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May 15, 2007 


Afghanistan Protests Pakistan's 'Flagrant Interference'
Daily Afghan Report  / May 15, 2007 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
The Pakistani ambassador to Afghanistan was summoned to the Afghan Foreign Ministry on May 14 to receive Afghanistan's "strong protest" over "provocative" actions by Pakistan, a statement posted on the Afghan Foreign Ministry's website said. Additionally, Afghanistan has sent an "official complaint" letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon regarding what it described as "flagrant interference and irresponsible actions by the Pakistani" military. Kabul claims that Pakistani forces entered Afghan territory and destroyed border posts, erecting their own posts in their place, Pajhwak Afghan News reported on May 14. According to the Afghan authorities, 13 Afghans, including six border policemen, have been killed in two days of clashes between Afghan and Pakistani forces. Defense Ministry spokesman Azimi said that in fighting on May 14, Afghan forces killed eight Pakistani soldiers and captured five. But Pakistani military spokesman Arshad said that no clashes occurred between Pakistani and Afghan forces on May 14, state-run PTV reported. The clashes have been taking place along a stretch of the Afghan-Pakistani border where Pakistan is erecting fences to stop militants and smugglers from moving illegally between the two countries. Kabul vehemently rejects the installation of fences or other barriers, because such measures would presumably lend legitimacy to a boundary that it is not properly demarcated and that Afghanistan does not officially recognize (see "RFE/RL Afghanistan Report," August 7, 2003 and January 15, 2007).
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Cabinet asks FM to summon Pak ambassador
KABUL, May 14 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The cabinet of President Hamid Karzai met here on Monday to discuss key issues including a deadly Pak-Afghan border clash and a couple of ministerial sackings over a crisis sparked by mass eviction of refugees from Iran.

Interior and defence ministers informed the cabinet that Pakistani border guards attacked Afghan posts in Zazai district of the southeastern Paktia province, where a dozen people were killed and injured.

Briefing journalists after the meeting, an official of the Parliamentary Affairs Ministry said the participants were told that a ceasefire had been secured. A team has been sent to the district to survey the damage caused by the heavy mortar fire and help the victims.

Dr. Sadiq Mudabber added, in compliance with a presidential decree, the delegation comprising ministers for border and tribal affairs, refugees, water and power and national security would meet the injured and families of the dead.

The cabinet asked Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta, who was voted out by Wolesi Jirga on Saturday but is still holding his office pending a court verdict, to summon Pakistans ambassador over the deadly attack on Afghan checkpoints.

According to Mudabber, President Karzai regretted the sacking of the foreign minister by Parliament and considered a second round of voting on his fate as contrary to the Constitution.

The official explained the president had sent Spantas case to the Supreme Court for interpretation under Article 95 of the Constitution. The top court would give its judgment in a couple of days.

Mudabber told a questioner the large-scale expulsion of refugees from Iran also figured prominently at the meeting. He said Iran had expressed its willingness for talks on the issue in response to a letter Karzai sent to his Iranian counterpart.

The deputy minister for refugee affairs and a delegation of the Foreign Ministry and Parliament will visit Iran for negotiations on the emotive subject.
Mustafa Basharat
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ISAF Blames Pakistan For Serviceman's Death
Daily Afghan Report  / May 15, 2007 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
A soldier attached to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was killed and four other ISAF troops were wounded near Teri Mangal in Pakistan on May 14, a statement on ISAF's website reported. A Pakistani soldier was also killed and three were injured in the attack. The soldiers were ambushed "by unknown assailants" after leaving a border meeting between ISAF, Afghan, and Pakistani representatives. While ISAF did not identify the soldiers' nationality, Pakistan armed forces spokesman Major General Wahid Arshad said the dead and injured ISAF troops were from the United States, Karachi-based Geo News TV reported on May 14. Arshad blamed unidentified "miscreants" for the attack. The meeting in Pakistan was organized in response to armed clashes between Afghan and Pakistani forces in the border region which began on May 13. Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman General Zaher Azimi said in Kabul on May 14 that "a Pakistani officer opened fire" on the joint Afghan-NATO delegation, killing two soldiers and wounding three, Kabul-based Tolo Television reported the same day. Azimi said one of the injured soldiers was Afghan, while the other four were "coalition soldiers," Tolo Television reported. According to Azimi, Afghan and U.S. forces returned fire, killing a "large number" of Pakistanis. However, Pakistani military spokesman Arshad rejected the Afghan Defense Ministry's claim that a Pakistani officer shot and killed U.S. soldiers, calling the charge totally incorrect, Geo reported on May 14. AT
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Afghanistan Says Clashes To Affect Ties With Pakistan
Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
KABUL, May 15, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Afghanistan says recent clashes between Afghan and Pakistani troops will have a negative impact on bilateral relations.

The comment by President Hamid Karzai's spokesman (Karim Rahimi) follows two days of deadly clashes at

the Afghan-Pakistan border. Kabul says the violence erupted Sunday (May 13) after Pakistani forces encroached inside Afghan territory. Islamabad accuses the Afghan army of sparking the battle with "unprovoked" fire at several of its border posts.
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Taliban replaces slain top commander with brother
By Saeed Ali Achakzai Tue May 15, 2:34 AM ET
SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Mullah Dadullah, the feared Taliban commander killed at the weekend in battle with U.S.-led forces in  Afghanistan, has been replaced by his younger brother, a Taliban spokesman said.

Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar appointed Mullah Bakht Mohammad to take the place of the insurgents' top operational commander in the south, Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousuf told Reuters.

The death of Dadullah, the main architect of suicide bombings, kidnappings of foreigners and Afghans, beheadings and a rise of violence in southern Afghanistan, was seen as the biggest blow to the Taliban since the start of the insurgency.

An ethnic Pashtun from the southern province of Uruzgan, Dadullah was a member of the Taliban's 10-member leadership council and took charge of battlefield operations in the south of Afghanistan in 2004.

"The Taliban will continue jihad under the command of the New Taliban commander, Mullah Bakht Mohammad," Qari said. "Our chief, Mullah Omar, asked the Afghan government to hand over Mullah Dadullah's dead body to his family soon."

Afghan authorities said on Monday they had buried Dadullah in an undisclosed location in the southern province of Kandahar but his relatives could rebury it if they wished.

Dadullah, who was called Afghanistan's Al Zarqawi after the slain leader of al Qaeda in  Iraq, lost a leg in a landmine blast during fighting in the 1990s. During the Taliban's rule from 1996 to 2001 he gained a reputation as a ruthless commander who ordered revenge massacres. Back to Top
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Dadullah's death hits Taliban hard
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Online / May 15, 2007
KARACHI - Now that Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah is dead, everybody, including Pakistani militants, al-Qaeda, Washington, Kabul and Islamabad, is weighing how this will affect the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.

The one-legged Dadullah, 41, was killed on Saturday in the southern province of Helmand, US and Afghan officials said on Sunday. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization's International Security Assistance Force confirmed the death, saying that after Dadullah had left his "sanctuary" in the south, he was killed in a

US-led coalition operation supported by NATO and Afghan troops.

One thing is clear. Dadullah's death will have no impact on the Taliban's formal political command structure. Mullah Omar remains firmly as head of the Taliban, with Jalaluddin Haqqani as his deputy chief.

However, Dadullah's death is certainly a serious blow to the Taliban's "soul" and their field strategy, as Dadullah had emerged as a ruthlessly efficient leader in the battlefield.

He was to be the driving force behind this year's spring offensive - Ghazwatul Badr - and he had enhanced his influence in the North and South Waziristan Pakistani tribal areas, and even made contact with the Pakistani establishment.

While Dadullah lacked much formal education, his unschooled intelligence gave him an astute understanding of the human mind. In 2005-06 he brokered a peace deal between the Pakistani armed forces and the Pakistani Taliban in North and South Waziristan and then worked to recruit Pakistani nationals into the Taliban. He advised Pakistani militants to be focused against NATO troops in Afghanistan rather than taking the war to Islamabad against President General Pervez Musharraf.

Dadullah was a natural leader in the battlefield as well as in strategic back yards. He rose to prominence in the Taliban movement in the mid-1990s, but did not have the wealth of war veterans of the Afghan resistance against the Soviets in the 1980s, like Ahmad Shah Massoud, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Jalaluddin Haqqani and Ismail Khan, who received millions of dollars in international aid to fight the Soviets.

Dadullah's popularity was not because he distributed cash and goods among the mujahideen and then enjoyed his tea on a ridge while his men fought. He derived loyalty because he fought alongside his men and suffered the same harsh conditions as them. This is how he died, in a fight with his men at his side.

Under Dadullah's command, the Taliban had taken over almost 80% of southwestern Afghanistan, and both Kabul and NATO-led forces have trumpeted his death as a major breakthrough.

And beyond the propaganda boost, they are correct, as the impetus of the insurgency will suffer, at least in the short term. And significantly, Dadullah's demise marks a shift of the Taliban's military command into the hands of "non-Taliban" and non-Kandahari commanders of southeastern Afghanistan, such as Haqqani.

The Taliban's spiritual home is Kandahar in the province of the same name, from where most of the Taliban leaders come, including Mullah Omar. With Dadullah gone, and before him leading commander Mullah Akhtar Osmani (killed in December), there could be a weakening of Mullah Omar's iron grip on Taliban military affairs.

The movement could become more reliant on southeastern Afghanistan, away from the Kandahar heartland, where Haqqani and Saifullah Mansoor hold sway, as well as Hizb-e-Islami Afghanistan's commanders under Hekmatyar.

Haqqani had recently been sidelined by Dadullah (see Pakistan gains from Taliban split, Asia Times Online, May 9), and now he could reassert himself.

Dadullah's cooperation with the Pakistani Taliban in the two Waziristans was unacceptable to Haqqani, who had been settled in North Waziristan for decades and had dreamed of the emergence of a conflict waged under his command from his bases in North and South Waziristan through 30,000 suicide bombers.

Instead, many of these recruits were diverted to fight with Dadullah. The face of the battlefield in Afghanistan could change yet again if Haqqani gets his way.

And Pakistan will be looking on with concern: its recently struck cooperation deal with Dadullah could be in jeopardy, as people like Haqqani were against it.

Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief.
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More Than 60 Suspected Taliban Killed in Southern Afghanistan
The Associated Press Tuesday, May 15, 2007; 3:02 AM
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- More than 60 suspected insurgents, including three regional commanders, were killed by airstrikes on two Taliban compounds Tuesday in volatile Kandahar province, the provincial police chief said.

The airstrikes were carried out at 3 a.m. local time in Kandahar's Zhari district, and many other suspected Taliban were wounded, said Kandahar police chief Esmatullah Alizai.

The number of casualties could not immediately be verified independently.

Alizai said NATO forces carried out the airstrike, but NATO's International Security Assistance Force did not immediately have any details. The U.S.-led coalition said it was not their operation.
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Six Taliban militants killed in Afghanistan
Kabul, May 15 (Xinhua) Afghan soldiers killed six Taliban insurgents in Nuristan province of northeastern Afghanistan, provincial governor Tamim Nuristani said.

The clash occurred Monday in Kamdesh district, said the governor, who did not mention the casualties of Afghan soldiers.

However, a local Afghan army commander said anonymously that six Afghan soldiers were killed and six others injured in the incident.

Due to rising Taliban-linked insurgency, over 1,300 persons, mostly Taliban militants, have been killed in Afghanistan this year.
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AFGHANISTAN-IRAN: Zahraa, "I was told to leave my home for good within one hour"
NIMRUZ, 15 May 2007 (IRIN) - Forty-eight-year-old Zahraa lived in the eastern Iranian city of Zabul for more than 12 years with her husband and two sons. On 8 May she was deported to Afghanistan for illegally staying in the country. She gave IRIN an account of what she said was her forced journey to Afghanistan.

"It was 10.00 am when somebody banged our door. My husband went to see who was out there. I could hear several men talking loudly to my husband. A few minutes later three police officers came into our yard and began yelling: 'You have only one hour. Hurry. Hurry.'

"The police told us to leave our home for good within one hour and go to Afghanistan.

"My husband was shocked – so was I. I begged the uniformed men to give us some time, but my husband said it was useless and that we had to leave. I could not believe it. How could we leave everything and go to Afghanistan at once?

"I started crying and declined to pack up our movable goods. I whimpered and said my sons are out at work and that we would not leave in their absence. We begged the police to give us only two days to inform our sons and collect all our belongings. But the police did not pay heed to our demands. When we started defying them and declined to leave, the police got angry and started beating my husband with their batons.

"Several blows"

"I was howling and struggled through to protect my husband. In doing so I received several blows on my back and legs. Then, while we were crying in a corner they [the police] started collecting our stuff. As they did so, they insulted us and used indecent words against all Afghans. One police officer told my husband that now that the Americans are in Afghanistan they should solve our problems. My husband only said that we are all Muslims.

"We were then taken to a deportees' centre by truck. It was around 5.00 pm when we reached it. There were hundreds of other Afghans in the centre, some of whom had suffered similar hardships. The centre had a few dirty toilets, plastic beakers and several halls filled with children and desperate women and men. We were not given anything for dinner. Some people, however, paid for biscuits and other foodstuffs for their children.

No means of communication

"Next morning we were driven to the border in big trucks. We were dropped near the bridge on the Iran-Afghan border. There were hundreds of people like us crossing the bridge to Afghanistan.

"For the last two days we have been staying with another family in a tent in this camp [deportees' transition centre in Zaranj, the provincial capital of southwestern Nimruz province in Afghanistan]. People are very kind here and we have received free food. But we are told we have to leave this place soon. We have no money and I do not know how we will be able to travel to our native province Bamyan [in central Afghanistan].

"We are also worried about our sons. We know they also will be deported – sooner or later. We do not have means of communication here. We just want to let our sons know that we are safe here in Afghanistan."
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Iran To Slow Down Expulsion Of Illegal Afghan Residents
Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
TEHRAN, May 14, 2007 -- Iran has agreed to slow down a drive to expel illegal Afghan residents to their home country.

Deputy Foreign Minister Mehdi Safari said President Mahmud Ahmadinejad has agreed to repatriate Afghans in a "gradual and orderly way." Safari spoke at a meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul a day after Iran said it had expelled 85,000 illegal Afghan refugees in the past three weeks.
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Afghan insurgent planned attacks on Britain, US
Washington (AFP) - Top Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah was training US and British citizens to carry out suicide attacks in their nations before he was killed, according to a video of the insurgent chief aired on US television.

"We are planning to carry out suicide and rocket attacks on those who are committing aggression on Afghanistan," the bearded fighter said in the subtitled video aired by ABC news on Monday.

"We will be executing attacks in Britain and the US to demonstrate our sincerity and make them understand how hard it is to endure under a foreign occupation," he said.

The attacks would aim "to make their women weep as our women are weeping, to make their elders weep as our elders are weeping and to destroy their cities as they have destroyed our cities."

Both the United States and Britain have troops in Afghanistan after a US-led invasion ousted the fundamentalist Taliban regime in 2001. Multinational NATO-led forces there are now fighting a fierce Taliban insurgency.

The video was of an interview carried out made some 36 hours before Dadullah's bullet-ridden corpse was recovered from fighting with US, Afghan and NATO forces and displayed on Sunday, the network said.

Linked to the beheading of hostages and training of suicide bombers, Dadullah, aged about 40, was one of the Taliban's top commanders and the most important rebel leader to be killed since the regime was driven from power.

Dressed in a black turban and clothing on the video, he linked his own planned attacks to the Al-Qaeda network, whose leader Osama Bin Laden was driven from Afghanistan by the 2001 invasion. "We and Al-Qaeda are as one. If we are preparing attacks, then it is likewise the work of Al-Qaeda."
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EU complains about civilian deaths in Afghanistan
Mon May 14, 3:19 PM ET
BRUSSELS (AFP) - German Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung said Monday that he had complained to NATO about the increased number of civilian casualties during US-led military operations in Afghanistan.

"I have told the NATO Secretary General ... that we have to make sure that such operations are not carried out in the future," said Jung, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency until the end of next month.

"We must ensure that operations do not develop this way. It would not be a victory to set the (Afghan) people against us," he said, after talks between EU defence ministers in Brussels.

Some 20 Afghan villagers were killed last week in an operation by US-led coalition forces in southern Afghanistan, according to Afghan officials.

The coalition is smarting from claims of mounting civilian casualties after nearly 60 other people were said to have been killed in its operations late last month, according to investigations and residents.

A NATO spokesman confirmed that Jung and NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer had discussed the issue at a working dinner held by the defence ministers.

"The two leaders agreed that everything must be done to reduce the number of civilian casualties," the spokesman said.

A NATO diplomat said the problem could be raised at the alliance's headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday during a routine weekly meeting between ambassadors from the 26 NATO member countries.

NATO is leading a force of some 37,000 troops from 37 nations in Afghanistan which is trying to extend the political reach of President Hamid Karzai's weak central government to more lawless outlying regions.

The US-led coalition is a separate force around 10,000-strong which, while it does coordinate with the NATO-led contingent, is mainly involved in "anti-terror" operations.

"We have to rebuild confidence and do everything we can to ensure that, in the future, we gain visibility" among the population by making progress with reconstruction work, said Jung.

Germany has some 3,000 military personnel deployed in Afghanistan with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), most of them in the relatively peaceful north of the conflict-torn country.

Almost none are assigned in the south or east where Taliban fighters backed by war lords and drug runners have been waging an insurgency.

Helmand provincial governor Assadullah Wafa said last week that foreign war planes bombed a village in the Sangin district late Tuesday, and that 21 civilians, including women and children were killed.

A man from the bombed village of Sarwan Qala told AFP that about 30 died.

The coalition said only that it was involved in an "engagement" in the same area of Sangin but made no mention of air strikes.

It said a coalition soldier was killed there when an Afghan and coalition convoy was attacked by Taliban fighters.
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Bombing in Pakistan border area kills 25
By RIAZ KHAN Associated Press May 15, 2007
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - A suicide bomber with a warning to spies for America taped to his leg attacked a crowded restaurant Tuesday near the Afghan border, killing at least 25 people days after a relative of the Taliban's slain commander was arrested there, officials said.

The explosion deepened instability in a country still reeling from deadly political riots over the weekend in its commercial capital, Karachi. The attack appeared unrelated to that unrest, but rather the work of an Islamic militant.

Provincial police chief Sharif Virk said the message taped to the severed leg of the bomber said spies for America would meet the same fate as those killed and included the Persian word "Khurasan" — often used in militant videos to describe Afghanistan.

The owner of the hotel restaurant, who was killed in the bombing, was an Afghan with ties to an anti-Taliban warlord, and the restaurant itself was popular with many Afghans.

Two security officials told The Associated Press that a close relative of the Taliban military commander Mullah Dadullah was arrested in the restaurant a few days before Tuesday's attack. The officials, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, refused to be identified.

They declined to say whether the arrest had helped the U.S. military track down Dadullah over the weekend and kill him in southern Afghanistan — one of the most senior militant leaders to die since the ouster of the Taliban regime in late 2001 for hosting al-Qaida.

Earlier, Javed Iqbal Cheema, a top Pakistani counterterrorism official, told a news conference he did not think the bombing was linked to Dadullah and denied that Pakistan had provided any intelligence that led to his killing.

"I would only say that Dadullah was killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan did not provide any intelligence on Dadullah," he said in Islamabad.

However, a senior investigator said police were examining whether Tuesday's attack could be linked to events in Pakistan's volatile tribal regions or Afghanistan.

Hassan Khan, a waiter in the ground-floor restaurant, said he survived only because he was delivering food to guests in their rooms when the blast occurred.

"I lost my senses, and when I came round and ran to see, there were dead bodies and body parts everywhere, even out in the street," said Khan, whose clothes were stained with blood and soot.

He said the bomb went off soon after the Afghan owner of the restaurant, Saddar Uddin, had returned from a trip outside with some relatives. Uddin, his two sons and two other relatives as well as seven employees were among the dead, he said.

An intelligence official said Uddin, an ethnic Uzbek, had links to the party of the anti-Taliban warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, part of the Northern Alliance that toppled the Taliban regime in Afghanistan with U.S. support in 2001.

Like the investigator, the intelligence official requested anonymity because he was not authorized to comment to journalists.

Cheema said 25 people were killed and 30 wounded in the bombing.

Windows of the hotel front were shattered and fans hanging from the roof were twisted. Windows were also shattered in nearby buildings. Television footage showed the bloodied bodies of victims on stretchers being bundled into waiting ambulances and then carried chaotically through the crowded corridors of nearby hospitals.

Tariq Khan, a 35-year-old jeweler with a shop on the same street, said the explosion left him in shock for several minutes.

"Then I saw dust and smoke everywhere," Khan said. "People who were injured were crying and wailing."

Peshawar has suffered periodic bomb attacks in recent years.

In January, a suicide bombing near a Shiite mosque killed 15 people and wounded more than 30, mostly police.

On April 28, a suicide attack on Pakistan's Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao in the nearby town of Charsadda killed 28 people. Sherpao was slightly hurt in the blast, the latest in a series of top Pakistani officials to be targeted by militants.

Islamic militants have increasingly asserted themselves in Pakistan's frontier regions, where scores of people have been executed over the past two or three years apparently for being too aligned with the Pakistani government or America — allies in the U.S.-led war on terrorism.
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Power Struggle in Afghanistan
By Christian Neef SPIEGEL ONLINE May 14, 2007
NEW ALLIANCE THREATENS KARZAI
In Afghanistan, an odd, new alliance of Mujahedeen, old communists, and royalists is threatening President Hamid Karzai's leadership. But can the motley crew solve the country's problems?

Such massive security precautions -- just to attend a national holiday parade -- can hardly be a good sign for the country. First, secret police secure the bridge over the Kabul River. Then armored cars, machine guns protruding from their rotating towers, roll into position as sharpshooters fan out in the ruins of the old city center. A Special Forces unit is perched on the roof of the Id-Gah Mosque to keep a watchful eye on the VIP rostrum.

Finally, at just past 9 a.m., half a dozen police cars speed into the square, sirens blaring. The day's leading man slips almost unnoticed out of a car in the middle of the motorcade. Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, has arrived.

The boulevard between the river and Kabul's bustling Maiwand Street has seen its fair share of celebrations. In 1919, after the Third Anglo-Afghan War, King Amanullah stood here and proclaimed Afghanistan's freedom from Great Britain. Rulers have been crowned here; rebels have marched here; the communists demonstrated here.

Today, Kabul's establishment is celebrating the anniversary of the "Islamic Revolution" here. In Afghanistan, the reference is to the overthrow of the Najibullah regime in 1992 and the takeover by the Mujahedeen; the Karzai government elected to name April 28th -- the day the holy warriors triumphed over the communists loyal to Moscow -- as the fledgling democracy's national holiday. Smoking tanks roll past the rostrum, followed by limping war veterans, and the first fighter jets from the Afghan National Army scream through the sky above.

They Only Serve the Enemy

And the cheering crowds out to celebrate Afghanistan's independence? They are nowhere to be seen; the entire area has been cordoned off. Besides, there is hardly reason to celebrate, a fact that can be easily read from Karzai's speech to the honored guests. The country, Karzai bemoans, cannot seem to find peace despite the government's invitation to cooperate with the Taliban. The government itself is far from healthy; differences within must be reconciled, Karzai warns, because they only serve the enemy.

A portrait of national hero Ahmed Shah Massoud hangs across from the grandstand. The army he led, the so-called Northern Alliance, chased the Taliban away five years ago. The general did not get a chance to witness his accomplishment, however, having been assassinated shortly beforehand. In his place, his brother Ahmed Zia Massoud stands next to Karzai on the grandstand. He is now Afghanistan's first vice president.

It is he who is meant first and foremost when the president speaks of "differences."

Four weeks ago, Massoud staged a putsch against Karzai -- that, at least, is how his detractors describe what happened. Others say it was concern for the country's future that drove him to action. However one chooses to see it, Karzai was on a visit to India when his vice president -- acting head of state with the president out of the country -- appeared at a dubious event in Kabul's old luxury hotel, the Intercontinental. It was the founding ceremony of the United National Front of Afghanistan -- and the most bewildering collection of people Kabulis had ever seen together.

Former warlord and Karzai's current chief of staff General Dostam was there, as was ex-Governor Ismail Khan -- known as the "Lion of Herat" during the anti-Soviet resistance -- which is currently the minister of energy. Former Minister of Defense and former head of the Northern Alliance's secret service Marshal Fahim was also there along with retired General Olumi, who was Najibullah's army chief in Kandahar. Then there were Yunus Qanuni, currently speaker of the parliament, and Sayed Mohammad Gulabzoy, who as a communist lieutenant toppled head of state Daud in 1978. Also sitting there were Prince Mustafa, the favorite grandson of King Mohammad Zahir, who returned from exile five years ago, and -- initiator of the meeting -- Burhanuddin Rabbani, recognized the world over as president of Afghanistan under the Mujahedeen and even during Taliban times -- a radical Islamist and opponent of democracy.

It was a gathering of people who were once bitter enemies and who have been blamed for a number of serious human rights violations. During the bloody civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal, men like Rabbani and Dostam turned Kabul into a pile of rubble, killing thousands of civilians. If they had been born in the Balkans, they and others like them would likely be sitting in a cell at the International Criminal Court in The Hague today.

But in the Intercontinental, they adopted a manifesto calling for the abolishment of the presidential system and for the election of governors. In other words, they were urging nothing less than the overthrow of Karzai and the re-establishment of their former power as tribal chiefs and provincial warlords.

Leadership Installed by Foreigners

The government-friendly Afghanistan Times later joked that the assembly was one of "infidels and traitors," a meeting of those who had missed out and who now wanted to take advantage of the state's temporary weakness. Others took the event more seriously -- and rightly so. The National Front represents the founding of the first-ever catch-all for all the political heavyweights who have played a role in Afghan politics over the past decades -- and who are now skeptical of what they see as a leadership installed by foreigners.

The event's importance did not escape Hamid Karzai either. The front is "supported by foreign embassies," he said angrily after his return from India -- by which he especially meant Iran. Parliamentary voices loyal to the government have demanded that Vice President Massoud and any cabinet members who joined the Rabbani front resign.

Burhanuddin Rabbani, 64, is certainly not unhappy about all the commotion. This professor of theology who so doggedly resisted giving up his office to Hamid Karzai in the fall of 2001 resides in a villa in the exclusive Wazir Akbar Khan district of Kabul. The street entering the district is barricaded by bodyguards.

"Yes," says Rabbani and sighs, "the government is spreading propaganda about us. But we want the same thing as Karzai: more security in the country once and for all." Sitting bolt upright, the white-bearded Tajik is imposing in his black turban as he sips at his tea. "More security won't happen without us -- the national leaders who were pushed aside in 2001."

After the Tea Comes the "But"

The front isn't going to jump the gun, assures the smiling former president, it's all a matter of time. But you have to consider that the public supports his alliance and not Karzai. Even members of the royal family have joined his movement.

He is talking about Mustafa Zahir. The prince is like a trophy for the front and he had nothing to do with Afghanistan's recent wars having been in exile in Rome with his grandfather. "I was special assistant to His Majesty, the father of the nation, and his personal secretary until 2001," Mustafa says. Now he is "president" of the Afghan agency for environmental protection, "the same rank as a minister," he emphasizes. His grandfather, the former monarch, lives in the royal palace once again, but the 92-year-old spends more time with his doctors in America or in Abu Dhabi than in Kabul.

Things have gotten better in Afghanistan in the last five years, the 43-year-old prince explains. He is wearing a light-colored blazer over the national dress, and the Tasbih, the Muslim rosary, glides endlessly through the fine fingers bearing a lapis lazuli ring. The people elected a parliament, the currency is worth something again and five million children have begun going to school again. It takes nearly an hour and several pots of green tea before the prince comes to the "but."

"But as a normal citizen," he says now, he has been "disappointed" by the Karzai regime. Fully 1,347 deputies out of 1,500, he claims, had voiced their support in parliament for his grandfather as head of state. Who exactly pushed his grandfather aside, he won't say -- what he means is that the Americans wanted Karzai and no one else from the very beginning.

But the security situation, he complains, has become atrocious -- so bad, in fact, that the prince doesn't dare venture past the Khair Khana Pass in northern Kabul when it's dark. Furthermore, he says the corruption is worse under Karzai than under the communists, the Mujahedeen and the Taliban put together, that the police raid and plunder the city at night and that no one knows what happened to the billions in foreign aid.

"I realized that my joining the Rabbani front would be risky," says the king's grandson, whom the Economist already considers a promising heir to Karzai. However, he courageously put national interest before his party, family and personal interests. "We must build bridges to our unhappy brothers and sisters," he says.

A Government Reshuffle

One of these is Sayed Gulabzoy, 55, once minister of the interior under Najibullah -- a man whose hand Prince Mustafa would not have shaken in the past. After 17 years in exile in Russia, he is back in the country and even a member of parliament.

His tribe and friends from five provinces, as well as many who have were disappointed with the Karzai regime, pushed him to run for office, says the retired colonel general. The narcotics boom and corruption? They were never a problem under "Dr. Najibullah." The worst, however, is that the new leadership forced 45,000 well-trained army officers into unemployment along with 7,500 men from the ministry of the interior -- if you include their families, that makes a quarter of a million Afghans "who now live in poverty."

It is this resentment that former head of state Rabbani, the man with the honed instinct for power, channels through his united front. He knows that even generals in the new army support his plan. Hamid Karzai, called the great accommodator by Western observers in Kabul, also tries to come to terms with his critics. Against Western advice, he granted amnesty to all war criminals as demanded by the Mujahedeen. Rumors say he is also preparing for a government reshuffle -- in favor of the Rabbani followers.

The question remains what game Karzai's deputy, Ahmed Zia Massoud, is playing. "The people must decide about the future," says the national hero's brother from his seat in the Sederat, a palace dating back to British times. And of course "everyone has the right to belong to any party," even a member of the government. He'd rather not speak of the fact that he is Rabbani's brother in law.
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Returnees from Iran to be sent to their provinces: IOM
KABUL, May 14 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) will send tens of thousands of refugees expelled from Iran in recent weeks to their native provinces in Afghanistan.

At a news conference here, IOM Director-General Fernand Arocena said they were in talks with the Afghan Transport Ministry on the transfer of the refugees to their respective provinces.

About 55,000 people were pushed into Herat and Nimroz provinces, said Arocena, who voiced concern over the lack of jobs for the returnees in provinces of their origin. Nevertheless, the IOM DG promised they had supportive programme for the returnees.

Nimroz officials should find a specific location for new returnees, the official stressed, regretting the attitude of Iranian police towards the refugees - some of whom complained of violence and torture upon reaching Afghanistan.
Ahmad Khalid Mohid
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Hekmatyar says he has no links with ISI, JI
TORKHAM, May 14 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Former premier and fugitive chief of the Hezb-i-Islami Afghanistan (HIA), Gulbadin Hekmatyar, has spurned reports about his links with the Pakistans influential military intelligence agency ISI and rightwing Jamaat-i-Islami party.

In a fresh videotape provided to Pajhwok Afghan News on Monday, the HIA chief accused leaders of the then Northern Alliance (NA) of receiving money and military support from Iran and Russia. 

The veteran jihadi leader took great pains to establish that he had no association either with the ISI or Jamaat-i-Islami (JI). Hekmatyar also tried to scotch speculation that the JI was in a bid to bring him close to the powerful agency.

"Jamaat-i-Islami is not serving a bridge between us and the Inter-Services Intelligence," Hekmatyar said, adding a military organisation would never establish contacts with Islamic parties or those working for the implementation of Shariah.

Additionally, he argued, the Jamaat-i-Islami had developed serious differences with President Pervez Musharraf and the two "hate each other's guts." How the JI could bring him closer to the ISI in the prevailing circumstances, the ex-prime minister asked.

"Jamaat-i-Islami and ISI have never helped us ever since I declared a jihad (holy war) against foreign forces in Afghanistan," insisted Hekmatyar, carrying a huge bounty on his head from the US. 

In the videotape, Hekmatyar blasted Iran and Russia for interference in the internal affairs of Afghanistan by arming and financing the Northern Alliance.

Referring to the formation of the Jubha-i-Milli, or National Front, headed by former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, Hekmatyar said it was the latest manifestation of Iranian and Russian meddling in Afghanistan.

Hekmatyar, who also rejected links with al-Qaeda, claimed its head Osama bin Laden was alive but keeping a low profile to avoid arrest.
Janullah Hashimzada
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MPs boycott session against presidential action
KABUL, May 13 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Members of Lower House of Parliament, protesting President Karzai's decision of referring Spanta's unseating to the Supreme Court for interpretation, boycotted Sunday's session.

The boycott would continue to go on if the minister was not removed from his post, warned the protesting MPs.

Foreign Minister Dr Rangin Dadfar Spanta was sacked by the parliament through a no-trust vote on Saturday.

However, President Hamid Karzai referred the issue to the Supreme Court for interpretation the same day.

Karzai has questioned the summoning of the foreign minister to Parliament over an issue 'not directly related to his job'. The president also sought court interpretation on twice summoning a minister to Parliament on the same question.

The president had directed the foreign minister to continue in his office till the verdict of the apex court, said a press release issued from the Presidential Palace last evening.

During Sunday's session, members of the House termed President Karzai's interference in the matter against the Constitution.

The parliament had the right to remove a minister through no-trust vote for valid reasons, said the MPs. They said reasons behind the action against the minister were clear.

Speaking on the issue, a parliamentarian Ahmad Behzad said he wished the president should have dissolved the parliament along with his action. Because, he said, the decree was "an insult" to the Parliament.

Ruling out Spanta's stay in his office, Speaker of the House Younus Qanuni said "we don't expect it".

However, some other members believed referring of the issue to the Supreme Court by President Karzai was in line with the Constitution.

Noor Akbari, MP from the central Daikundi province, said keeping a look on constitutional matters was the jurisdiction of the president and he had done the right thing by seeking interpretation from the court.

Female member of the parliament from the eastern Nangarhar province Shukria Barakzai also threw her weight behind the president and said he had the authority to ask for interpretation on an issue.
Makia Munir
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First-ever govt-owned fish farm in Parwan
CHARIKAR, May 13 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The first-ever government-owned fishery was launched in the central Parwan province on Sunday.

The fish farm, built in Tajikan village of the Jabal Siraj district, will start production in the coming six months, officials told Pajhwok Afghan News.

Amount for setting up of the fishery was provided by the government of France. Ahmad Zia Sharifi, representative of the French embassy in Kabul, said supply in the market would begin in the coming six months.

Director of the agriculture department Shah Mir Ameeri said dozens of private farms were present in the province, but that was the first government-owned fish farm to be set up here.

A farmer Abdul Khaliq said he also intended to set up a fish farm and start running his own business.

People hunt fish by using explosives or passing electric current through water, which kill even the new-born fish.

Agricultural officials in Parwan province said fish at the newly-opened fish farm have resistance against climate changes and can grow faster.

Two weeks back, a fish farm was established with French support in Takhar province.

Sharifi said fish farms at Qargha lake with 50,000 fish and another in the central Kapisa province, had been established at the cost of $164,000 last year.

According officials of the Agriculture Ministry, there were fish farms in Salang, Naghloo and Darunta Lake, but those destroyed during the years of war and civil strife.
Farid Tanha
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Better border management to spur revenues, says Ahady
S. Mudassir Ali Shah
KABUL, May 13 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Finance Minister Dr. Anwar Ul Haq Ahady and European Commission delegation's head Ambassador Hansj.rg Kretschmer Sunday laid the cornerstone of a new customs terminal in Sher Khan Bandar in the northern Kunduz province, bordering Tajikistan.

Lack of efficient facilities is one of our biggest problems in managing borders, controlling incoming and outgoing goods, promoting trade and generating revenues, the finance minister told a ceremony.

But we are working hard to cope with this problem by building customs facilities where we have none, and modernising those we already have, Ahady added, acknowledging the European Commission was playing an instrumental role in assisting the government of Afghanistan in the process.

One of the biggest construction efforts going on in Central Asia, the custom terminal at the Sher Khan Bandar border post is seen as a major step towards improving border facilities, regional trade and generating important revenues for the Afghan government.

It is hoped the new bridge and improved border infrastructure will lead to a substantial increase in trade with Tajikistan, with the customs terminal expected to process 1000 trucks a day. The total covered surface will exceed 5,100 square meters, including the main customs building, import warehouse and accommodation for customs officials.

Operational area of the terminal tops 35,000 square meters. The construction of the new customs terminal is funded by the European Commission with a 5 million contribution.

Addressing the ceremony, Ambassador Hansj.rg Kretschmer said: The European Commission has been engaged with the government of Afghanistan in an ambitious border management programme.

The ambassador promised: We will continue to cooperate with the government on border management, because it is an important tool to ensure the rule of law, promote regional cooperation and enhance the revenue of the state.

The works in Sher Khan Bandar are part of a programme on Integrated Border Management Support in North-Eastern Afghanistan worth of 22,2 million, which was signed by the Ministry of Finance and the European Commission last December.

This agreement also includes a new border police building at Emam Sahib, border crossing points in Badakhshan at Nozay, Sheghnan and Eshkashem, as well as the second phase of the reconstruction of the Torkham border post.

The first phase of the construction of the Torkham border post was completed in 2006 with support from the European Commission.
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