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May 6, 2007 

Attacks claim 15 Afghan police
HERAT, Afghanistan (AFP) - New attacks reported in  Afghanistan Sunday took to 15 the number of police killed in a weekend of violence, including in the country's west which has seen a surge in unrest.

Eight policemen were killed in a six-hour battle in the western province of Farah Saturday when Taliban fighters ambushed a police patrol, the provincial police chief told AFP Sunday.

A US-led coalition statement said 17 rebels were killed in the fighting, but Sayed Agha Saqeb said only four of their bodies were recovered from the battlefield.

Another policeman was missing, Saqeb said. "The fighting ceased when we sent reinforcements," he added.

The attack occurred near the centre of Bakwa district, which was overrun by Taliban late February. The militants were in control for less than a day before Afghan security forces drove them out.

The coalition said it assisted the police with close air support and sent forces to secure the district centre. Four police vehicles were burned by insurgents, it said.

On Sunday a suicide car bomb exploded near police returning from Bakwa, wounding one of the men, Saqeb said. Intelligence services had been tipped off beforehand and security forces were on the lookout for a bomber.

On Saturday five policemen were killed when a roadside bomb tore through their vehicle in Ghazni province, another insurgency-plagued region in southern Afghanistan, a district official said.

Two policemen were also killed in the southern province of Helmand on Saturday when a suicide bomber blew himself up close to their convoy, police said. The Taliban claimed responsibility.

Afghan security forces are a main target for insurgents, and about 150 have been killed so far this year, according to an AFP tally based on reports.

Most of the violence has been in the south, the birthplace of the Taliban movement, but attacks in the previously quiet west have stepped up in recent months.

Police in early April raided a religious school in Farah, near the town of Bakwa, and arrested 22 people, alleging the madrassa was involved in organising Taliban suicide attacks and was being used as a "terrorist centre."

There was a rash of suicide bombings in Farah this year, including one on March 12 that killed a newly appointed Bakwa police chief and nine of his men.

The neighbouring province of Herat, on the border with  Iran, has also seen an increase in unrest. US Special Forces and other foreign and Afghan troops say they killed 136 Taliban fighters in battles there last weekend.

Separate Afghan and UN reports say, however, that about 50 civilians, including women and children, were killed. An interior ministry team is expected to announce the findings of its own investigations soon.
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Flood kills at least 12 in northern Afghanistan
06 May 2007 13:05:00 GMT
MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan, May 6 (Reuters) - Floods killed at least 12 people in Afghanistan's Samangan province, the governor said on Sunday, raising the death toll from flooding in the mountainous north of the country to 36 in the past week.

Dozens of houses were destroyed when the Samangan River burst its banks on Saturday and government help was needed to prevent further flooding, provincial governor Abdul Haq Shafaq told Reuters.

Further east in remote Badakhshan province, 23 Afghans and a Czech soldier serving with NATO were killed on Thursday in flooding and landslides.

A cold and snowy winter means Afghanistan is having a very heavy snow melt this spring, with floods and slips killing around 100 people since the beginning of March.

The Red Cross says more than 3,000 homes have been destroyed.
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Six German Soldiers to Deploy to Southern Afghanistan
Deutsche Welle.
After refusing to station 19 German troops to Afghanistan's volatile south, the defense ministry confirmed six soldiers would be sent to the region for up to a month, but said they would not be part of combat missions.

Germany has come under pressure from its NATO allies to transfer some of its 3,000 troops from the relatively safe north to the south to support their mostly US, British and Canadian allies in fighting Taliban-led insurgents.

But the troops' very presence in Afghanistan has caused unease in Germany six decades after the end of World War II and a parliamentary mandate limits their activities to areas such as logistics and first aid.

Three of the soldiers now being sent will work to win over local support for the deployment of NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). The others will assess conditions in the south for a possible deployment of an Afghan battalion currently in the relatively safe north of the country and decide what equipment they will need.

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift:  Jung refused a request to send 19 Bundeswehr soldiers to southern Afghanistan

Deputy Defense Minister Peter Wichert wrote in a message to the chairs of the German parliament's defense committee that the deployment would be for a limited time of three to four weeks and the result of a request from the Afghan government that could not be denied, the Welt am Sonntag newspaper reported Sunday.

"The deployment of German soldiers completely conforms to the Afghanistan mandate," a defense ministry spokesman said.

Christian Democratic Union defense expert Eckhart von Klaeden said it was right for Germany to support the Afghan government when requested. He told the online version of Der Speigel news magazine that the Bundeswehr needed to "be ready to accompany the Afghan units that received German training in their deployment."

On Friday German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung declined a request from the Afghan government to send 19 German army instructors to accompany an Afghan battalion being deployed near Kandahar in the volatile south.

ISAF has around 37,000 troops from 37 countries, around a third of whom are in the south.
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Stable, peaceful Afghanistan in the interest of Pakistan: Sherpao
Sunday May 06, 2007 (0810 PST) PakTribune.com, Pakistan
ISLAMABAD: Peace Jirga Commission (PJC) led by interior minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao has returned home from Kabul Saturday.
Talking to the journalists at Chaklala airbase Saturday, Interior minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao described talks with Afghan Jirga Commission (AJC) fruitful saying AJC will visit Pakistan at the invitation of PJC by the end of this month.

During the visit of AJC, agenda , modalities and rules and regulations of Joint Jirga Commission (JJC) will be finalized. Over 700 people will participate in JJC, 350 each from Pakistan and Afghanistan. .

PJC will help remove misperceptions besides bringing to end the blame game, he , said adding Jirga will also play vital role in strengthening mutual contacts among the people;

A peaceful stable Afghanistan is in the interest of Pakistan, he reiterated. We want lasting peace in Afghanistan, he remarked.
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Poll suggests Canadians want troops out of Afghanistan if casualties rise
Sun May 6 08:18:00 CDT 2007
TORONTO (CP) — A poll suggests 54.6 per cent of Canadians would want the country’s troops pulled out of Afghanistan if casualties climb. That compares to 39.3 per cent who consider casualties an an unfortunate but necessary part of the military mission.
Since Canada joined the NATO-led mission in 2002, 54 Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have been killed.

The poll also indicates Canadians are split over how well the government is handling the war, with 48 per cent disagreeing with the government’s course and 44 per cent supporting it.

Also of note — a whopping 67 per cent of respondents said they believed Canada’s presence in Afghanistan is making the country more vulnerable to a terrorist attack.

The telephone survey of 1,000 Canadian adults was conducted between April 26 and May 1 and is considered accurate within 3.1 percentage points 19 times out of 20.

The poll was conducted by SES Research for Sun Media.  
SES president Nik Nanos said the numbers suggest an incident with a high death count would smash support for the mission and create a major political problem for Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s minority Conservative government.

Canadians understand the political reality, said Nanos ”If you’re going to pick a fight and somebody else is home, there are repercussions back in Canada.”
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PAKISTAN: Afghan refugees concerned over imminent closure of two camps in Balochistan
06 May 2007 07:38:51 GMT
QUETTA, 6 May 2007 (IRIN) - Afghan refugees living in two camps slated for closure later this year in Pakistan's southwestern Balochistan province have expressed strong concern over their future plight, saying fear of violence was the main reason they did not want to return to their homeland.

"The majority of the refugees here come from the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand province where the Taliban are strongest," Shamsaddin Shams, a shopkeeper at the Jungle Pir Alizai refugee camp 62 km west of Quetta, Balochistan's provincial capital, told IRIN.

The camp is home to some 35,000 Afghan refugees.

"We don't know what to do," Shams said. "Everyone knows that these provinces are insecure and many of the people living there now are actually displaced from their own places of origin out of fear of further fighting and bombardment."

Akram, another refugee at the camp, agreed. Originally from the northern province of Mazar-i Sharif, he said his family's land had been seized by Uzbek militants working in the area, making the probability of their return all but impossible.

"As ethnic Pashtoons, we are the minority in the province. Our relatives are now displaced, living in the south of the country, and wouldn't dare return now."

A second Baloch camp facing closure is the Girdi Jungle camp, where another 40,000 Afghans live. It is 400 km from Quetta and close to the Iranian border. Residents there raised similar concerns.

"I am very sad. I will not go. It's better for the government to kill us," Agha Janan, a banana seller from Afghanistan's northern Kunduz province, said.

Abdul Ghafoor, a school teacher at the camp, had a question for Balochistan's government and the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR): "How can you willingly ask us to return to places like Helmand and Kandahar knowing how bad the security is there?"

That is a question repeatedly being asked by the 2.15 million registered Afghans living in Pakistan today.

According to a recent report on the registration of Afghans living in the country, the majority of Afghans registered (82 percent) said they had no intention of returning to their homeland in the near future, with 41 percent citing insecurity as the primary impediment to their return.

However, the decision to proceed with the closure of the two camps in Balochistan, alongside the Katchagari and Jalozai refugee camps in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, home to another 150,000 Afghans, was already reaffirmed in February at the Tripartite Commission meeting between Afghanistan, Pakistan and the UNHCR.

Majeed Khan Achakzi, a member of the Baloch provincial assembly, told IRIN that the camps had become a haven for terrorists working in the area, adding that Jungle Pir Alizai had become a base for drug traffickers, smugglers and thieves.

"We have hosted the refugees and tolerated risks for more than 20 years. Enough is enough," Achakzi said.

Dunya Khan, a UNHCR spokeswoman in Quetta, confirmed that the two camps in Balochistan would indeed close, with Jungle Pir Alizai likely to close by 15 June, and Girdi Jungle by 31 August, adding that residents would, however, have the option to either relocate to the Ghazgai Minara refugee camp in Loralai district, about 300km south of Quetta - and where they would continue to receive basic assistance in terms of primary education, health care and access to water and sanitation - or to repatriate to their homeland with UNHCR assistance.

Afghans registered in the country who choose the latter could receive an enhanced assistance, transport and reintegration package, including a grant of approximately US $100, Khan said, while those Afghans affected by camp closure who could not repatriate at the moment would receive transport to, and assistance in, the government-identified camps in Pakistan.

Since the launch of UNHCR's voluntary repatriation effort in March 2002, close to three million Afghans have returned to their homeland.

The refugee agency's planning figure for Afghan returns in 2007 is 250,000 from Pakistan and Iran, the primary host countries of the Afghan diaspora.
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'Buddha' unveils life in Afghanistan
By GLENN GARNETT -- Sun Media via Jam! Showbiz - May 06 1:11 AM
Over the past 40 years, Afghanistan has suffered through invasions by both of the world's superpowers, a civil war, fundamentalist Taliban rule, communist oppression and ongoing attacks by the world's most notorious insurgent groups.

Life expectancy is 43 years, comparable to life in medieval Europe. Only 11% of the rural population has access to clean drinking water. Most Afghans have never walked an hour beyond their village with many so isolated they've never seen a car or a television.

In 2003 Canadian journalist Hamida Ghafour went to Afghanistan to cover the rebuilding of her native country while tracing her roots in a rapidly changing landscape. Over twenty years earlier she and her brother were whisked away to India with her parents amidst the fighting between the Russian-supported communist government and the mujahideen.

At the time her parents imagined they would be away for a handful of years at most until the restoration of peace. After four years they moved to Toronto and are still waiting for the bloodshed to end back home.

Ghafour's account (which we read from pre-published proofs) of the experiment in turning the dysfunctional tribal country into a democratic Muslim society raises many questions about the assumptions we've made in the West about what's best for a people largely living in the Middle Ages. 
 
"Afghanistan was, and still is, an extreme example of the debate within the Muslim world about modernity, its relationship with the West, the role of religion and the role of women," she writes.

Ghafour comes to realize that not only can't you go home again, sometimes you dodge a bullet by getting the hell out.

"I couldn't shake off the sense of a near brush, and that I was watching my life as it could have been," she writes.

But not all ex-pats were similarly chilled. Many she met were moved to kiss the tarmac upon arrival and felt liberated.

"Hundreds of young Afghans in their twenties who had grown up or were born abroad were now returning to sort out their identity crises," she observes.

"Some took the opportunity to unleash all the pent-up machismo they had to tone down in the feminized West - Apache helicopters rushing through the skies, AK-47s slung over the arm of every man, it was like a real-life video game."

Most of those young people, however, were men. As a woman travelling the length and breadth of a conservative, patriarchal country, Ghafour was continually asked, with varying degrees of hostility: Are you married? Do you have a husband? Do you have a son? Where is your father? Who gave your permission to come here?

Ghafour, gutsy in her own right in conversing with warlords and travelling to the most dangerous corners of the country, profiles the courage of a number of women she met in Afghanistan, from her cousin who defied death threats to run for office to a hairdresser teaching previously house-bound women a trade.

In the West, Ghafour leads the life imagined by her grandmother, also named Hamida, a member of Afghanistan's Awakening of Youth movement in the 1940s. She was an active member of a group of reformers who campaigned for liberal change including opening women's schools and the abolition of the veil and forced marriage.

Hunting for magazine articles written by her grandmother, Ghafour learns this bit of heritage is part of the country's past which has been stolen, burned or blown to bits. Books that survived the communist purges were looted by the mujahideen and what was left was incinerated by the Taliban.

Ghafour notes the story of a six-tonne Buddha seized by police as it was being dragged across a railway station platform in Peshawar, while other antiquities slip more quietly across the border. She interviews an Afghan archaeologist who weeps at the destruction of the famed Bamiyan Buddhas, built into a mountainside sometime between the third and fifth centuries, blown up by the Taliban in 2001 before 9/11.

"Afghans know their country is centuries behind in education, infrastructure, economy. But their immense heritage, their role as inheritors of humanity's rich history, was proof that they were at least a civilized people," she writes. "The destruction of the Buddhas took that away."

About the only thing this impoverished, landlocked country isn't short of is guns. The influx of modern weaponry stepped up during the Soviet occupation in the late '80s, with over $4 billion in weapons supplied by the U.S. to the insurgents, including the shoulder-held, laser-guided Stinger missiles which helped turn the tide of the revolt against the Russians. After the Russians left, American interest waned and no effort was made to clear the landscape of weapons for 14 years before a disarmament program was declared in 2003.

Today it's estimated there are 40 million small weapons in Afghanistan for a population of 31 million, and good luck getting 'em back. Ghafour quotes a United Nations official who says Afghanistan's attitude toward guns "makes the National Rifle Association look like a bunch of pinko softies."

To illustrate the years Afghanistan was used as a staging area for al-Qaida, Ghafour interviews members of the Khadr family, who left Canada to fight for the mujahideen about the same time the author's family arrived on our shores to escape the bloodshed there. Today some of the Khadr family members are back in Toronto, while son Omar continues to be held at Guantanamo Bay as an "enemy combatant."

"The Khadrs are the sort of Islamic fundamentalists who crystallize for some what they think is wrong with a multicultural society," Ghafour writes.

"They denounce freedom of speech and liberal attitudes to sex but live on the dole with taxpayers' money. They want to force the world to live under a caliphate but still insist on their share of free health care."

The family matriarch bemoans the fact that her son Abdul Karim, returned to Canada for medical treatment after he was wounded while with al-Qaida, is being polluted by Western culture.

Held out for particular disdain is Adbul Karim's favourite show: The Family Guy. "It is the worst program. It's about a little boy who cannot even talk, he's in diapers. And it's about how he can get rid of his mother, how he can kill his family." What the deuce!

The UN estimates there are 850 "illegally armed groups" which are responsible for an unrelenting crimewave across the country. Ghafour is critical of America's approach in dealing with some these groups as part of its plan to cleanse the countryside of Taliban and al-Qaida operatives.

"The lack of synergy between the Americans and NATO is obvious," Ghafour writes. "The United States is funding and arming warlords to capture territory held by Taliban insurgents, while ISAF (the International Security Assistance Force) is supposed to protect civilians from the same commanders who see their power increase as a result of an infusion of arms and cash, and generally invest into the drugs trade."

Ghafour says the rush to parliamentary elections before the establishment of security across the country guarantees a continuance of the instability plaguing the country.

"The presidential and parliamentary elections cost $249 million. For that money, half of parliament is made up of warlords; 40 are linked with armed groups, 24 belong to criminal gangs, 19 are suspected war criminals and 17 are drug traffickers," she notes.

Instead of a Marshall Plan to rebuild (or in most instances plain build) infrastructure, Ghafour says post-9/11 Afghanistan was deemed "a free-market project," and the country opened its doors to a breathtaking influx of diplomats, consultants and non-governmental agencies (NGOs) with experience in dealing with "post-conflict zones."

"They were there for 'capacity building' and 'empowering women' and sorting out 'post-traumatic stress disorder' and 'gender issues.' There is hardly an assessment of what they have accomplished and no one seems to be held responsible," she writes.

"The rebuilding of a rural, collectivist, insular and conservative culture is being overseen by people who have been raised in post-industrial, individualistic, capitalist cultures."

Foreign aid, NGOs and democracy, however, could bow to the transformative powers of the media, and it may be that newspapers, satellite dishes and the Internet will ultimately inspire the traumatized country to put down their guns and pick up their joysticks.

While televised candidate speeches didn't exactly capture the public's imagination in 2005, Ghafour points out that another kind of election was rocking the vote. "Afghan Star," a version of American Idol, was sweeping the country as 1,000 hopefuls, including some young women, competed for the coveted title and a $3,000 prize.

Another big hit is a makeover show where a traditional-looking Afghan boy is plucked off the street at random and is given a Western-style hairdo and wardrobe. Which sure beats the alternative when you're plucked off the street in Kabul.

In short, what Afghanistan may need is less Condi Rice and more Ryan Seacrest. And more modest, simpler gestures may prove effective in bringing hope to a place used to bitter disappointment.

"Afghanistan would have to be healed by ordinary people, Afghan or not, doing a million small deeds simply because they wanted to," Ghafour says.
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CHRONOLOGY-Danger stalks aid workers in Afghanistan
May 5 (Reuters) - Taliban insurgents on Saturday extended a deadline for a deal for the release of a French aid worker until after Sunday's French presidential elections.

Here is a chronology of killings and kidnappings of aid workers in Afghanistan since the Taliban government was toppled in 2001 by U.S.-led forces:

Feb. 16, 2002 - An Afghan aid worker is killed near the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif when a warehouse used by Irish relief agency GOAL is hit by a rocket during factional fighting.

Feb. 16, - An Afghan employee of the U.N. children's agency, UNICEF, is shot in the leg by gunmen trying to kidnap him in Mazar-i-Sharif.

March 27, 2003 - Ricardo Munguia, an El Salvadorean Red Cross aid worker, is shot dead by Taliban in Kandahar province.

Aug. 13 - Two Afghan aid workers with the Afghan Red Crescent Society are killed in a Taliban ambush southwest of Kabul.

Nov. 16 - U.N. refugee aid worker Bettina Goislard, 29, is murdered by Taliban in Ghazni, southwest of Kabul, leading to the closure of several U.N. refugee centres.

Feb. 25, 2004 - Suspected Islamic militants shoot dead five Afghan aid workers of the Sanayee Development Foundation, a community project, on a road east of Kabul.

March 6 - Mohammad Isah, a director of the Afghan Red Crescent Society, is shot dead in Zabul province.

June 2 - Five staff from Medecins Sans Frontieres are killed when gunmen open fire on their car in the northwest, prompting the agency to leave the country after 24 years.

Aug. 3 - Shots from a passing vehicle kill Mohammed Idrees Sadiq, an Afghan field officer employed by the Malteser Germany agency and his driver on a road south of Kabul.

Sept. 7 - Ten foreign and local NGO workers are injured in mob attacks on foreign aid agency offices in the northern province of Badakhshan.

Oct. 28 - Gunmen kidnap three U.N. election workers in Kabul. They are freed unharmed after almost four weeks by a Taliban splinter group.

May 16, 2005 - Gunmen kidnap Clementina Cantoni, an Italian worker from the CARE International aid agency, in Kabul. She is released after more than three weeks.

Sept 9 - Diego Rojas Coronel, a Colombian aid worker, and two Afghan colleagues are kidnapped. They were freed three weeks later.

May 12, 2006 - A doctor from a German aid agency and a U.N. children's fund driver are killed when their vehicle is hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in Herat province.

May 30 - Taliban gunmen shoot dead three Afghan women working for ActionAid.

March 8, 2007 - A German aid worker is shot dead while travelling with colleagues on a road in northern Afghanistan.

April 3 - Taliban insurgents kidnap a French man and woman working for the Terre d'Enfance aid group, along with three Afghan colleagues. The woman is freed on April 28.
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Meeting with Karzai very fruitful, says Musharraf
ISLAMABAD, May 4 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Afghanistan and Pakistan would press on with their joint campaign against militants intent upon creating anarchy in the region, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has said.

His summit with President Hamid Karzai in Ankara, the capital of Turkey, was highly successful in abridging the Islamabad-Kabul mistrust over growing Taliban incursions, Musharraf said at a meeting with an Egyptian media delegation in the garrison city of Rawalpindi on Thursday.

In the war on terrorism, the general stressed, his country had rendered tremendous sacrifices, killing and arresting scores of high-value figures and losing hundreds of its own soldiers.

"A peaceful, prosperous and stable Afghanistan is in the best interest of all its neighbouring countries," Musharraf said, dispelling the impression that Pakistan is not doing enough to tackle Taliban militants on its soil.

Musharraf also rejected the perception that Pakistan was a partner in the ant-terror drive because of pressure from the US. "Instead, Pakistan has been a front-line state in the international fight against terrorism and its role has been widely acclaimed by the international community including the US," he told the Egyptian media team.
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Explosion destroys school in Paktia; three suspects held
GARDEZ, May 4 (Pajhwok Afghan News): A middle school was extensively damaged in an overnight explosion in the southeastern Paktia province, where the security situation has been fragile because of a rising Taliban-led insurgency.

Ehsanul Haq Akbarzai, administrative chief of Ahmad Aba district, told Pajhwok Afghan News on Friday the bomb attack destroyed five classrooms and the office block of the school. He described the attack as the handiwork of obscurantist elements, opposed to the schooling of Afghan children.

More than 300 boys and girls were enrolled in the three-acre Essakhel Middle School, established last year with financial assistance of one hundred thousand dollars from Italy, said Islamuddin, deputy director of the Paktia Education Department.

Provincial police chief Abdur Rehman Sarjang said three suspects had been arrested in connection with the overnight blast at the 15-room school. The culprits would be dealt with under the law, he vowed, without naming the detainees.
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US admiral: Afghans to be given security responsibilities
WASHINGTON, May 4 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Afghan forces - gradually being raised, trained and equipped - would be transferred responsibilities as they become capable of sustaining security in their war-ravaged country, a top-ranking official of the US Central Command (CENTCOM) has said.

"As the Afghan Security Forces become capable of sustaining security and force development, we will hand responsibilities over to them and transition to a long-term security relationship," said US Navy Admiral William J. Fallon, who admitted Taliban insurgents continued to operate in southern and eastern Afghanistan.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, the admiral explained although progress had been made in manning the Afghan national police and border patrol of approximately 46,000 officers, the forces were several steps adrift of the army.

Last year insurgent attacks jumped up to their highest levels as the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) expanded operations into previously uncontested areas, but the violence leveled off in October and remained lower in the winter, Fallon told the powerful senate committee.

While expecting militant activities to rise as the summer sets in, the CENTCOM official discounted warnings of a major spring offensive by Taliban. In spite of their ability to instigate localised violence, he insisted, the rebels could not militarily defeat the Afghan army and Coalition forces.

"Despite positive developments in the Afghan national security forces, long-term security requires the effective disruption of cross-border extremist operations. Essential security cooperation with Pakistan is increasing and more needs to be done," the naval officer informed lawmakers.

Acknowledging issues related to border security and militant safe havens were difficult problems, he said, coordination at tactical levels between Pakistan and Afghanistan and with ISAF was getter better. He hoped it would pave the ground for more confidence-building measures and robust joint efforts against the scourge of terror.

"Trilateral cooperation between ISAF, Pakistan and Afghanistan to improve governance, the rule of law and trade in the border region can also help eliminate extremist sanctuaries," Fallon continued.

Pakistani security forces had captured and killed many violent extremists, including 23 high-ranking al-Qaeda and Taliban figures, the admiral pointed out. The Pakistanis also suffered extensive casualties, he said. "Our long-term partnership with Pakistan is central to defeating extremist groups in the region, and it is difficult to imagine success in that struggle without its support and cooperation."

Apart from continuing to counter the insurgent threat militarily, he promised, the US troops would work with other agencies and a broadly based international effort to assist the Afghans in expanding governance and promoting economic development.

Concerted attempts were required for improved Afghan governance, infrastructure and economy, he felt, identifying roads, electricity, agricultural development, micro credit, job skills and education as priority areas. "ISAF is actively pursuing initiatives in these areas, from building schools and providing them with supplies to encouraging the growth of small businesses."

Until there were sustainable governmental institutions and a viable replacement for the poppy crop, opium trafficking would remain a significant part of Afghanistan's future, he warned.

"In the interim, CENTCOM supports US government and UK-led counter-narcotics activities. These efforts include building infrastructure, training border forces and the Counter-Narcotics Police National Interdiction Unit (CNPA)."

In the wake of successful anti-militant operations by NATO and Coalition forces, he claimed, there was a general sense of optimism and determination among the Afghan leaders and people. "They regularly voice their appreciation for our assistance, and believe things have improved since last year. We must help them succeed."

Fallon lauded Jordanian doctors and nurses for establishing a hospital in Afghanistan and treating over 550,000 Afghans and 1,900 coalition members.
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