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May 28, 2007 

Nine dead as Afghan police clash with protesters
by Shoib Najafizada
SHIBERGHAN, Afghanistan (AFP) - Nine people were killed and 32 wounded in northern        Afghanistan Monday when police opened fire to break up a violent protest by a warlord's supporters, a doctor and witnesses said.

The incident happened as stone-throwing followers of ethnic Uzbek warlord and former Northern Alliance commander Abdul Rashid Dostam rallied to demand the removal of the governor of Jowzjan province.

"We have nine people dead in the hospital and we registered another 32 wounded," Simia Jan, the director of the hospital in the provincial capital, Shiberghan, told AFP.

Jan said most of the wounds were from bullets.

The interior ministry said in a statement that police were not informed of the protest in advance and that it was illegal.

"Police trying to protect public property came under armed attack from supporters of General Dostam, wounding four police. Tens of armed people attacked the guards of the governors' office and disarmed them," it said.

Witness Jan Ali told AFP by telephone that hundreds of people were protesting against governor Juma Khan Hamdard and hurling rocks at his office when police opened fire.

Habibul Rehman, one of the protesters, blamed police for opening fire first.

"We protested against the governor, since he is a Pashtun and only works for Pashtuns. Some of the protesters threw stones at police and then police opened fire killing at least seven people that I witnessed," he told AFP.

But deputy provincial police chief Mohammad Ibrahim said the protest turned violent after some of the armed protesters fired at police.

"The protesters opened fire first, the police tried to control and defend," he said.

The governor's spokesman Rohullah Samoon said that some of the protesters opened fire as they tried to storm the governor's office.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the protest and ordered the interior ministry to investigate.

Jowzjan is one of the strongholds of Dostam, a former key general in the Northern Alliance, which helped US-led forces topple the ultra-Islamic Taliban government in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Dostam recently called for provincial governors to be appointed via local elections instead of by the central government in Kabul, in what critics say is an attempt to consolidate his power.

The protest was "Dostam's attack on the government," Samoon said, adding that protesters had been chanting "This governor has been imposed on us."

Northern Afghanistan has suffered from similar political tensions in recent years. There were protests and clashes between supporters of Dostam and his rival Uzbek General Abdul Malik last year.

Dostam was a losing candidate in the 2004 presidential election, won by Karzai.

He gained a reputation as a turncoat, starting out in the 1980s fighting for the Soviet Union against Afghan mujahideen commanders and then backing communist president Najibullah after the Soviets left.

During the civil war that followed the fall of Najibullah he switched sides to support late resistance leader Ahmad Shah Masood and then went over to rival warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Dostam retreated to northern Afghanistan and built a fiefdom in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif, after battling with the Taliban for control of the city in 1997 in a brutal campaign marked by massacres of retreating troops.
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Thirteen killed in Afghan protest: witnesses
By Tahir Qadiry
MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Thirteen people were killed and 35 wounded in        Afghanistan on Monday when police opened fire to break up a violent protest against a provincial governor, witnesses said.

More than 1,000 people were protesting to demand the removal of Juma Khan Hamdard, governor of the northern province of Jowzjan, and were throwing stones at several government offices in Shiberghan, the provincial capital, witnesses said.

Police fired to stop the protesters from raiding the offices, the witnesses said. A provincial government spokesman said the protesters were supporters of General Abdul Rashid Dostum, for years a powerful military commander in the Afghan north.

"We've got 13 dead and 35 wounded," said Naqibullah, a doctor at Shiberghan's main hospital, adding some of the wounded were in critical condition. Four police were also wounded, but it was not clear how, witnesses said.

Provincial spokesman Rohullah Samun, confirmed the casualties but said they were caused by the protesters. He said police fired into the air to disperse the protesters.

He said the protesters had staged an "uprising against the provincial government" and wanted to bring down the government flag and install that of Dostum's faction.

"They were militias of Dostum," he said.

By midday, the protests came to an end and by then army troops were stationed in key government buildings to maintain order and help police.

The troops were sent in at the request of provincial officials, the defense ministry said in a statement.

Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek and a former communist, has been involved in a series of coups and regime changes in nearly three decades of Afghanistan's conflict.

He considered northern areas as his fiefdom, but his powers have been reduced to a large extent in recent years, though he still is officially a military aide to President Hamid Karzai.

A pro-federalist, Dostum has been accused in the past by several provincial officials in the north of bullying them.

(With additional reporting and writing by Sayed Salahuddin)
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Broader international effort needed for Afghanistan: Canadian FM
Mon May 28, 4:45 AM ET
OTTAWA (AFP) - Canadian Foreign Minister Peter Mackay has called for a "greater collective effort" in        Afghanistan, saying        NATO member states and even Russia and China could do more to help the country.

"There is a greater collective effort to be made," Mackay said in an interview broadcast by the CBC network on Sunday.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan "needs everyone" to help, he said.

Mackay said that several NATO countries with forces deployed in Afghanistan were not doing as much as they could, especially in the south, noting that only seven of the 37 nations with forces in Afghanistan were present in that region.

"The mission is more vulnerable without a complete support from NATO Afghanistan forces," he said.

"It is not just soldiers," Mackay said of the assistance needed, "it is equipment, it is the training they can provide to Afghan officials and security forces, it is the backup, the ability to transport, border security."

"Even non-NATO countries can do more, including ... China and Russia," he said, without elaborating.

Without more of a joint international effort, the mission in Afghanistan will remain vulnerable, said Mackay, who described southern Afghanistan as the "weak underbelly of the country."

"Until we are able to stop that flow of the insurgency," he said, "more lives will be at risk, including Canadians."

The ISAf force in Afghanistan deploys 37,000 troops from 37 nations, including 2,500 Canadians whose mission could extend beyond a February 2009 deadline, according to officials in Ottawa.

Since the start of their mission in 2002, 55 Canadian soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan and 11 since the beginning of 2007. A Canadian diplomat has also lost his life in the country.
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Up to 380 civilians killed in Afghan violence this year: UN
KABUL (AFP) - Up to 380 Afghan civilians have been killed in fighting between Taliban insurgents and Afghan and international forces this year, the        United Nations said Monday.

"In the first four months of the year there were in the range of 320 to 380 civilians killed," said Richard Bennett, human rights chief at the UN mission here.

The figures included those killed by international troops and by Taliban attacks, including suicide bombings.

Hundreds more were wounded, he told a news conference in Kabul.

"In addition to deaths and injuries, civilians are affected in many other ways: they are forced to become IDPs (internally displaced persons) and their properties have been destroyed," Bennett added.

Bennett stressed that, besides increased US and        NATO-led operations against insurgents, Taliban attacks had risen this year compared with 2006.

"To take one example, in March and April this year there were 37 suicide bombings -- last year in the same period there were 23," he said.

Bennett said that the UN mission had stepped up efforts to protect civilians and planned a conference in August with Afghan and foreign forces as well as community leaders of the violence-plagued regions.

"The conference will bring together the government of        Afghanistan together with Afghan and international forces ... including community representatives to look at ways to ensure the safety and welfare of all communities," he said.

He said consultations with community leaders in the southern and eastern regions, where Taliban militants are most active, had already began.

Bennett called on all parties to avoid civilian deaths while battling each other.

"International humanitarian law is clear -- the safety of civilians must come first and foremost," he added.

Bennett's comments came after UN and Afghan government investigators found last month that more than 50 Afghan civilians including women and children were killed in US-led raids on the Taliban in the western province of Herat.
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U.N. urges foreign forces, Taliban to cut civilian deaths
By Jim Loney Mon May 28, 5:57 AM ET
KABUL (Reuters) - U.N. officials in        Afghanistan said on Monday that up to 380 civilians were killed in the Afghan conflict in the first four months of 2007 and called on Western military forces and the Taliban to respect laws protecting civilians.

NATO and the U.S.-led coalition forces have been under fire for a recent surge in civilian casualties in the nearly 6-year-old war against the Taliban, ousted from government for harboring al Qaeda in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Afghans have staged angry protests in recent weeks against aerial bombing by Western forces and President Hamid Karzai has warned that Afghans' patience with foreign troops is wearing thin. "International humanitarian law is clear. The protection and safety of civilians must come first and foremost," Richard Bennett, the U.N.'s top human rights officer in Afghanistan, said at a news conference in Kabul. "This principle needs to be respected by all parties to this conflict."

Fighting has picked up in recent weeks following the usual winter lull. Taliban suicide bombers strike several times a week and NATO and the U.S. coalition report clashes with Taliban fighters nearly every day.

Officials in Western capitals have expressed concern that the surging number of civilian casualties risks damaging relations with ordinary Afghans, many of who initially welcomed foreign troops.

U.N. officials said it was difficult to determine the exact number of civilians killed recently because they had limited access to remote locations and conflicting information from villagers and the combatants.

But pressed for a number, Bennett said: "We believe that in the first four months of the year there was in the range of 320 to 380 civilians killed."

This number is much higher than one offered last week by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, which said about 136 civilians had been killed to date this year.

Reluctant to directly accuse foreign forces of violating international human rights laws, U.N. officials said civilian casualties in war are often unavoidable but the use of force must be proportional to the military advantage gained through its use.

They cited an example of a suicide bomber who blows himself up in a crowded market as an example of how the insurgents use excessive force that violates international humanitarian laws.

NATO said last week that 85 people, including 40 civilians, died in the first 23 days of May from improvised explosive devices, including suicide and roadside bombs.

"Insurgent groups and their leadership must stop the wanton disregard they have shown for innocent life including suicide bomb attacks, the use of IEDs, abductions, beheadings and the deliberate use of civilian locations to plan and launch attacks," Bennett said.

Asked for a similar example of foreign or Afghan military forces using such excessive force, Bennett cited a March 4 incident in which U.S. forces opened fire on civilians on a road near Jalalabad, east of the capital. A U.S. military official apologized for the deaths of 19 Afghans and the wounding of 50.

NATO and U.S. officials say they take strict measures limit aerial bombing in order to avoid civilian casualties and accuse the Taliban of using civilians as human shields.
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Two dozen Taliban killed in Afghanistan battle: coalition
Mon May 28, 3:27 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - Two dozen Taliban militants were killed when US-led forces backed by warplanes repelled an ambush on a supply convoy in        Afghanistan, the coalition said Monday.

A 10-hour gunbattle broke out after two roadside bombs hit the convoy of 24 trucks in volatile Helmand province on Sunday, killing a civilian truck driver and wounding three coalition troops, it said in a statement.

Joint Afghan and coalition forces called in air strikes after insurgents followed up the blasts with rocket propelled grenades and small-arms fire, the statement said.

"There were an estimated two dozen enemy fighters killed, four enemy vehicles and one enemy fighting position destroyed during the 10-hour battle," it added.

The wounded coalition soldiers were evacuated and are in a stable condition, it said.

Helmand has seen some of the worst violence in a spreading insurgency led by the Taliban militia, especially in Sangin district, where the ambushed convoy was headed for.

More than 1,500 people, most of them rebels, have been killed in the violence so far this year.
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Two Afghans killed in attack on US firm
Mon May 28, 3:22 AM ET
MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan (AFP) - A suicide attack aimed at US private security contractors in northern        Afghanistan killed two Afghan civilians and wounded another on Monday, officials said.

The bomber detonated explosives strapped to his body as an armoured vehicle from the US firm Dyncorp slowed down at a speed bump in Kunduz city, provincial police chief Mohammad Ayob Salangi said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

"Two civilians were martyred and another civilian was wounded," deputy provincial police chief general Amar Khail told AFP. The interior ministry also confirmed the toll in a statement.

Officials said there were no foreign casualties.

A spokesman for German troops stationed in the province with the        NATO-led International Security Assistance Force confirmed the suicide blast and said none of its soldiers were involved.

"The suicide attack was against an American organisation, Dyncorp. There were no German forces in the area," Colonel Guntu Schelmann told AFP.

The US security firm was not immediately available for comment.

A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, claimed responsibility for the attack and said six soldiers were killed in the blast.

Previously calm northern Afghanistan has suffered a rash of recent blasts blamed on a spreading insurgency led by the radical Taliban movement, whose attacks have usually targeted southern and eastern Afghanistan.

Private security firms protecting foreign businesses, military bases and a host of organisations in Afghanistan have been targeted by militants on a number of occasions.

A blast outside the Kabul offices of Dyncorp in August 2004 killed nine people including four foreign Dyncorp employees.
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2004 Crash in Afghanistan Highlights Gaps in U.S. Control Over Flights
By MATTHEW L. WALD May 28, 2007 The New York Times
WASHINGTON, May 27 — Carrying three soldiers and two pallets of mortar shells through the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan, the twin-engine turboprop was on a military mission.

But Flight BW61 from Bagram Air base was technically an air taxi, according to civilian safety officials. That distinction may have contributed to a Nov. 27, 2004, crash that killed everyone on board — and may put at risk thousands of military passengers and thousands of tons of cargo every year by contractors in war zones.

Neither military nor Federal Aviation Administration safety rules were enforced on the flight, which was operated by a subsidiary of Blackwater USA. Standard safeguards — high-altitude oxygen masks and at least one pilot experienced with the terrain — were not observed. And there was no dispatcher to send an alert that the plane was missing, which delayed rescuers’ arrival and possibly compounded the tragedy.

The three-man crew and two of the passengers died on impact, a military investigation found. But a third passenger apparently lived for at least eight hours, long enough to climb out of the plane, smoke a cigarette and unroll two sleeping bags before dying of internal injuries.

The safety lapses emerged in investigations by the military and the National Transportation Safety Board, and in a lawsuit filed by families of the crash victims against Blackwater, which is seeking to have the suit thrown out in federal court.

With two American-flag carriers and three foreign companies performing contract work for the military in Afghanistan, other flights could also be in peril because of gaps in regulation. Though the N.T.S.B. recommended in December that the military and the Federal Aviation Administration coordinate on oversight of flights operated by military contractors, the F.A.A. responded earlier this year that it would not give a progress report for six months.

The Pentagon, though, said Blackwater would begin auditing its own flights in Afghanistan and reporting the results to the government. While the F.A.A. does not fly on the planes in Afghanistan, the Defense Department said government quality-assurance personnel “randomly fly” on them.

Even though Flight BW61 was operating in Afghanistan, the F.A.A. had jurisdiction over it because the agency considered it an American air taxi. The plane, a Spanish-made CASA 212, was operated by Presidential Airways, the Blackwater unit that won a $35 million contract in September 2004 from the Air Mobility Command at the Pentagon. The Pentagon needed small planes to carry cargo and passengers at high altitudes into the rough landing strips typical in Afghanistan.

Families of the victims say that if it had been a military flight, it might not have crashed. The crew’s unfamiliarity with the route is clear from the transcript of the cockpit voice recorder.

“I hope I’m goin’ up the right valley,” said the captain, Noel B. English, according to the transcript. “We’ll see where this leads.”

Mr. English, 37, was an experienced pilot who had done extensive mountain flying in Alaska in the same type of airplane, according to investigators. The co-pilot, Loren D. Hammer, 35, also had substantial experience, and had flown the CASA in smoke-jumping operations.

But they had been in Afghanistan only 13 days. Common military and civilian practice is to pair a pilot who is new to an area with a veteran, experts said. Eventually, the two men flew into a box canyon, essentially a dead end bordered by mountains. Despite excellent daylight weather, they waited too long to begin climbing, which would have allowed them to fly over the mountains, or make a U-turn.

The captain at one point said he did not want to go up to 14,000 feet in the unpressurized plane, but later, with terrain rising, he said, “If we have to go to fourteen for just a second, it won’t be too bad.”

Less than two minutes before impact, evidently still trying to climb, he said urgently: “Come on baby, come on baby, you can make it.” A mechanic, flying in the cockpit and assisting with navigation, said, “You guys are gonna make this, right?”

“Yeah, I’m hopin’,” the captain said.

“Hope we don’t have a downdraft comin’ over that, dude,” the mechanic added, evidently referring to a nearby mountain peak. Such downdrafts are common in the mountains, experts say. “Got a way out?” he asked. “You need to make a decision.”

Seconds later, the plane slammed into the mountain.

Robert F. Spohrer, a lawyer for the families of the dead passengers, argued that if the flight had been operated by the military, better safeguards would have been imposed.

“This was infinitely worse than any armed forces flight would have been,” he said. “It would have had triple redundancy, with checklists,” he said. “In the military, you plan your flight and fly your plan. These guys did neither.”

The flight did not follow some civilian rules, either. The N.T.S.B., for example, concluded that the pilots were not wearing oxygen masks, as air taxi operators are required to do in unpressurized cabins at that altitude.

And no one on the ground tracked the plane from takeoff to landing, as federal civilian safety rules require. The Defense Department has a system for tracking its own planes, and even in areas with poor radio communication, the military takes notice immediately if a flight is overdue.

But no search was begun for Flight BW61 until the plane was overdue for its return to Bagram, about seven hours after the crash; rescue forces spent the first five hours looking in the wrong place. They did not reach the site until the third day, by which time Specialist Harley D. Miller, 21, of Spokane, Wash., had died of his injuries.

The safety lapses have frustrated families of the victims. “It was in the middle of a gray zone,” said Col. Jeanette McMahon, the widow of one of the passengers, Lt. Col. Mike McMahon. Colonel McMahon, like her late husband, is a helicopter pilot.

Blackwater declined to comment for this article. But the company argued to the N.T.S.B. that the safety board had no jurisdiction to investigate the crash because it was a military flight. The safety board did not send anyone to Afghanistan, the company pointed out, but relied on facts gathered by the military search and rescue team. And the military had so botched the fact-gathering phase that no reliable inquiry was possible, Blackwater said.

The company is expected to appeal to the safety board for a reconsideration of its findings.

After the safety board panel recommended that the F.A.A. and the Defense Department coordinate their oversight of such flights, the F.A.A. responded in language as close to arch as the bureaucracy gets. “It is not our practice to send inspectors into areas of military hostilities to conduct en route inspections,” the F.A.A. said in February. “We do not believe that the risk to our personnel can be justified as necessary for the effective accomplishment of our safety mission.”
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Afghanistan steps up poppy field eradication: UN drugs office
Sun May 27, 5:20 PM ET
FUNCHAL, Portugal (AFP) -        Afghanistan has stepped up its efforts to eradicate poppy crops in 2007 after producing a record amount of the key ingredient for heroin production last year, a senior UN official said here Sunday.

Officials have destroyed some 25,000 hectares (61,000 acres) of opium poppy fields so far this year, compared to 15,000 hectares during all of 2006, said Andrea Mancini, the project coordinator for Central Asia of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

"Eradication is working," he told a gathering of lawmakers from        NATO member states held in Funchal on Portugal's Madeira island.

Some 165,000 hectares were under poppy cultivation in 2006, a 59 percent increase from the previous year, according to the UN drugs office.

Afghanistan accounts for more than 90 percent of the world's heroin supply and officials say a big portion of the over three billion US dollars (2.2 billion euros) generated each year from the trade of the drug helps finance the Taliban insurgency.

"Battling the connection between drugs and conflict requires a long term commitment and the recognition that opium in Afghanistan is as much a narcotic issue as matter of insurgency," said Mancini.

At least half of Afghanistan's 34 provinces should be without opium production in 2008, he said. By the end of this year 11 to 12 provinces are expected to be without significant poppy cultivation, he added.

NATO should adopt an integrated strategy together with the UN and the        European Union that includes economic incentives to encourage Afghan farmers to abandon poppy cultivations as well as eradication drives, said Mancini.

Just over one in 10 Afghans are estimated to be directly involved in the production of heroin.

While poppy cultivation has fallen in northern and central Afghanistan where security is stronger, it has surged in southern Afghanistan where the fundamentalist Taliban has staged its fiercest fighting.

"The south is going wild, it is basically out of control," said Mancini.

Fearing a backlash from the population, the Afghan government has rejected US proposals for chemical spraying of poppy fields and has permitted only time-consuming manual eradication using sticks and tractors.

Anti-drug teams are often the target of suicide bombers and Taliban forces allied with drug lords.

Afghanistan's efforts to stop opium production have left 18 police dead and another 33 wounded this year, most of them in clashes during poppy eradication.

NATO has some 37,000 troops in Afghanistan as part of its International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) which aims to provide stability to the country. There are also around 11,000 US-led troops in the country.

Getting rid of illegal drugs has not been a part of the official mission of international forces in the country. It is the responsibility of the Afghan government which receives assistance from the US and the        United Nations.
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Smash our trade in opium, Afghans tell British
Telegraph, UK 05/27/2007 By Tom Coghlan in Kabul 
The Afghan government has demanded that British troops destroy the opium trade in the country after a record poppy harvest that threatens to flood Europe with cheap, high-purity heroin.

Officials are so concerned that they want the British to abandon their policy of non-intervention in the drugs war.

Counter-narcotics officials argue that the insurgency faced by the British in southern Afghanistan and the trade that centres on the province of Helmand are now indistinguishable and must be dealt with as such.
Figures for this year's opium harvest show that Helmand is producing more than half of the world's heroin, even with British troops present, and that production has soared by 30 per cent in a year to a record 6,100 tons.

advertisement"The drug dealers, the Taliban and the warlords are the same network," said Gen Khodaidad, Afghanistan's deputy minister of counter-narcotics.

"Nato should destroy these people. They should hit their headquarters, their convoys, the drugs labs and factories.

"Drugs are the main source of income for the Taliban."

British troops have studiously avoided involvement in the issue, arguing that they cannot afford to risk alienating public support in the province, where the Taliban seek to present themselves as the defenders of poppy farmers. In line with stated Nato policy, they offer support to the counter-narcotics policies of the Afghan government.

Britain is the lead partner working with the Afghans on drugs policy, but the support is provided by experts from the Foreign Office rather than the Army.

"Helmand is out of control," said one Western official.

"This may be the place where the military has to get involved. There is an increasing relationship between the Taliban and the drugs trade. Drugs feed corruption and a lack of governance. Any security is an illusion unless the drugs issue is tackled."

The Taliban are estimated to earn tens of millions of dollars by charging a tithe for protecting poppy fields, where farmers benefited this year from good weather and corruption among officials.

Officials in Kabul were incensed when British psychological operations teams put out radio broadcasts in April that announced that British soldiers would not destroy poppy crops because they knew people had a livelihood to earn.

A senior Western diplomat in Kabul said: "Nato is adamant that it will not become a poppy eradication force, but there is a need for them to provide much more active support on interdiction and trafficking, even security for (Afghan) eradication teams."
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Friends learn to cope as 'perfectionist' dies in Afghanistan
MURRAY CAMPBELL May 28, 2007 Globe and Mail, Canada
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- At age 22, Daryl Janssen is coming to terms with the fact that he and his buddies have a dangerous job and that sometimes bad things happen.

On Friday morning, just after dawn, Corporal Janssen was on patrol as part of Operation Hoover, the massive assault on Taliban positions by 1,000 troops from Canada and other countries.

As a signaler, he heard the radio chatter about who might have been involved in a massive explosion that shook the ground about 8 a.m.

Even when he was pulled aside and told that the blast had killed a fellow signaler, Corporal Matthew McCully, he couldn't accept it.

"I didn't believe it," he said. "It was just too far from what I could believe."

However, barely 36 hours later he had to deal with the reality when he became one of the eight pallbearers who carried his friend's flag-draped casket on to a Hercules transport plane for the first stage of his long journey back to Canada.

Cpl. McCully, 25, was the 55th Canadian to die in Afghanistan since 2002.

The pallbearers looked the picture of lightheartedness as they stood in the soft pink twilight on Saturday evening on the tarmac at Kandahar Air Field, waiting for hundreds of soldiers to form a walkway to the plane.

Cpl. Janssen said the smiling, laughing young men were just trying to remember the good times they had shared.

"We can dwell on how upsetting the experience is or we can laugh and joke," he said. "And then when the job at hand comes, you know, you could tell that everybody was hurt badly. We lost a good man, a good person all around."

Cpl. McCully's commanding officer, Major Peter Sullivan, praised him as "a tremendously professional soldier."

But it took one of the guys who hung out with him at CFB Petawawa and in Afghanistan, Cpl. Janssen, to paint a fuller picture of the dead soldier.

He was fastidious with an impish sense of humour and would snap his fingers and say "that's it, I got it" when he solved a problem.

He was always complaining that he didn't have the right equipment to do his job.

In fact, he was fretting about his gear when the two last talked at the forward base at Ma'sum Ghar two days before Operation Hoover began.

"He was definitely a perfectionist," Cpl. Janssen said. "It was never good enough unless it was perfect."

That streak was evident in a recounting by another friend, Keith Beaudin, about a fight the pair had on the lawn outside a particularly exuberant house party two summers ago.

"The thing that pissed him off the most was not the fact that I beat him in the fight," Mr. Beaudin recalled in a Facebook entry, "but the fact that his new white Under Armour shirt was green from grass stains." In the wake of Cpl. McCully's death, there was much talk in Kandahar this weekend about professional soldiering and the acceptance of the risk the job involves.

Cpl. Janssen talked that talk, too, saying that "everybody is shaken up, but we're all professional soldiers and everybody is acting accordingly."

But he admitted that losing a friend hurts.

"You get this assumption in your head that, yeah, you know, shit's going to happen, but it's not going to affect me like that, and then you lose a buddy," he said.

"It doesn't even sink in, you know, but I know when we start rolling out again to places where Matty would have been sitting there waiting for me, complaining about some piece of kit that he needed, and he's not there, that it's just going to kill me."
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Afghanistan mission defines Harper, Canada
By Dan Leger The Chronicle Herald - May 28 2:34 AM
IT HAS become impossible to overstate how important the mission in Afghanistan has become to the federal government, politically for Stephen Harper and the Conservatives, but also for Canada’s sense of identity in the world.

Right now, Afghanistan is far and away the most important foreign-policy issue facing the Canadian state. We are spending billions and sacrificing lives. We are trying to bring peace to a region of violence, stability to a place of chaos and simple freedoms to deeply oppressed people.

Nothing this country has done in 50 years has been as ambitious. No other foreign project has been as expensive in money, at $6 billion, or in lives, 56 and counting. And none has been so dangerous.

Because if Canada does not achieve what it set out to do in Afghanistan, its international prestige will be damaged and a signal will be sent to the next gang of killers that Canada is a big, soft target. The mission could well turn out to be the defining issue in the next election campaign.

A talk with a very senior federal official last week reminded me how extensive Ottawa’s goals are in Afghanistan. Before the Canadians can leave, the Afghan government must be able to stand on its own as a sovereign entity. It must have a functioning army, a police force and a judiciary. It must be able to feed its people and defend its shaky borders.

And the mission has significance beyond political and military goals. It has also become a mission in which careers are built and reputations risked.

Any army officer worth his boots wants to go to Afghanistan and be tested in combat against the famed and feared Taliban fighters. Canadian soldiers have trained all their lives for the challenge. Few will turn it down.

And it’s not just the military. Foreign-service officers who want to break out of the cocktail circuit in polite capitals can make a reputation in Kabul or Kandahar. The same goes for spies, in a region where intrigue is a way of life.

It’s not only government. Humanitarian workers and aid organizations will put their expertise to the test in an environment unlike any other.

Last week, the prime minister flew to Kandahar to emphasize his own political support for the mission, but also to reinforce Canada’s sense of why we are there. The trip wasn’t without controversy.

It is typical of the debate roiling the country that the visit was seen by some as a mere photo opportunity and by others as a tangible measure of Mr. Harper’s commitment.

There’s no doubt this deeply partisan prime minister had a political agenda in being photographed with the troops and meeting Afghan leaders. But in going, he also acknowledged his moral and ethical responsibility to see for himself what’s going on.

Mr. Harper, who has a long-term view of the Afghan mission, is pondering ways of extending it past 2009, the exit date mandated by Parliament. He can’t do that in a hostile minority environment. He needs an election and a majority.

To have any chance of winning that, Mr. Harper has to do more than get his picture taken with the soldiers. He and his ministers have to convince Canadians that this country benefits from a more stable Afghanistan and that Canada is helping to achieve that.

So Canadians need to see pictures of Afghan kids in school, of functioning hospitals, of the beginnings of a stable economy and of Afghans finding solutions for themselves.

That’s the key. Eventually, someone is going to have to talk to the Taliban, or whoever is really behind the violence in Afghanistan. Right now, that’s all but impossible because the insurgency is decentralized and lacks identifiable leadership.

But Canada and its NATO partners must, over time, enable moderate Afghans to negotiate with their enemies on equal terms. Afghans solving Afghanistan’s problems: That is Canada’s goal and its only viable exit strategy.

I’m told that Ottawa feels it’s still too early to talk to the Taliban because its leaders refuse to renounce violence. But the government knows that eventually it will be Afghans negotiating with Afghans, just the way Irish Protestants and Catholics have finally put aside their guns for civilized politics.

Northern Ireland’s reconciliation is a good example for Afghanistan. Trouble is, it took 30 years to happen.

dleger

Dan Leger is director of news content for The Chronicle Herald. The opinions expressed here are his own.
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Afghanistan, Pakistan To Meet For Border Security Talks
Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
May 27, 2007 -- The Afghan and Pakistani foreign ministers are scheduled to meet May 30 in Germany to discuss their lawless border region.

In a statement, the Afghan Foreign Ministry said Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta and his Pakistani counterpart, Khurshid Kasuri, will attend the G8 foreign ministers' meeting in Potsdam to talk about peace, stability, and reconstruction in Afghanistan and the region.

Officials say both have been "specially invited" to meet on the G8 sidelines to discuss how they can ease their differences.

The meetings comes after two Pakistani soldiers were reported killed and at least five others wounded by a roadside bombing on May 26 in a region bordering Afghanistan.

Officials said the blast hit the soldiers' convoy near Tank, in the Northwest Frontier Province. The convoy was reported traveling to the South Waziristan tribal region when the attack occurred.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. The region is considered a base of operations for Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants.
(AP, Reuters, AFP)
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Afghanistan's other casualties
An unusual young Scot is involved in a heroic effort to preserve the heritage of battered historic Kabul
LISA ROCHON The Globe and Mail (Canada) May 26, 2007
As with any disaster, natural or manmade, there are two kinds of destruction going on in Afghanistan: that caused by the war and the wrecking by city planners of what remains. The looming urban disaster that concerns me is likely not on the radar screens of Prime Minister Stephen Harper or the good Canadian troops stationed in the south of Afghanistan. But it should be. What's at risk is the survival of historic Kabul, a neighbourhood of elaborately decorated mud buildings - tea houses, historic mosques, public baths - that city planners would like to eliminate so as to allow a six-lane highway to run through it.

It's only fitting that the crusade to save old Kabul is being led by Rory Stewart, the iconoclastic Scottish adventurer and author of The Places in Between. He was asked to become involved by Prince Charles, whose friendship with Afghan President Hamid Karzai led to the Prince setting up the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, aimed at both historical restoration and teaching youth traditional skills. Now, the organization is countering the city's threats to pull down the historic neighbourhood of Murad Khane with an initiative to restore the adobe structures in a tight warren of streets north of the Kabul River.

More than 100 people from the neighbourhood, including some women and orphans, are being employed by the foundation to restore 200-year old buildings. More than restoration, though, we're talking about the protection of collective memory and the rising up of civic pride. Houses are being rebuilt, mud walls are being reinforced and piles of garbage, sometimes several metres high, are being cleared for the first time from the streets. In a district where 615 residents function without toilets or sewage provisions, running water is finally being supplied to the area.

Stewart walked across Afghanistan in the winter of 2002, just weeks after the Taliban had been driven out by coalition forces. His critically acclaimed book The Places in Between is a stunning account of his harrowing journey. He writes of once-refined cities stripped down to shantytowns, Hazara villages burned to become emaciated versions of their original selves and people's circumstances terribly reduced first by the Russians, then the Taliban and bloody skirmishes between neighbours sometimes living only a few kilometres apart.

Stewart's is a life well-lived. In the early 1990s, he was an Eton-educated summer tutor of Prince William and Prince Harry, a job that led to the friendship and respect of the Prince of Wales. Just into his 30s, he was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 2004 for a decade of foreign service that included, during the previous year, serving as deputy governor of two southern provinces in Iraq.

When he walked across Afghanistan, he was called a "nutter" by some fellow Brits stationed in a remote outpost, a bit of homespun humour that cheered Stewart to continue to trudge through a winter blizzard that day. He walked an average of 40 kilometres a day.

Sufficiently intrigued, I decided to call Kabul during the holiday weekend from my cedar cottage in Ontario. It was early in the morning, the fire wasn't throwing much heat and my hands were freezing. When Stewart picked up, I was looking through the green veil of Jack pines to the lake and the four islands you want to swim to when the water is warmer.

Stewart's neck, on the other hand, was being burned by the hot Afghanistan sun. Indeed, we were worlds apart. "I'm standing in the middle of a 19th-century fort," says Stewart, who sounds more like an art historian turned urban designer than the British foreign officer he once was. "It's made up of mud walls with bleached cedar windows carved with Buddhist motifs, Islamic geometric designs, art deco."

Is Old Kabul coming down? "It's difficult to judge," says Stewart. "The master plan of the old city is being written and rewritten continually," but "because of the work we've done in the last 14 months, I think we've made a lot of progress." In this case, progress depends on the pressure exerted by Stewart, his foundation and the rest of the international community. The idea, simply put, is to make it impossible for the city planners to tear something that has started to sparkle again.

The Turquoise Mountain Foundation is named for the 12th-century capital of the Silk Road empire, a place marked only by a towering minaret, which Stewart happened upon during his journey. Tragically, given lack of leadership by the international community, the site has been looted and pillaged by the locals keen to sell their findings for a pittance. "The Turquoise Mountain was only the most dramatic and most recent victim of a general destruction of Afghanistan's cultural heritage," wrote Stewart in his book. "A month after I left the village, items from [the valley of] Jam [site of the Turquoise Mountain] - described as Seljuk or Persian to conceal their Afghan origin - were being offered on the London art market."

In Kabul, the gorgeous, idiosyncratic detailing of the abode structures, the result of layering of culture and religion, is increasingly under threat. For one thing, the nation's capital has exploded from a population of one million in 2001 to 4.5 million today - the result of floods of Afghan refugees returning from Pakistan and Iran. Besides, distinctive architecture mattered not at all to the Soviet and East German planners who dictated in a 1978 plan the future of Kabul in which anonymous concrete and brick block towers would replace the fine vernacular stock of buildings.

The civil war of 1989-1992 interrupted their short-sighted plans - neglect is often the saving of historic neighbourhoods around the world - but since a relative peace has descended on Kabul, the planners have dusted off the brutish Soviet-style plan.

However, "To some extent, they're coming around," says Stewart, on the phone from Kabul. "If we'd started with a lot of bureaucratic talk and documents, we might have been met with utter skepticism. But we've set up a school, cleaned the garbage. The real thing I want to get is a full legal guarantee for the preservation of the entire area."

Initially, Prince Charles imagined the establishment of a centre in which locals could be taught traditional crafts, such as metalworking or woodcarving. Many of the local artisans had fled the area or, indeed, the country.

During his six-week journey across the country, Stewart had observed the slipping away of culture in Afghanistan, how, as he wrote in his book, "religion, language, and social practices were becoming homogenized, and how little interest people took in ancient history." He wanted to participate in the Prince's plan, but insisted that the newly trained artists be part of an urgent cause: revitalizing and potentially saving the historic neighbourhood of Murad Khane.

Murad Khane is a place of crowded marketplaces, with some 300 handcarts selling everything from Chinese alarm clocks to sandals made from rubber tires. Stewart walks the streets to meet daily with the street bosses, collecting petitions supporting the foundation's work, marked by the illiterate with thumbprints. Drainage ditches are being dug and solar panels installed on some of the roofs. "What we're looking at here is a robust, functioning neighbourhood. We're not interested in a Disneyfied place that is frozen in time."

Since the Turquoise Mountain Foundation was established last year, it has attracted some impressive recruits, including Jemima Montagu, a former curator at the Tate Modern who now serves as its director of culture and education. Rebecca Tunstall, a lecturer in housing at the London School of Economics, has consulted with the team on urban regeneration and development, and there have been architects and building conservationists pitching in from Zurich and London. The small team lives together in a ramshackle mud building and shares dinner in the evening.

The Prince of Wales and the Prince's Trust have provided key financial support for the foundation, and important backing has come from the Aga Khan Development Network. But money is tight. Stewart spends much of his time fundraising in the Middle East, particularly the Persian Gulf states. More money is urgently needed, he says, as the foundation only has about six months of operational funds in the bank.

Afghanistan is a country that has known a continuity of violence and destruction, but also healing. When Stewart walked across Afghanistan, he effectively retraced the footsteps of Babur, the first emperor of Mughal India, who wrote in his journals of the desperation and beauty of his journey.

After reaching the western edge of Kabul, Babur noted that there were 33 different sorts of tulips growing with wild abandon in the mountains, some with the perfume of roses. In 1519, Babur planted two plane trees on a hill on what would become the site of the emperor's tomb and a lush garden in Kabul.

Stewart has since identified the stumps of what were once glorious trees, the result of another vicious act by the Taliban. The Aga Khan Trust for Culture has been working over the last few years to revitalize the historic Bagh-e-Babur garden as a major public open space.

Human beings can be cruel and illogical, but they are also capable of believing in something better for the future. Old Kabul should be allowed to stand. The plane trees will surely be replanted. And cut down, no doubt, during another sorry time.
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