into that area who were legitimate targets," Collins said. "The building was struck and as we all know, unfortunately, civilians were killed."

Human Rights Watch researcher Sifton said Taliban attacks that harmed civilians and excessive force by NATO troops in response were both inexcusable.

"It's legal to return fire during a conflict setting. We would never deny that," he said. "We're just saying international forces have to take additional precautions. ... It's simply not believable that so many civilians could be killed. You can't open fire and shoot anything and everything, 360 degrees around you."
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Associated Press writers Rahim Faiez, Amir Shah and Alisa Tang contributed to this report.
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Civilian deaths turning Afghans toward Taliban: analysts
by Sardar Ahmad Tue Mar 6, 12:36 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - Civilian casualties caused by  NATO and US-led soldiers in  Afghanistan -- almost 20 killed in the past few days -- are driving its war-weary populace into the hands of the Taliban, analysts and officials say.

Nine Afghans were killed late Sunday when coalition warplanes bombed their house after a rocket attack. Hours earlier there were angry protests after 10 civilians died when US troops opened fire after a suicide ambush.

International troops here have alleged that the Islamist fighters not only target ordinary Afghans in attacks but also use civilians as human shields by hiding in their mud-hut villages.

But experts say that in the short term the foreign forces must find new and less deadly ways of separating militants from the masses -- while in the long term they must focus more on reconstruction.

"Incidents such as the killing of defenceless civilians are a great opportunity for the Taliban to claim they protect the people and that foreign troops and the government are killing them," analyst Wahid Mujda told AFP.

This shift in feeling was starkly evident after Sunday's carnage in eastern Nangarhar province when hundreds of demonstrators called for the death of the weak, US-backed Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

"Killing people will, I'm sure, undermine NATO's mission in Afghanistan," said outspoken female legislator Shukria Barakzai. "It will even cause an uprising."

NATO and US forces say they have taken steps to avoid civilian casualties, despite the Taliban's guerrilla campaign being at its toughest since the regime was toppled in late 2001.

They say they are consulting with Afghan security forces and authorities to establish the location and movement of civilians in the most insecure areas.

Advertisements warning Afghans to stay away from NATO and US convoys -- several people have been shot dead after coming too close -- have appeared on billboards, in newspapers, on television and on the vehicles themselves.

"What the people need is to help us avoid casualties. If they know about enemy activities they should let us know and stay away," said Maria Carl, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

"When there's operations we work with local shura (councils) to make sure that kind of thing is not happening."

Not that this always works. More than 50 civilians were killed during a major NATO offensive against rebels in southern Kandahar province last September, one of the biggest battles here in five years.

And while most of the nearly 1,000 civilians who died in insurgent-related violence last year were killed by militant attacks, it is when NATO and US troops are responsible that the anger really boils over.

Wadir Safi, an expert and lecturer at Kabul University, says foreign forces are walking into the insurgents' trap.

"The Taliban are using populated areas on purpose. They do it to prompt foreign troops to kill civilians which enables them to use it as propaganda against them," Safi said.

In Monday's incident the coalition said militants "knowingly" endangered civilians by entering a populated compound after launching a rocket attack at their base. Five women and three children were among the dead.

Excuses are not enough to stop Afghans feeling more disillusioned, analysts say.

"If they continue to kill civilians they'll definitely face the same fate as the Russians," Safi said. The Soviet army invaded Afghanistan in 1979 but was driven out by resistance fighters 10 years later.

Safi, also a former cabinet minister, said the Taliban already enjoy support among people living near the southern and eastern border with Pakistan, who share the same Pashtun ethnicity as the fundamentalist movement.

Western nations must concentrate more on providing aid and development to what remains one of the poorest countries on earth, according to the analysts.

When the NATO force took control of the south in the middle of last year reconstruction was meant to be one of its main goals, but it has largely been sidelined by the raging insurgency.

"NATO has been telling the Afghans they are here to help them out with reconstruction. What happened to the reconstruction they had promised? I don't see it," Mujda said.
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US military blamed for Afghan civilian deaths
The Christian Science Monitor 03/06/2007 By Jesse Nunes 
President Karzai calls for an investigation, as journalists accuse US troops of deleting images of the aftermath of one deadly attack.

The actions of US troops in Afghanistan have sparked criticism, demonstrations, and calls for investigations after at least 17 civilians were killed in two separate incidents, and soldiers reportedly then deleted journalists' photos and video footage of the aftermath of one of the attacks.

The BBC reports that at least eight civilians were killed by gunfire Sunday after a suicide bomber targeted a US convoy on road from Jalalabad to Pakistan in what US forces described as a "complex ambush." US military spokesman Maj. William Mitchell said that incoming fire on US troops from gunmen in the area "was wholly or partly responsible for the civilian casualties."

However, The Associated Press reports that witnesses at the scene said most of the bullets that lead to the casualties were from American forces. The incidents prompted angry demonstrations by hundreds of Afghans who shouted "Death to America! Death to [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai!"

Nine witnesses, including five Afghans recuperating from bullet wounds in the hospital, told The Associated Press that U.S. forces fired indiscriminately along at least a six-mile stretch of one of eastern Afghanistan's busiest highways - a route often filled not only with cars and trucks but Afghans on foot and bicycles.

According to the AP, Lt. Col. David Accetta, the top US military spokesman in Afghanistan, maintained that "it's not entirely clear right now" whether the civilians were casualties of enemy fire, although he didn't deny that they may have been shot by "coalition forces."

CNN reports that Zmarai Bashiri, a spokesman for Afghanistan's Interior Ministry, said that after the suicide bomb attack, US forces became "emotional" and started firing at Afghans in the area "because they feared another bomb attack." President Karzai "strongly condemned the incident" and has ordered an investigation, Reuters reports.

The AP also reports that at least one US soldier deleted video footage and photos taken by Afghan journalists covering the aftermath of the suicide bombing. A freelance photographer working for AP and an AP Television News cameraman, who arrived a half hour after the suicide bombing, were capturing images of three bodies inside a vehicle when they were approached by troops who accused them of not having permission to be there, then erased their work. Other local Afghan TV reporters at the bombing site were threatened by US troops and had their footage deleted as well, according to the AP.

Khanwali Kamran, a reporter for the Afghan channel Ariana Television, was in a small group of journalists working alongside [AP photographer Rahmat] Gul. Kamran said the American soldiers also deleted his footage.

"They warned me that if it is aired ... then, 'You will face problems,"' Kamran said.

Taqiullah Taqi, a reporter for Afghanistan's largest television station, Tolo TV, said Americans were using abusive language.

"According to the translator, they said, 'Delete them, or we will delete you,"' Taqi said.

Agence France-Presse reports that Major Mitchell defended the actions of the soldiers in deleting the footage, saying that the practice was allowed in "extreme circumstances."

The journalists had gone beyond a security perimetre and had been asked to remove their images to "protect the integrity of the investigation," he said, adding that the scene may have been altered before they arrived.

The concern had been that the "photographers would not accurately represent what the scene looked like immediately after the ambush," Mitchell said.

In a statement, press advocacy group Reporters Without Borders called for an investigation into "the acts of censorship by the US Army" and asked "if the US soldiers had nothing to hide why have they done everything to prevent the press from covering this blunder?"

Al Jazeera, however, reports that it has obtained footage showing "local people in shock, treating the wounded and pulling bodies from the debris left by the shooting." Al Jazeera also reports that witnesses said the suicide bomber acted alone in attacking the US troops, and that the troops simply panicked, firing at anything that moved after the bomb exploded. One witness told Al Jazeera: "There were no gunmen, this is a complete lie."

In the second deadly incident for Afghan civilians on Sunday, The New York Times reports that nine members of a family were killed after a US-led airstrike bombed a compound thought to be holding militants possibly tied to the Taliban. US and Afghan troops stationed at a NATO base north of the Afghan captial of Kabul came under rocket fire Sunday night, and saw two armed men enter the compound before ordering the airstrike.

"Coalition forces observed two men with AK-47s leaving the scene of the rocket attack and entering the compound," Lt. Col. David Accetta, a military spokesman, said in the statement. "These men knowingly endangered civilians by retreating into a populated area while conducting attacks against coalition forces."

"We did this in self-defense," said Gen. Muhammad Eiwaz Masloom, the police chief of Kapisa Province, whose men work beside Americans at the base. "The enemy of Afghanistan is trying to use different tactics to destroy the peace and stability in our area, especially in the districts of Tagab and Nejarab, and they have repeatedly attacked our bases."

He said that members of the Islamic Party, which is led by the renegade mujahedeen commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and Taliban supporters were active in the area.

However the AP reports that such tactics by US-led coalition troops may do more harm than good in the battle against the Taliban.

"These incidents will make people unhappy and upset with the international forces as well as the government of Afghanistan," said Zalmai Mujadedi, head of a parliamentary committee on domestic security. "The incidents in Nangarhar and Kapisa will make the people's confidence in the Afghan and international security forces even lower than before."

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said coalition forces will always respond in self-defense when fired upon: "It is often the enemy that is putting innocent peoples' lives in danger by where they're conducting these attacks on our forces."

Civilian deaths "encourage people toward the Taliban and give the Taliban a chance to turn the situation to their advantage," said Mohammad Qasim Akhgar, an Afghan political analyst and spokesman for the non-governmental Freedom of Expression Association.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the civilian deaths that occured in both the highway shootings and the compound bombing underscore the problems that US forces face when combating a guerrilla foe.
Because suicide attacks against allied convoys are so commonplace, troops sometimes react to even the threat of an attack with overwhelming force. Scores of Afghan motorists have been shot when they ventured too close to convoys and ignored or did not understand warnings to move away.

Use of "close air support," or precision bombardment, has also become a crucial component of the allies' battlefield strategy. But allied troops under fire in remote areas sometimes unwittingly call in airstrikes against an area where insurgents have taken cover among civilians -- or have come and gone, leaving innocent villagers behind in the path of bombs.

Human Rights Watch has echoed Mr. Karzai's call for an investigation into the civilian shooting deaths and called for better precautions to ensure the prevention of further civilian deaths, even when insurgents are hiding among them. "The fact that the insurgents violate the laws of war doesn't absolve the US and its allies of the need to observe them," said Brad Adams, Asia director of the group. The AP notes there have been at least thirteen separate incidents in which Afghan civilians have been killed by coalition forces since the US-led invasion of the country in the month following the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.

Human Rights Watch also expressed concern that the US military is trying to control information related to the highway shooting deaths by deleting journalists' footage. The AP has said it will lodge a protest with the US military over the deleted images and video.
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Almost $3m wasted on Afghan aid program
By SUE BAILEY The Canadian Press
OTTAWA — A Canadian program to teach Afghan women about journalism and the law was a misguided bust that wound up breaking Afghan media ownership rules, says a newly released audit.

Ottawa aid officials pulled the plug on the flawed effort run by Vancouver’s Institute for Media Policy and Civil Society (IMPACS) — but not before almost $3 million was spent, says the document obtained under Access to Information.

It’s one of the first glimpses offered into an aid injection that the Conservative government has tried to cast in glowing terms. Prime Minister Stephen Harper last week announced another $200 million in funding on top of the $1 billion already committed to Afghanistan over 10 years.

The money is being used for hundreds of reconstruction and training projects, from well drilling to new schools.

But those asking questions about results achieved for money spent have for months hit a bureaucratic stonewall. It has only cracked with the release by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) of thousands of pages of audits.

Evaluators found the media project lacked even the most basic managerial oversight on the ground, while financial reports were spotty or non-existent.

Strong, detailed monitoring was essential "because of the extreme under-development of Afghanistan and its institutions," says the audit. "This was seriously lacking in all project sites."

Especially puzzling was the 2004 launch of a now defunct monthly newspaper in the capital of Kabul, the report says. Its purpose was in part to train female reporters and educate women about politics and other issues.

Trouble is, most Afghan women can’t read. The United Nations estimates that almost 80 per cent of girls and women are illiterate.

"A newspaper is not the most effective means of communication to reach the average Afghanistan citizen," says the audit dated Sept. 2005. "The paper will not be sustainable when project funding ends."

Moreover, the newspaper’s reliance on IMPACS for its survival breached Afghan media law on foreign ownership, said the audit.

Indeed, the publication has since folded, says Nancy Bennett, who took over as IMPACS executive director last fall in part to respond to the audit’s findings.

"It’s messy. There’s no doubt about it," she said in an interview Tuesday. "Senior management of IMPACS just wasn’t present enough on the ground."

Problems included a lack of staff with international experience, Bennett explained. There were also major security challenges and the financial chaos of dealing in a cash-only society where receipts are frequently missing.

Alternative expense-tracking methods were needed, she said.

"Those mechanisms were not put in place. And that comes back again to the lack of real oversight from here. I think there was an assumption made (by ex-IMPACS management) that things are going to work there the way they do here. It doesn’t."

The organization has since pulled out of Afghanistan because of safety risks and the need to build more internal scope for dealing with overseas projects, Bennett said.

Asked to explain the audit’s findings, a CIDA spokesman said no one was available.
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Iraq, Afghanistan failing in human rights, US says
By Matthew Lee, Associated Press  |  March 7, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Fledgling US-backed democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq are failing to protect human rights, despite huge flows of American aid to improve conditions after the ousters of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, the State Department said yesterday,

In its annual global survey of human rights practices, the department criticized the two US allies for their records last year, when they were beset by increasingly bloody insurgencies and saddled with weak administrations and poorly trained security forces.

"Too often in the past year we received painful reminders that human rights, though self-evident, are not self-enforcing," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in presenting the report.

The report cited poor human rights conditions in several other US allies and partners, including China, Egypt, Pakistan, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. It also criticized the records of foes Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea.

The genocide in Sudan's troubled western Darfur region was the "most sobering reality of all," the report said.

Afghanistan and Iraq have received millions in US aid for human rights and democracy programs -- $102.9 million for Afghanistan last year alone and $183 million for Iraq since 2004, according to State Department figures.

In Iraq, where deadly attacks have surged despite the formation of an elected government after Hussein's removal in a US-led invasion in 2003, "both deepening sectarian violence and acts of terrorism seriously undercut human rights and democratic progress," the report said.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government "was unable to diminish these violent attacks" despite enhanced security steps taken after the Feb. 22, 2006, bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra, which provoked a major rise in Sunni-Shi'ite attacks, it said.

The report said the Iraqi defense and interior ministries were responsible for "serious" human rights violations, including severe beatings, electrocutions, and sexual assaults of detainees.

In Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai's government made progress on human rights in 2006, but its performance "remained poor," the report said, attributing lapses to a weak central administration, abuses by authorities, and Taliban and Al Qaeda insurgents. The United States deposed the country's Taliban rulers in 2001.

The report said there were persistent reports of "politically motivated or extrajudicial killings by the government or its agents" in addition to atrocities by insurgents.

The report said Pakistan, another key US counterterrorism ally, had a poor record, citing extrajudicial arrests, executions and torture, and dealing with rape cases. It faulted Egypt, a moderate Arab nation, for cracking down on dissent in court decisions and through the Internet.

It criticized Russia for its poor rights record in Chechnya and superficial probes of suspected contract killings of government foes, including reform-minded officials and journalists. It also took China to task for clamping down on cyber dissent and suppressing demonstrations and protests for liberalization.
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Preserving Land and Wildlife, to Restore the Afghan Identity
By STACEY STOWE The New York Times March 6, 2007 A Conversation With Alex Dehgan
Since June, Alex Dehgan has spent most of his time in Afghanistan, working to protect the country’s wildlife and develop its first official system of protected lands.

The premise of the three-year project run by Dr. Dehgan, a behavioral ecologist and conservation biologist, is that conservation is critical for recovery and stability in a country where 80 percent of the population lives in rural surroundings and directly depends on local natural resources for survival.

The goals of the project, a joint effort by the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Afghan government and financed by a $6.9 million grant from the United States Agency for International Development, are ambitious: a legislative review of environmental policies, a baseline on wildlife populations, help for local communities to manage natural resources and aid for conservation efforts with neighboring countries.

Home to the Hindu Kush range and the Pamir Knot, a region where four ranges come together, Afghan alpine ecosystems support species like Marco Polo sheep, the world’s largest; Himalayan and Persian ibex; flying squirrels; and birds like griffon vultures and golden eagles.

Dr. Dehgan, 37, was born in Iran and moved to the United States when he was 2. Since receiving his doctorate from the University of Chicago in 2003, he has worked on conservation and foreign policy issues around the globe, most recently helping to rebuild the science culture in Iraq, including a natural history museum.

Dr. Dehgan was in the United States earlier this year, lecturing at the Bronx Zoo, where the Wildlife Conservation Society is based, before returning to work in Afghanistan.

Q. What kind of environmental problems does the country face?

A. By 2002, 52 percent of the forest cover had been lost. There is soil erosion, overgrazing and disease transmission between livestock. The Afghan government has almost no information. Its records were lost. Its data was lost.

We’re trying to restore information and digitalize manuscripts. We just completed surveys of avian and large mammal incidence in Big Pamir and Little Pamir. We identified 22 new species in Wakhan Valley.

Q. You talked about trying to do conservation with pastoralists, agriculturalists — people who are worried about the military seizing their animals or the taxes if they disclose the true number of their livestock. How do you incorporate these pragmatic concerns?

A. The financial part of conservation is essential to its success. To the extent possible, we have to get them to see linkages of what the natural environment provides to the people and what sort of services they are getting from that natural environment.

Q. Does that entail going house to house?

A. We cross rivers in the middle of the winter. We get on yaks. We get on donkeys. We get on horses. And we go to them and we sit down and we talk to them. Part of it is understanding how they are dependent on those natural resources. Their entire wealth, their entire survival in a very harsh part of the world is livestock and the few crops they grow in support of being able to feed that livestock.

If that livestock is overgrazing the land, that livestock population can crash, and they can lose animals, because there’s no food to survive through the winter, and that loss affects the survival of people, particularly people who are nomadic.

Q. An entire generation displaced by war has grown up in Iran and Pakistan. Three million Afghans remain refugees in Pakistan. What is the relationship between conservation and the identity of the Afghan people?

A. The Afghan people are very closely tied to their land. And reacquainting them with wildlife and wild lands in Afghanistan is a way of restoring identity, particularly if you go to some of these houses where they have these symbols of the wildlife for their decoration. There’s a historical legacy of the wildlife that has been there for these people. So just on that fundamental basis, to know the things that are Afghan, this assemblage of animals, is part of their culture.

Q. How do you communicate an understanding of existing laws and policies to rural people?

A. The people want to restore management practices for natural resources. We have to work with local communities and get them to understand the interrelations between how they are managing their resources and what the downstream impacts of those things are. We do conservation workshops in cold weather and heavy snowfall. The fact that people are willing to attend astounds me.

One hundred percent of the 21 villages we asked to participate in the program said yes. We’re training Afghan vets. We’re working with the Kabul Zoo. The zoo itself is not a bad institution. It’s partnered with the North Carolina Zoo. But half of its administration building is missing. Yet what it makes up for in its lack of infrastructure and bricks and mortar are its people.

One of the things we do with the government ministries is sit by side by side with them at the national level and local level. We include them in our training. If we give them control over their natural resources, they can defend against other incentives.

Q. Such as the profits from illegal trade?

A. Yes.

Q. Hamid Karzai outlawed the trading of animal pelts by presidential decree, yet such trading persists. How do you address the problem?

A. We don’t want to do things by presidential decree. We want to have laws passed by Parliament, because that’s how the balance of power works. So we’re working on that. Animal skins from animals such as snow leopards are sold in Baghdad, and the expatriates and military forces are buying it. There is also illegal timber trade.

Q. Explain the reaction of Afghans to your program.

A. Extremely positive. One of the things science gives us is a common language that transcends culture. The respect for science is tremendous in the Islamic world. You look at the biological process the same way, no matter what your religion.

You can’t overpromise, because the Afghans in the last five years have been promised a lot of things, and not a lot of things have followed through. One of the things we established is a reputation for following through. We have to be mindful of the fact that we are guests in this country, which means respecting the local culture and tradition, not coming in with an imperialistic perspective.

Q. You are working on revenue from admission at national parks being returned to local communities. How is tourism a viable industry in Afghanistan?

A. Prior to 1979, tourism was the No. 2 source of income. There’s mountain climbing and river running, Marco Polo sheep. What is it worth to people to see those today?

One of the things we’re trying to do is talking with these conservation committees — three or four villages participate in each — to manage tourism and work with tour operators to make sure that they benefit from tourism that’s going on and to help train people to work with tourists. Because as soon as people see there are tourists to see that ibex or that Marco Polo sheep, I think they have an incentive to conserve.

Q. Three years is a relatively short time. What are your measures of success there?

A. The idea is that I will be replaced by an Afghan.

Q. Given the challenges, the risk and the scope of the task, why do conservation at all in a place like Afghanistan or Iraq?

A. Because I think this is the path to security. The path to security in Afghanistan and Iraq is not going to be achieved through guns. They depend on natural resources and identify with wildlife. It’s an element of who they are.
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Afghan children die as US drops one-tonne bombs
The Independent (UK) By Justin Huggler Asia Correspondent 06 March 2007
Nine civilians, including four children, were killed in Afghanistan when US planes dropped two 2,000lb bombs on their mud home. Their deaths came after at least eight civilians were killed by US Marines a day earlier.

It has been a disastrous two days for the Americans in Afghanistan. First US Marines trying to get to safety after being ambushed by a suicide bomber sprayed gunfire wildly across one of the busiest roads in the country, killing passers-by.

And now US planes have dropped two bombs on a family home, killing children aged between six months and five years.

Last year, the Afghan President Hamid Karzai wept as he pleaded for Western soldiers to take more care to avoid killing civilians. But the killings continue.

Gulam Nabi told reporters yesterday how his parents, his sister, his nephew and four of his siblings' children were killed in the air strikes. The US said it had carried out the bombings after militants fired a rocket at a Nato base in the province of Kapisa.

"Coalition forces observed two men with AK-47s [assault rifles] leaving the scene of the rocket attack and entering the compound," said Lt-Col David Accetta, a military spokesman. "These men knowingly endangered civilians by retreating into a populated area while conducting attacks against coalition forces."

The "compound" was a small group of mud houses where Mr Nabi's family lived. The air strikes destroyed the house where the family was, according to reports from the scene.

Kapisa, north of Kabul, is some way from the centre of the insurgency and has been relatively free from attacks. If the Nato base there is coming under attack, it is a sign of how far the insurgency has spread.

The deaths of Mr Nabi's relatives came a day after US Marines killed at least eight Afghan civilians in the eastern province of Nangarhar. There was mounting criticism of US forces over the incident yesterday, as the Afghan government announced it would hold its own inquiry. In particular, in a rare piece of defiance, the Afghan Interior Ministry has questioned the US military's claim that the Marines came under militant attack and were returning fire.

The incident took place after a US convoy was targeted in a suicide bombing on a busy highway. Witnesses say that as they drove away from the scene of the attack, US Marines opened fire indiscriminately at cars and pedestrians along the road. "I saw them turning and firing in this direction, then turning and firing in that direction," said Ahmed Najib, a 23-year-old who was shot in the shoulder. "I even saw a farmer shot by the Americans."

The US initially said as many as 16 civilians were killed, but it has since revised its figures. The Marines say they were returning fire. A US official who insisted on anonymity told reporters there was "no doubt in the minds of Marines o the ground that they were being fired on".

But a spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, Zemeri Bashary, said: "The coalition says they have proof that gunmen opened fire. But I think more of the gunfire was from the [US] side."

And two senior provincial Afghan officials, who asked not to be named, said they had found no evidence to support the US claims.

The Associated Press news agency has said US soldiers deleted footage and photographs of dead civilians from the cameras of its reporters, and warned them not to publish any images of what had happened. AP said it would lodge a protest with the US military.
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Lower house of Italy's parliament to vote on Afghan mission amid fears for missing reporter
The Associated Press Wednesday, March 7, 2007
ROME: The lower house of Italy's parliament was to vote Wednesday on a decree refinancing the country's military mission in Afghanistan — a measure that has caused rifts in the government.

The vote comes amid fears that an Italian reporter may have been kidnapped by the Taliban.

The Chamber of Deputies was widely expected to pass the decree, which must then go to the Senate for final approval. Premier Romano Prodi's center-left coalition has ample margin in the lower house, but commands only a razor-thin majority at the Senate.

Italy's mission in Afghanistan, involving 1,800 troops, has split Prodi's forces because some Communist coalition allies oppose the troop deployment.

Any defections in the upper chamber of parliament could lose the vote for the center-left. However the conservative opposition led by Silvio Berlusconi, the media mogul and former premier, is expected to back the mission, ensuring passage of the measure.

In Afghanistan, a Taliban spokesman claimed the militia had captured a man who worked for Italian daily La Repubblica. The Rome-based newspaper had raised the alarm about reporter Daniele Mastrogiacomo, saying it had not heard from the veteran correspondent in southern Afghanistan since Sunday.

Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema said Tuesday that officials did not believe Mastrogiacomo was "in the hands of a bunch of stragglers, but was effectively captured by the Taliban's military structure."
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Afghanistan deaths put pressure on Italy's Prodi
By Silvia Aloisi
ROME, March 6 (Reuters) - An escalation of violence in Afghanistan is piling pressure on Italy's Prime Minister Romano Prodi as he seeks new funds to keep 1,900 troops in the country despite opposition by pacifists in his coalition.

The lower house of parliament is expected to approve the refinancing of the mission later on Tuesday, but Prodi faces a much harder task getting the green light from the Senate, where he only enjoys a razor-thin majority.

Divisions over the presence of Italian troops in Afghanistan, where they are part of a NATO force, were one of the issues that triggered the crisis which forced Prodi to resign briefly two weeks ago after leftist allies revolted.

Since then Prodi has arm-twisted the nine parties in his centre-left bloc to agree on a list of priorities that includes the Afghan mission, but the latest violence has laid bare splits over whether Italy should be involved at all.

"Let's repatriate our soldiers before it's too late," Claudio Grassi, a communist senator, said on Tuesday. "Let's distance ourselves from the failed foreign policy of the American government."

The killing by U.S. forces of several civilians -- at least 10, according to Afghan officials -- after a suicide attack at the weekend was compared by another communist, Marco Rizzo, to "Nazi-style retaliation".

The U.S. military have said only that 16 people died in the suicide bombing and subsequent shooting.

Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema said he was "greatly upset" about the killings and worried that they would fuel popular resentment against the NATO force. He supported President Ahmed Karzai's decision to launch an independent inquiry.

With NATO forces bracing for a bloody spring offensive by the Taliban, Afghanistan increasingly looks like the sword of Damocles hanging over Prodi, who accelerated the pullout of Italian troops from Iraq after taking office last year.

At least one dissident senator whose defection over foreign policy brought Prodi down last month has said he will vote against the mission, meaning Prodi may have to rely on opposition support to secure backing for the new funds.

Former Prime Minister and centre-right leader Silvio Berlusconi, a staunch U.S. ally, has signalled his bloc would largely vote in favour, but his allies say that if the government cannot count on its own majority, it must resign.

"Either the government is self-sufficient on such an important issue like Afghanistan, or they have to step down," said Fabrizio Cicchitto of Berlusconi's Forza Italia party.

The new funds must be approved by both chambers of parliament by the end of the month.
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Bulgaria to increase peacekeeping troops in Afghanistan: DM
Peopl’s Daily 6 march 2007
The Bulgarian government will agree to send another batch of troops to Afghanistan in the summer, Defence Minister Veselin Bliznakov said on Monday.

Bliznakov told a military award ceremony that about 200 troops are scheduled to be sent to defend the airport in the city of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan in mid-summer.

The defence minister said the government will make a final decision on the matter in the next few days. The government can dispatch the troops without the approval of parliament because the action is part of NATO's deployment.

Bliznakov said it will be safe for Bulgarian troops to take charge of the security inside the airport while security outside is in the hands of the British troops.

Bulgaria first sent peacekeeping troops to Afghanistan in February 2002. It now has 82 soldiers in Afghanistan.

Bulgaria has decided to send another 120 troops in April and May this year and the 200 soldiers will bring the total number of Bulgarian troops in Afghanistan to 400.

NATO has a force of more than 30,000 troops in Afghanistan. Many countries have contributed, but the brunt of the fighting has been borne by U.S., British, Canadian and Dutch forces deployed in the restive south.

A resurgent Taliban have threatened a spring offensive to follow 2006, the bloodiest year since they were ousted by U.S. forces in 2001. Source: Xinhua
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Safe havens or recruiting grounds?
Globe and Mail 3.6.07 - GRAEME SMITH investigates how camps are aggravating tense cross-border relations - GRAEME SMITH With a report from Estanislao Oziewicz
GIRDI JUNGLE, PAKISTAN -- On the map, this place is marked as a refugee camp. Under the harsh desert sun, however, Girdi Jungle seems unusually prosperous by the bleak standards of this region. The market stalls are full of fresh herbs and vegetables, and generous hunks of meat hang from the butcher's hooks.

Hints about the sources of the settlement's wealth are scattered everywhere, too, as sport-utility vehicles with Dubai licence plates roar along the dirt roads, and shopkeepers crank up the volume on cassette players blaring Taliban propaganda songs. (Dubai has long been a financial centre for militant Islamic groups.) This place was a desperately needed refuge during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, as millions of people fled the war.

Two decades later, war continues to rage in Afghanistan. This time, however, this camp and others like it no longer serve as beacons of hope for a stricken people. Instead, they are emerging as a key point of friction between Afghanistan and Pakistan, aggravating a relationship that is already dangerously inflamed.

Afghan officials say the camps now serve as recruiting grounds, training centres and transit points for the Taliban insurgents who launch attacks across the border. Pakistani authorities complain that drug dealers use the camps as shipment and refinery centres, bringing tonnes of opium and a culture of criminality into Pakistan.

In their warren of rutted lanes and mud walls, the refugees claim innocence on all counts, saying they're caught in the political crossfire between the two bickering countries.

"The world knows this is a conflict between the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan," said Haji Abdul Qayum, 40, head of the tribal council that rules this settlement of about 43,000 people. "We are caught between them." All sides of the argument are partly correct, observers say: Drug dealers and Taliban insurgents likely use the camps, but the refugees are also trapped in an increasingly difficult spot.
The Pakistan government has been threatening for years to forcibly shut down the camps. In recent months, spurred by Afghanistan's complaints about the Taliban, the Pakistani authorities have set deadlines for the closing of four major camps this year, including Girdi Jungle, and paramilitary border guards are already preparing to enforce the order. Islamabad has informed the United Nations High Commission for Refugees that all of the estimated 2.4 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan must return home by 2009, citing concerns for Pakistan's national security.

"This time, the government is serious," said Duniya Aslan Khan, a UNHCR officer in Quetta, Pakistan. Last week, the UNHCR announced the last chance for unregistered refugees to go home with a $60 (U.S.) cash grant to cover travel costs.

Astrid Van Genderen Stort, a UNHCR spokeswoman, said on Friday that Pakistan's decision to close the four camps was agreed to by Afghanistan and the UNHCR. Katchagari (in North West Frontier Province) and Jungle Pir Alizai (in Balochistan) are scheduled to close by June 15. Jalozai (NWFP) and Girdi Jungle (Balochistan) are set to close by Aug. 31.

"Camp closure is the prerogative of the host government, but UNHCR maintains that affected Afghans must be given viable options," she said in an e-mail. "Afghans living in the four camps are being given a choice between assisted voluntary repatriation and, if they cannot return at the moment, relocation to existing camps in Pakistan identified by the government." Law-enforcement officers are already preparing for trouble around the Girdi Jungle camp. Pakistan's Frontier Corps recently constructed seven checkpoints giving the paramilitaries control of all roads to the settlement, said Qamar Masood, district co-ordination officer in the nearby town of Dalbandin.

So far, the metal arms of the checkpoints remain open, and during a recent visit, the paramilitary officers hardly glanced at a shabby sedan visiting the camp. Afghan refugees say they have faced insults and intrusive searches at the checkpoints, but mostly they resent the new posts because they represent an implicit threat.

"They surrounded our camp on all sides, and they harass our people," said Haji Mehmoud, a tribal elder. "There are many cases in which some local [Pakistani] people are kidnapping refugees for ransom, for money," Mr. Mehmoud said. "But what can we do? We pay them, to release our people. We don't want to stay here, but inside Afghanistan, the peace situation is not good. If the peace comes, we will return home."

At the local government offices, however, Mr. Masood said Pakistan deems the situation in Afghanistan stable enough for the refugees to go home. The checkpoints are necessary, he added, because the Afghans might be tempted to commit crimes on the way out.

"The Afghan government is creating the impression that we're using these refugees to cause trouble," Mr. Masood said. "But it's just the opposite. They're making trouble for us."

While the Pakistani government is making preparations for the refugees' departure, Pakistani officials complain bitterly that their Afghan counterparts are not keeping up. Across the border, in Kandahar, Afghan authorities acknowledge they're not ready, saying they would face a crisis if tens of thousands of refugees come streaming back in the coming months.

Kandahar's department of refugees and repatriation has already registered about 19,000 displaced families living in the vast, squalid camps west of the city, many of them forced to flee their homes several years ago because of drought or war. Those people must be resettled first, said Agha Mohammed Nazari, the department's deputy director.

"How can we handle new refugees in Afghanistan?" Mr. Nazari said. "We don't have the capacity."
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Pakistani tribesmen, militants talk after clash
07 Mar 2007 11:06:08 GMT
More  TANK, Pakistan, March 7 (Reuters) - Pakistani tribesmen and al Qaeda-linked militants held talks near the Afghan border on Wednesday after a bloody clash between them in which 17 people were killed, a government official said.

The two sides battled for hours on Tuesday in the first reported clash between the militants and ethnic Pashtun tribesmen in the area, after the militants tried to kill a pro-government tribal leader. Among the dead were 12 Uzbek militants.

"They're trying to settle the problem themselves. A jirga is under way but we're not part of it," said a senior government official in the region, who declined to be identified.

A Muslim cleric, Mohammad Alam, was overseeing the jirga, or traditional council, in Azam Warsak village in the South Waziristan region where the fighting took place, he said.

Hundreds of foreign militants, mostly Uzbeks, Chechens and Arabs, have been hiding in Waziristan and some other Pakistani areas with the help of tribesmen since fleeing Afghanistan when U.S.-led forces defeated the Taliban in 2001.

Militants in North and South Waziristan have killed dozens of people, including government officials, tribal elders they accuse of supporting the Pakistani government and people accused of spying for U.S. forces in neighbouring Afghanistan.

The Pakistani government has been trying to clear the foreign militants out as part of its efforts in support of the U.S.-led war on terrorism. Hundreds of people have been killed in clashes.

A Pakistani military spokesman said the clash showed that local people were turning against the foreigners.

"We see this as a very positive development," said the spokesman, Major-General Waheed Arshad.

"It shows that the local people are on board and realise that the foreign elements are no longer wanted here."

An intelligence official said efforts were also being made for the release of three tribesmen captured by Uzbek militants during the fighting.

The fighters were said to be members of the al Qaeda-linked Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan militant group, accused of a series of bomb blasts in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, in 1999.

Azam Warsak and nearby areas were the scene of fierce clashes in 2004, when Pakistani security forces launched an operation against militants commanded by IMU leader Tahir Yuldashev.

More than 100 people were killed in that fighting but Yuldashev escaped. Back to Top
Pakistan govt claims credit from fight between tribesmen, Uzbeks near Afghan border
The Associated Press Wednesday, March 7, 2007
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: A gunbattle between tribesmen and Central Asian militants near the Afghan frontier shows that Pakistan's shift away from direct military action against al-Qaida and Taliban fighters is paying off, a government minister said Wednesday.

Officials said as many as 18 people died in the firefight on Tuesday in the South Waziristan tribal agency, part of the wild border zone where Taliban and al-Qaida militants are believed to shelter.

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf is under pressure to prevent Taliban fighters based in the border region from mounting attacks into Afghanistan and to respond to U.S. fears that al-Qaida — including its leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri — is re-establishing itself in the same area.

However, Musharraf last year halted a bloody military campaign in the region and insists that economic and political support is a better incentive to traditional tribal leaders to rein in the extremists than army operations that have alienated the local population.

Tuesday's battle began when dozens of armed tribesmen attacked two carloads of Uzbeks and Tajik militants in a village near Wana, the main town in the South Waziristan tribal agency, triggering an hourlong gunfight, officials said.

An intelligence official said Wednesday that the final death toll from the clash was 18, three more than reported the previous day. The dead were 15 mostly Uzbek militants, two tribesman and a shopkeeper caught in the crossfire, the official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of his work. Another 18 people were wounded, he said.

Information Minister Mohammed Ali Durrani said the incident was a "vital development" because it suggested that elders in the semi-autonomous border zone were growing more hostile to foreign fighters who have found refuge in their midst.

The Uzbeks "obviously" belong to al-Qaida, Durrani said in a telephone interview.

"They were welcome before, but their behavior has become more aggressive and this is the reaction of the local tribes," he said.

Hundreds of Arab, Central Asian and Afghan militants suspected of links with the Taliban and al-Qaida fled to South Waziristan and the adjoining North Waziristan region after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001.

Durrani denied that the government was involved in instigating the fighting, but said that reconstruction activities and agreements between the government and the tribes "are the background to this. ... It certainly causes a gap between the locals and the militants."

The dead included a senior militant, Durrani said. However, he could not confirm whether fugitive Uzbek militant leader Tahir Yuldash was in the attacked convoy.

According to the intelligence official who updated the death toll, armed tribesmen were patrolling in Azam Warsak on Wednesday. He said tribal militants had razed the homes of two local tribesman in apparent solidarity with the Central Asians.

A delegation of Islamic scholars and tribal elders led by a pro-Taliban cleric had arrived in the village from neighboring North Waziristan to broker peace between the embattled sides, the official said.
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Taliban fire off spring warning
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Online / March 6, 2007
KARACHI - Recent Taliban operations in southwestern Afghanistan's Helmand province and Pakistan's anti-Taliban swoop in its southwestern province of Balochistan mark a broadening of the struggle into Pakistani territory.

The Taliban claim to have overrun the Kabul-installed administration in Nawzad district headquarters in Helmand and all surrounding villages.

This only confirms the belief among North Atlantic Treaty Organization officials that until a broader strategy is devised that

takes in the whole region - including the Pakistani border areas - there can be no level playing field between NATO and the insurgency, and NATO will be the loser.

"The Taliban besieged NATO bases and offices of the Afghan administration [in Nawzad] during [the] whole winter season. We did not attack them because of the difficulties of a winter mobilization of men, and the sustainability of battle remains a problem," Taliban commander Abdul Khaliq Akhund told Asia Times Online by satellite phone from Nawzad district. "Nevertheless, we just curtailed the mobility of the Afghan administration and NATO forces throughout the winter and it was a real blow to their morale.

"As soon as the summer started, we announced the end of the ceasefire with the [Hamid]-Karzai backed administration of Nawzad district and the Taliban and moved into district headquarters. I gladly inform you that the Taliban are now fully in control of Nawzad district headquarters and all villages around it."

A NATO spokesperson in Kabul did not respond to an Asia Times Online request for comment on the Taliban's claim to have taken control of Nawzad.

During a visit to Helmand province last November, this correspondent observed the ceasefire between the Taliban and NATO forces in Nawzad district (see Time out from a siege, Asia Times Online, December 9, 2006). NATO saw the ceasefire as a chance slowly and peacefully to extend the influence of NATO forces as well as the writ of the Afghan government. However, the scheme seems to have come to nothing.

"The fall of Nawzad is the start of the Taliban-led uprising in southwestern Afghanistan, and soon the entire province of Helmand will be in the hands of the mujahideen," Abdul Khaliq claimed.

As events in Nawzad illustrate, the Taliban are unlikely to receive much opposition from Kabul-backed administrations across the province.

To stop the rot, as it were, NATO wants to take the fight into Pakistani territory - from where the Taliban receive logistical support - as its "ceasefire" tactics seem to have failed.

A new focus on Balochistan

Recent clashes between NATO forces and the Taliban in Gramser, Helmand, left dozens of Taliban wounded. Some of them retreated to Naushki, Kuchlak and Quetta in Balochistan, where they were admitted to various hospitals. Their colleagues stayed with the Afghan diaspora in the area.

NATO followed the movement of these people in Pakistan and eventually passed on information to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation's proxies, which have deep influence in the Pakistani police. As a result, under the direct surveillance of the FBI, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence led an operation to capture dozens of Taliban.

A Pakistani newspaper claimed one of the arrested was Mullah Obaidullah, one of Taliban leader Mullah Omar's top aides. Pakistani state authorities denied the claim, including the Ministry of Interior. Nevertheless, sources in the security agencies did say that during a raid in Quetta some "very important persons were sorted out" and that Mullah Obaidullah might indeed be in the area.

These developments reinforce the Afghan government and NATO view that Quetta is an important command and control post for the Taliban and that they have to be rooted out from there. The areas of Naushki and Gardi Jungle in Balochistan have also been identified by the British Task Force in Helmand as the main supply lines of logistics and manpower into Helmand province.

"Local Baloch youths are very active supporters of the Taliban in the region of Naushki and it is the main supply line of weapons and manpower to the Taliban," commented a British military official based in Helmand province, speaking on condition of anonymity.

In return for the heat being turned on them, the Taliban will target the US proxy intelligence network in Balochistan. These include Police Intelligence Unit and FBI collaborators among Muslim clerics and other anti-Taliban elements.

It's all very well, though, for NATO to recognize the necessity of becoming more proactive across the border. There is an obstacle - and a big one. As reported by Asia Times Online (Pakistan makes a deal with the Taliban, March 1), the Pakistani establishment has struck an accord 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.

As the Taliban begin the first phases of their spring offensive, the battlefield is getting bigger, as is the number of contestants.

Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief.
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An Afghan Policy Built on Pipe Dreams
The New York Times 03/06/2007 By Rory Stewart 
The international community's policy in Afghanistan is based on the claim that Afghans are willing partners in the creation of a liberal democratic state. Senator John McCain finished a recent speech on Afghanistan by saying, "Billions of people around the world now embrace the ideals of political, economic and social liberty, conceived in the West, as their own."

In Afghanistan in January, Tony Blair thanked Afghans by saying "we're all in this together" and placing them in "the group of people who want to live in peace and harmony with each other, whatever your race or your background or your religion."

Such language is inaccurate, misleading and dangerous.

Afghans, like Americans, do not want to be abducted and tortured. They want a say in who governs them, and they want to feed their families. But reducing their needs to broad concepts like "human rights," "democracy" and "development" is unhelpful.

For many Afghans, sharia law is central. Others welcome freedom from torture, but not free media or freedom of religion; majority rule, but not minority rights; full employment, but not free-market reforms. "Warlords" retain considerable power. Millions believe that alcohol should be forbidden and apostates killed, that women should be allowed in public only in burqas. Many Pusthu clearly prefer the Taliban to foreign troops.

Yet, senior officials with long experience with Afghanistan often deny this reality. They insist that Taliban fighters have next to no local support and are purely Pakistani agents. The U.N. argues that "warlords" have little power and that the tribal areas can rapidly be brought under central control. The British defense secretary predicted last summer that British troops in Helmand Province could return "without a bullet fired." Afghan cabinet ministers insist that narcotics growth and corruption can be ended and the economy can wean itself off foreign aid in five years. None of this is true. And most of them half-know it.

It is not only politicians who misrepresent the facts. Nonprofit groups endorse the fashionable jargon of state-building and civil society, partly to win grants. Military officers are reluctant to admit their mission is impossible. Journalists were initially surprisingly optimistic about transforming Afghanistan. No one wants to seem to endorse a status quo dominated by the Taliban and drugs. Humankind cannot bear very much reality, particularly in Afghanistan.

Does it matter? Most people see our misrepresentations as an unappealing but necessary part of international politics. The problem is that we act on the basis of our own lies. British soldiers were killed because they were not prepared for the Helmand insurgency. In the same province, the coalition recommended a Western-friendly technocrat as governor; he was so isolated and threatened he could barely leave his office. Hundreds of millions of dollars invested in anticorruption efforts, and the police and the counternarcotics ministry, has been wasted on Afghans with no interest in our missions. Other programs are perceived as a threat to local culture and have bred anger and resentment.

Still others have raised expectations we cannot fulfill, betraying our friends. I experienced this in Iraq, where I encouraged two friends to start gender and civil society programs; we were unable to protect them, and both were killed. Even when we fail, instead of recognizing the errors of the initial assessment and the mission, we blame problems in implementation and repeat false and illogical claims in order to acquire more money and troops.

The time has come to be honest about the limits of our power and the Afghan reality. This is not to counsel despair. There is no fighting in the streets of Kabul, the Hazara in the center of the country are more secure and prosperous than at almost any time in their history, and the economy grew last year by 18 percent. These are major achievements. With luck and the right kind of international support, Afghanistan can become more humane, prosperous and stable.

But progress will be slow. Real change can come only from within, and we have less power in Afghanistan than we claim. We must speak truthfully about this situation. Our lies betray Afghans and ultimately ourselves. And the cost in lives, opportunities and reputation is unbearable.

Rory Stewart's latest book is the "The Prince of the Marshes and Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq." He runs the Turquoise Mountain Foundation in Kabul and is a guest columnist this month.
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AFGHANISTAN: Severe winter causes more pneumonia child deaths
HERAT, 6 March (IRIN) - Doctors in Afghanistan say that a particularly cold winter this year has increased the number of children dying of pneumonia. Thousands of children contract the respiratory illness every winter in Afghanistan, where difficult living conditions and inadequate medical care can make it a fatal illness.

In February, at least 50 children reportedly died of pneumonia at Herat provincial hospital, while in the eastern province of Nangarhar, there were 28 deaths.

Despite measures such as an early warning system and attempts at civic education and improving facilities, doctors at both hospitals said that child mortality from pneumonia increased this year because of the cold weather and the increased snow it brought.

Zia Gul's four-day-old daughter Parastu contracted pneumonia in the cold, windy room of their house in the Koshko Robatsangi district in Herat province.

"We are very poor people and cannot afford enough wood for the stove," Gul said. "My room also does not have proper windows and doors, allowing the cold wind to come in. I tried keeping her warm with two or three blankets but she fell sick."

To get her to the nearest medical facility, Parastu's family had to walk in snow to the nearest village with cars. In heavy snow, the vehicle they found took two hours to reach the nearest clinic, where doctors said the baby's condition was serious and told the parents to take her to Herat. Upon arriving in the provincial capital, they learnt Parastu had a severe form of pneumonia.

Delays in getting medical care often cause deaths. Dr Abdul Qayoum, head of the paediatric ward in the Herat provincial hospital, said Afghanistan's winter prompted respiratory diseases such as influenza, severe pneumonia and tuberculosis.

The hospital sees the deaths of 12 to 15 children due to pneumonia every week, Qayoum said, adding that most of the children were from rural areas. With the onset of pneumonia symptoms, Qayoum said parents often took their children to mullahs (religious teachers) for prayers to be read over them. They would only go to hospitals if the child's condition deteriorated, by which stage treatment can be difficult.

Tawoos, a woman from Ghorian district, brought her six-month-old son to Herat hospital after four mullahs could not cure him. The family gave a calf to the first mullah, a prayer rug to the second and money to two others. Now, Tawoos sits by her son Saddeq in a hospital where she has seen three mothers lose their children.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), pneumonia accounts for 20 percent of all deaths of children under five in developing countries. In Afghanistan, statistics are hard to compile because even the larger regional hospitals have only just started to record admissions and deaths.

The WHO says basic hospital equipment such as oxygen concentrators, suction machines, nebulizers and oxygen masks are in short supply in the war-ravaged country.

"It is for the Ministry of Public Health to take a decision on this," Qayoum said. "The people in the rural areas need their doctors and nurses to be trained in diagnosis and they need better healthcare facilities."
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Outside View: Hope in Afghanistan
By PYOTR GONCHAROV UPI Outside View Commentator
MOSCOW, March 6 (UPI) -- It has become bad form not to lash out at NATO and the United States for their actions in Afghanistan.

Many analysts are convinced that NATO's affairs there could not get any worse, and that the U.S. is getting bogged down there like it is in Iraq; that the situation in Afghanistan is going from bad to worse; that NATO and the U.S. are repeating the Soviet Union's mistakes and are doomed to the same fate. However, I believe these assessments are not quite fair.

Needless to say, Afghanistan is going through troubled and sensitive times. The nation has been in the process of consolidation for the last five years, since the rout of the Taliban from Kabul. Today, the situation has reached a boiling point. On the one hand, the reformers want to build a modern democratic society in an Islamic framework that will be based on universal human values and will therefore be largely secular; on the other hand, the Taliban and their eternal opponents, the Mujahideen (war lords), would like to return Afghanistan to their own versions of the past.

Today, the balance has clearly tilted in favor of the reformers, and now the main goal is to keep this success going. During his meeting with Russian experts in Moscow in early February, Ambassador Christopher Alexander, deputy special representative of the United Nations secretary general for Afghanistan, outlined two obvious trends now underway. First, the Taliban has become markedly more active; second, the economy and social relations are getting better, and, most importantly, Afghan society is undergoing consolidation. There are some grounds for these conclusions.

In 2006, the Afghan economy grew by 10 percent-12 percent. I will disappoint the cynics right away: this growth has nothing to do with drug trafficking. It resulted from the intensive development of communications and construction, including road building, and trade. Agriculture, the economy's backbone, is showing signs of hope. Before, it seemed to have been shattered beyond repair. For the first time in 10 to 15 years, Afghan peasants had a surplus of produce, meager as it was, for export to neighboring Pakistan and India.

Credit for this success goes to the financial support Kabul receives from donors around the world, first and foremost, the Afghan assistance package agreed upon in London in February 2006. Essentially, this is a five-year contract between Afghanistan and the world to revive the former's economy by providing $10.5 billion in aid.

Importantly, it provides support to the Afghan national solidarity program, whose primary objective is to invigorate government agencies at the grassroots level. Up to now they have been the weakest link in the process of Afghanistan's recovery.

Under the program, local authorities at the level of shuras, or councils, of kishlaks, or villages, and regions submit their development plans for consideration by the Afghan Ministry of Rural Reconstruction and Development and international sponsors.

These plans provide for repairs of roads and bridges, construction of schools, paramedical centers, hospitals, and irrigation facilities. The international organizations earmark up to $50,000 to every recipient of aid, and monitor the spending. The ministry has received a total of $650 million. The program has already covered more than 17,000 of Afghanistan's 34,000 kishlaks. Indicatively, women are active on the local shuras, and not only in Kabul's suburbs, but also in eastern provinces, such as Paktia.

Consolidation is a painful process for the nation, because it is bound to run into a huge obstacle: the Pashtuns' historical dominance will run up against the growing role of national minorities, first and foremost, Tajiks, Hazara, and Uzbeks. These minorities were predominant in the Northern Alliance, which fought the Taliban, and now that they have come to power, they are reluctant to share it with Pashtuns. This problem is not unsolvable, but it requires time.

Afghans themselves believe that the government in Kabul has substantially enhanced security in the country's northern, western, and central provinces. A car ride from Herat to Kabul is a routine event now. The situation in all northern provinces is about the same, but it is much worse in the south and southwest, where the Taliban have become much more active.

Thus in 2006 more than 2,000 militants took part in hostilities on the Taliban's side. In effect, these were army operations. The number of terrorist attacks with explosives grew substantially, and there were 176 suicide bombings: In 2005, the relevant figure was no more than 100. The past year set a record in the number of victims -- more than 4,000 dead, compared with about 1,000 in 2005.

In the early stages of its counterterrorist campaign, the U.S. considerably weakened the Taliban's influence in the south and southeast of Afghanistan. The latter started increasing their influence mostly in the Pashtun-inhabited south for both objective and subjective reasons. But one of the main factors in the Taliban's revival was the support it received from some quarters in Pakistan's political establishment and radical Islamic movements.

This question is very sensitive for Afghanistan. Many local experts believe that Britain and China, which have levers of influence on Islamabad, should increase their efforts to end this support.

Today, there are two foreign military structures in Afghanistan: American troops and NATO's International Security Assistance Force with a total strength of 43,000. But today Afghanistan needs not only -- and maybe not so much -- military aid, as political and economic assistance from the world community.
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(Pyotr Goncharov is a political commentator with the RIA Novosti news agency. The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily coincide with those of the RIA Novosti editorial board. This article is reprinted by permission of RIA Novosti.)
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(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)
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In search of the Taliban
Sunday Herald - 03/05/2007 By Trevor Royle
AFGHANISTAN WAS never supposed to be a simple mission, nor is it turning out to be one. Five years into the West's involvement and less than a year since Nato took over responsibility for running the volatile southern and eastern areas of the country, there are worrying signs of drift, with both the US and Nato voicing concern about the internal security situation. Britain has been forced to increase the size of its force in Helmand province by sending an additional 1400 troops, and commanders on the ground would prefer a larger deployment.

Poppy production is also causing problems. Last year the country's opium production increased by 50%, making it the source of 92% of total global production, and the profits are being channelled into the Taliban to fund their insurgency against president Hamid Karzai's administration. A leaked UN report shows that the opium trade is worth $3 billion to the local economy and that the market is dominated by sophisticated criminal dealers who enjoy the protection of Taliban warlords.

To complicate the issue, neighbouring Pakistan has become part of the equation, with continued claims that the country's security forces have been aiding and abetting the Taliban and failing to crack down on suspected al-Qaeda cells in Quetta and Peshawar.

"Despite the stationing of around 80,000 troops in the tribal areas along the border, Pakistan has neither been able to prevent the al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters crossing the porous borders into Afghanistan nor to prevent the radicalisation of its own tribal belt," claims Harsh V Pant of the department of defence studies at King's College London. "The Taliban have found a particularly hospitable environment in Waziristan and the border areas of neighbouring Baluchistan."

advertisementIn Washington, the Bush administration has warned that Afghanistan risks becoming a failed state if the deteriorating internal security situation is not taken more seriously by Nato, and last week vice-president Dick Cheney warned president Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan that he had to do much more to stop the flow of Taliban fighters across the border.

There are fears that the Taliban are about to open a fresh offensive against Nato forces and that the insurgency will be difficult to contain as long as the Taliban receive unofficial strategic support from Pakistan. Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, has long been suspected of playing host to a Taliban headquarters, and that seemed to be confirmed on Friday when the Pakistani security forces arrested mullah Obaidullah Akhund, the highest ranking Taliban warlord to fall into their hands.

While the arrest has been hailed as a breakthrough, it will not remove the pressure on Musharraf, who stands accused of signing up to the war on terror but continuing to help the Taliban behind the scenes. A leaked British Defence Academy paper has already alleged that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has been lending support to the Taliban, and a recent Pakistani truce agreement with pro-Taliban elements in North Waziristan was met with undisguised fury in Washington. As part of the agreement, Musharraf agreed to end military activity in the area, which is suspected of being a haven for Taliban fighters and other militants.

With elections due later this year or early next year, Musharraf does not have his troubles to seek. In the wake of 9/11 he was given the choice of supporting Washington or being punished as a supporter of terrorism. With little option but to choose the former, he signed up to Bush's war against terror, and from time to time his security forces have delivered important information about terrorist activity. However, the suspicion remains that Musharraf has not done enough, and that what has been done, such as last week's arrest, has been done only as a sop to Washington.

Part of the problem is that Musharraf is being undermined by his own military. Despite all the denials, it is clear that both the army and ISI retain their links with the Taliban, because they view them as the best means of retaining Pakistani influence in Afghanistan. For many years the Taliban were seen as the best bet to stave off Indian influence, which has grown during Karzai's period in office. At the same time there has been an upsurge in anti-US sentiment in Pakistan, matched by a rise in Islamic militancy.

"Yes, we're unhappy about the lack of progress in containing the Taliban, and yes we've got our suspicions about the involvement of the Pakistanis in fomenting trouble in Afghanistan," says a US diplomatic source. "But no, we're not going to push Musharraf too hard, as we know only too well that he has to make compromises to remain in power."

While the north of Afghanistan remains relatively calm, there has been widespread disenchantment with the slow pace of redevelopment in the volatile southern provinces and a growing cynicism about the validity of Karzai's government. The most recent assessment by the CIA paints a bleak picture of a country on the brink of failure, and unable to exist without external military and financial support. While there have been improvements, the rate of reform has been too slow and unfocused. This has led to resentment with the Karzai regime and a growing perception that the Taliban is a valid alternative, hence the increasing number and ferocity of attacks against US and Nato forces.

And, thanks to the profits made out of the drug trade, it is not a problem that attracts easy solutions. Cash from the sale of poppies for drug production means that Taliban warlords can easily recruit fighters who are paid $100 a month, a huge amount of money in Afghanistan. Small wonder that US and Nato forces have evolved an eradication programme, and it is hardly surprising that Taliban fighters are doing all they can to resist it.
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Kabul calling
The Times of India, Editorial - 03/05/2007 By Mahendra Ved
Right-thinking people across the world are dismayed at efforts in Afghanistan to pass a law granting immunity to war criminals and exempting them from judicial proceedings.

"For bringing peace and reconciliation among various stratum in the society and starting a peaceful life in Afghanistan, all those political and belligerent sides, which were involved during the two and half decades of war, will not be prosecuted legally and judicially", says a resolution passed after a heated debate by the National Assembly.
It is part of a Bill that also seeks an extraordinary reconciliation commission to be formed within the assembly to accelerate the talks with opposition groups that include Taliban militants and the Mujahi-deen who fought each other during 1992-96.

It will be debated and put to vote in the upper House. President Hamid Karzai would need to sign it to become law. Shukria Barekzai, a woman member, walked out when the Bill was put to vote, saying, 'It is the act of some warlords who try to bury their past atrocities by approving such a Bill".

The UN, under whose aegis the Bonn Agreement was signed in December 2001 to usher in the present era in Afghanistan, has been the first to voice its strong opposition saying that it violates the basic tenets of human rights and the Geneva Convention.

Others, who have been concerned about the fratricidal conflict of nearly 30 years, are bound to follow suit. The UN has said: 'There can be no sustainable peace and security in Afghanistan without respect for the rule of law".

The criticism of the assembly's move is undoubtedly valid. However, it seems unmindful of the ground reality that prevails in Afghanistan. For one, Afghanistan's government and institutions are nascent and weak. The country has failed to stabilise politically and economically.

Worse, Taliban, yesterday's rulers, have not only survived, but have displayed a capacity for resurgence against a combined military force of the government in Kabul and its supporters within and outside.

Worst still, the past record of Taliban's adversaries, who are in power now - a good number of them elected to Parliament - has been no better. Indeed, people on both sides are responsible for human rights violations.

Non-combatants, women and children have been victims of their policy. Realising that he is too weak to take on Taliban, Karzai has repeatedly held out the olive branch, urging all to accept the constitution and join the national mainstream.

Parliament debated the Bill days after his last such appeal which, significantly, did not meet with the usual derisive rejection from Taliban.

The Taliban wants Karzai to evict all foreign forces before considering reconciliation. They know they have the upper hand. Any reconciliation would actually be a wholesale compromise. The role of Pakistan, the 'frontline' state in this fight, is well known.

Pakistan's own geopolitical interests, the Pushtuns' sympathetic stance towards Taliban and the presence of foreign mercenaries in the no-man's-land between Pakistan and Afghanistan, make Islamabad a broker of sorts.

While everyone in the Afghan imbroglio is committed to fighting terrorism, their actual role has been different. For some, this fight is just another phase of countering Russian and Chinese presence. The US has the biggest stake, but it has outsourced the task of Afghanistan's security to NATO.

Within NATO, the Germans and the French are losing interest, leaving the US and the UK, mainly, to hold the baby.

Despite claims to the contrary, and measly augmenting of forces, there is a certain fatigue in the West that began with the Iraq war and grows worse with the rising prospects of another one in Iran. All along, the US has never stopped looking for 'good' Taliban.

The British too reached an understanding with local tribes in the area they are supposed to police - something that is breached repeatedly. It would be unfair and unrealistic to expect the Afghans alone to abide by the Geneva Convention and human rights and conduct war crime trials.

Unlike South Africa, the Afghan Bill seeks to pave the way for a national reconciliation that is really guided by realpolitik. Unfortunately, Afghanistan is too poor and remote to be anything but a sacrificial lamb in the new Great Game.
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