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October 11, 2007 

Afghans crack down on private security
By FISNIK ABRASHI and JASON STRAZIUSO, Associated Press Writers Thu Oct 11, 11:40 AM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan authorities this week shut down two private security companies and said more than 10 others — some suspected of murder and robbery — would soon be closed, Afghan and Western officials said Thursday.

Authorities on Tuesday shut down the Afghan-run security companies Watan and Caps, where 82 illegal weapons were found during the two raids in Kabul, police Gen. Ali Shah Paktiawal said.

A Western security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said some major Western companies were on the list of at least 10 others tapped for closure. He would not identify them.

The crackdown echoes efforts by authorities in Iraq to rein in private security contractors often accused of acting with impunity. Blackwater USA guards protecting a U.S. Embassy convoy in Baghdad are accused of killing 17 Iraqi civilians in a Sept. 16 shooting, an incident that enraged the Iraqi government, which is demanding millions in compensation for the victims and the removal of Blackwater in six months.

The incident in Iraq has focused attention on the nebulous rules governing private guards and added to the Bush administration's problems in managing the war in Iraq.

Dozens of security companies also operate in Afghanistan, some of them well-known U.S. firms such as Blackwater and Dyncorps, but also many others who may not be known even to the Afghan government.

The U.S. military employs some 29,000 private contractors in Afghanistan for a variety of goods and services. Some 1,000 of those are security contractors, said Air Force Lt. Col. Todd Vician, a Defense Department spokesman.

The Afghan government's main complaints against the companies are lack of accountability, intimidation of citizens, disrespect of local security forces, and companies that do not cooperate with authorities, according to a set of draft rules being debated by the Afghan government and obtained by The Associated Press.

Up to 10,000 private security guards are estimated to operate in the capital of Kabul alone, but the Interior Ministry — which is responsible for the Afghan police and domestic security — has little idea who some of the guards are, said the Western official.

Paktiawal said more than 10 companies would be targeted for closure in raids police planned to carry out next week.

"There are some companies whose work permits have expired, and there are some companies who have illegal weapons with them," Paktiawal said. "We do not want such private security companies to be active in Afghanistan. It doesn't matter if they are national or international."

The Interior Ministry said 59 Afghan and international security companies have registered with them, although the Western official said as many as 25 other security companies could be operating in the country.

Some of the 59 companies are suspected of involvement in criminal activity such as killing and robbery, and the police were investigating these cases as well, Paktiawal said. He could not provide the breakdown of how many of these companies are Afghan and how many foreign.

The rules seen by the AP say the main problem faced by the government is the absence of "checks and balances" over the work of private security companies, known as PSCs.

"In a compromise with the large international community, and its legitimate and high demand for security protection, the (government of Afghanistan) has allowed for limited PSC operations and activities," the draft said.

"However, increasingly, the absence of targeted regulation ... in parallel with unstable security environment has generated an unfortunate and nearly anarchical PSC market with a long series of security problems and criminal activities."

Faced with growing Taliban insurgency, "it is a matter of urgency to regulate and monitor the activities of PSCs in a coordinated and precise manner and through a set of clear mechanisms," the draft said.
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Associated Press reporters Amir Shah and Rahim Faiez contributed to this report.
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Kabul Denies Reports Of Taliban Prisoner Swap
By Ron Synovitz
October 11, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Afghanistan's central government today is denying reports that it traded Taliban prisoners for a German hostage who was freed on October 10 after being held by Taliban kidnappers for more than two months.


International media reported that Taliban kidnappers freed German engineer Rudolf Blechschmidt and four of his Afghan colleagues in exchange for the release of five Taliban prisoners by the government in Kabul.

The source of those reports was Mohammed Naeem, a local administrative chief in the Jaghato district of Wardak Province.

Some media referred to Naeem only as "an Afghan official." And rather than identifying Naeem as a local administrator from a remote area to the southwest of Kabul, others wrongly portrayed his comments as a statement by the Afghan central government.

Neither Confirm Nor Deny

On October 10, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan asked the spokesman of the Afghan Interior Ministry, Zmarai Bashari, to clarify whether there had been a swap for Taliban prisoners. Bashari told Radio Free Afghanistan that he had no information and was unable to either confirm or deny the reports.

"I reject reports about any deals in this case, and we do not have any information about a deal that led to their freedom." -- Zmarai Bashari, Afghan Interior MinistryLater, after officials in Kabul were inundated with questions from journalists about the reported prisoner exchange, Naeem retracted his earlier comments. He said no Taliban had been released, but he said five imprisoned criminals had been freed -- including the father of the Taliban commander who had abducted the German and Afghans.

Today, Bashari faced a swarm of reporters at a Kabul press conference asking what kind of deal -- if any -- had been reached to obtain the release of the hostages.

"The release occurred as a result of cooperation of elders and efforts of security forces," Bashari said. "I reject reports about any deals in this case, and we do not have any information about a deal that led to their freedom."

Afghan Government Criticized

Blechschmidt was one of two German engineers abducted along with six Afghan colleagues in July while visiting a construction site. One of the Afghan captives apparently escaped, while the other German hostage, a 44-year-old, reportedly was shot by his abductors a few days after being kidnapped.

The Italian and Afghan governments were heavily criticized in March when five imprisoned Taliban were freed in exchange for a kidnapped Italian journalist, Daniele Mastrogiacomo. At the time, Afghan President Hamid Karzai vowed to never again trade Taliban prisoners for hostages.

Since then, there has been a series of high-profile abductions by Taliban militants and criminal gangs in Afghanistan. Unconfirmed reports of ransom payments and prisoner releases appear to have encouraged more kidnappings in recent months despite official denials. Kabul has insisted that no ransom was paid and no prisoners were exchanged for a group of South Korean hostages seized by the Taliban in July.
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Police colluded with Taliban, say Afghan and German hostage
by Bronwen Roberts Thu Oct 11, 12:16 PM ET
KABUL (AFP) - An Afghan man and a German engineer freed with him after a three-month hostage ordeal on Thursday accused the group's police escort of handing them over to their Taliban kidnappers.

The Afghan, who did not want his identity revealed for fear of retaliation from his captors, told AFP a day after their release that he also saw a second German hostage shot dead after they were seized on July 18.

The Afghan man said he feared he would suffer the same fate after the group from two construction companies were seized in Wardak province near Kabul.

He also revealed that a total of five Afghans had been released with the German, not four as originally stated by a district governor on Wednesday.

The surviving German, 62-year-old Rudolf Blechschmidt, flew out of Afghanistan Thursday after he and the others were released in exchange for five Taliban prisoners. He was expected in Germany later in the day.

German radio station Antenne Bayern reported that he had told his family Monday via satellite telephone that police officers intended to protect him and his team had been expecting the kidnappers and greeted them when they arrived.

"It had all been arranged," Blechschmidt said, according to the report.

The group had travelled to a dam in Wardak called Band-i-Sultan which they had been contracted to repair, the Afghan man said.

They had been escorted by local police who had been communicating with someone by telephone during the trip, saying when they would get there.

They were captured 10 minutes after their arrival, he said.

"Before we started doing anything, we saw the Taliban walking towards us.

"I told the police, 'The Taliban are coming.' But they did not do anything. I took a rifle but one of the policemen slapped me and said, 'There are more than 50 to 100 Taliban here. Why do you do that'?"

But their abductors only numbered a few and the group -- two Germans and six Afghans -- were bundled off as police stood by.

"The police of our own country handed us over to the Taliban," the man said.

"When the police of my own country trades me and deals with the Taliban, how can one trust anyone?"

He said their abductors were prepared to start killing the Afghan hostages when they received word that the father of one of the ringleaders had been picked up by intelligence police.

The father was one of the men eventually released from custody in exchange for the hostages, he said.

Jaghato district governor Mohammad Naeem said on Wednesday five Taliban were freed for the group, which a Taliban spokesman confirmed. The interior ministry said however it did not know of any prisoners being released.

The Afghan said that during his time in captivity, the group was moved around often and made to carry their captors' weapons. They also saw the Taliban rig up a car bomb.

Blechschmidt reportedly described the treks as gruelling, saying he was forced to walk hundreds of kilometres (miles) with heavy packs and camp in the open in the mountains with only his summer-weight clothing with him.

"The conditions were horrible," he was quoted as saying.

After few days, one of the Germans who struggled to keep up with the rest of the group was shot dead by a Pakistani Taliban whom the captives called Mullah Grenade because he was short and stout.

"The mountains were very hard to climb and he was always last and asking, 'Please go slowly'," the freed Afghan hostage said.

"Mullah Grenade kicked him in the chest, and said, 'Why do you always complain?' And then he shot him'."

Blechschmidt said his 44-year-old colleague had been killed in cold blood.

"The Taliban said it was a mistake but it didn't look that way," he said.

In the next weeks, the Taliban allowed another of the Afghans to "escape" after apparently receiving money for him from his family, the Afghan said.

He said he despaired of his future in Afghanistan.

"When my own country's police sells me to someone else, when another Afghan wants to puts a knife to my throat, why? What can I expect from this?" he asked.
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Marines to look at Afghanistan shooting
Associated Press
CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. - An official court of inquiry will investigate a shooting in Afghanistan involving a Marines special operations company in which civilians were killed, the Marine Corps said Thursday.

The step is a preliminary one and is not a criminal proceeding, and no charges have been filed against the Marines in the March shooting. Conflicting reports have cited between 10 and 19 fatalities and several dozen civilians wounded.

Lt. Col. Sean Gibson, a spokesman for the Marine Corps at the U.S. Central Command, said the exact number of those killed and wounded could be part of the inquiry.

Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission said the shooting occurred along a 10-mile stretch of road after a minivan laden with explosives rammed a military convoy in Nangahar province.

Injured Afghans said the Marines — part of the 2nd Marine Special Operations Battalion — fired indiscriminately at pedestrians and civilian cars as they sped away. Eight members of the company were brought back to Camp Lejeune and the rest of the company was ordered out of Afghanistan while military officials investigated.

Lt. Gen. James Mattis, the top Marine officer in the U.S. Central Command, ordered the inquiry after reviewing evidence that has been collected so far, the Corps said in a statement.

Mattis will decide whether charges should be filed after receiving a report from the court, which will include at least three senior officers with combat experience. No date for the inquiry has been set.

In May, a U.S. commander in Afghanistan said he was "deeply ashamed" by the killings and said the military made condolence payments of about $2,000 for each death.

Gibson said the last known time the Marine Corps used a court of inquiry was in 1956, in the case of a Parris Island drill sergeant who marched recruits into a South Carolina creek where six died.
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Iran urged to delay expulsion of Afghan refugees
Thu Oct 11, 4:36 AM ET
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan's parliament has appealed to Iran to delay the deportation of thousands of Afghans until the end of winter, saying the country didn't have the resources to look after them during the harsh season.

Iran has already sent back some 260,000 Afghans who it regards as illegal migrants since April, and plans to deport another 200,000, despite calls by Afghanistan to stem the tide.

The Afghan senate, in an open letter carried by state media on Thursday, urged Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to intervene and stop the deportations until the end of the harsh winter.

Some 1.8 million Afghans live in Iran.

After neighboring Pakistan, Iran accounts for the largest number of Afghans who have left their homeland during three decades of conflict. Many work in the construction sector or as domestic help.

But Iran says about half of them have illegally entered the country and will be sent back. The Afghan government, struggling to contain a Taliban insurgency, has repeatedly called on Tehran to suspend repatriations because it lacks the resources to resettle them.

The United Nations says it will take a long time for the war-ravaged country to sustain the inflow of refugees.
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Canadian-trained Afghan army unit strikes out on its own
Matthew Fisher CanWest News Service Thursday, October 11, 2007
KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan - The Canadian-trained Afghan National Army conducted its first successful solo combat operation on Wednesday in a Zhari district town where troops of Quebec's Royal 22nd Regiment have been leading the fight against the Taliban insurgency.

Under the watchful eye of their Canadian army mentors, Afghan troops planned and launched a company-sized mission that netted several weapons and ammunition caches as well as the electronic gear used to trigger improvised explosive devices of the sort that have in the past killed many Canadian soldiers and Afghan security forces and civilians.

The operation near the bazaar in Howz e Madad was "a great success. It went well," said Capt. Sylvain Gagnon, planning officer for Canada's operational mentor liaison teams. "This was an important seizure."

Although several Canadian mentors were on hand to take charge if the Afghan plan went awry, their help was not needed, Gagnon said.

Developing the Afghan army is a key part of the Harper government's evolving strategy to lessen the Afghan government's near-total dependence on NATO forces to bring security to the country. If successful, the program would allow Canada's combat units to be assigned to operations elsewhere in Kandahar province, or to be shifted to non-combat roles.

But getting to that point might take a while.

"It's hard to put a time frame on it," Gagnon said. Different Afghan battalions that are being mentored by the Canadians are at different points in the training system. But, he added: "Every step we take towards them taking responsibility for an operational area is important."

Shortly after the Afghan army operation ended, Col. Ahmad Shah Audin, the Afghan National Police chief for Zhari, praised a recent Canadian initiative to help open police substations in his district.

"If we want to make a place secure, we must have a substation for public safety," the colonel said.

But Audin also criticized NATO forces for not providing his men, who are also being mentored by Canadian soldiers, with better uniforms and weapons.

"Right now all the weapons and other facilities are given to the Afghan army," he said. "We must have some weapons. It would help for the job we do."

Maj. Alain Veilleux, chief of long-term plans for Joint Task Force Afghanistan, agreed. "He's perfectly right. The Afghan national police are not properly equipped."

But a big problem, he said, is that they had been given weapons, "but they have given them to the powers-that-be."

Such corruption explains why the police have a much poorer reputation among Afghans than the army. Moreover, because the police are paid so irregularly, they often disappear on payday to bring money back to their families in other parts of the country.

"It is a very complex and huge problem," Veilleux said at a briefing called to explain how Afghan police are now being paid. "We estimate the Afghan police are three years behind the army" in terms of becoming a professional force.

Afghan police are paid from an international fund to which Canada contributes. But because of concerns that some money was not reaching the policemen who had earned it, the United States, which oversees the fund, began last month to send its soldiers around southern Afghanistan to observe Afghan provincial paymasters dole out police salaries.

"It is right to suppose there is a lot of American involvement," Veilleux said, adding "there has been a lack of accountability and questions about who was a qualified policeman or not and whether they were entitled to be paid or not. Not all of them wear a uniform."

Another problem is that police operating at sanctioned and unsanctioned checkpoints in Zhari, where Canadian troops are responsible for the battle space, have been demanding bribes from travellers.

To stop this practice, "which is obviously not a good thing for security, Canadians have been living at (police) checkpoints since the beginning of September," Veilleux said.

In addition to problems of corruption, inadequate levels of professionalism and a compromised pay system, Afghan police must also deal daily with a bloody insurgency. Unlike other police forces, this makes it nearly impossible for the Afghan police to concentrate on regular police work.

Canada's decision to mentor the army and police was designed so that Afghans could take over their own security.

"If we don't deal with this, we feel we will be here for a long time," Veilleux said.
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Afghanistan: Reconstruction, Security Coming Slowly To Violent Helmand
By Abubakar Siddique and Salih Muhammad Salih
October 10, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Poverty, poppy cultivation, unemployment, and violence still plague the southern Helmand Province's 1.4 million residents -- despite the presence of thousands of foreign troops, major development projects, and years of considerable Western aid.

But international efforts continue to transform this troubled Afghan province from a war zone to a place of peace and development.

With a large number of British troops and smaller contingents of Estonian, Danish, and Czech soldiers, Helmand has had the largest concentration of NATO-led International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) troops over the past year -- some 7,000.

As part of the "war on terror," a small number of U.S. forces also operate separately against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda insurgents who use the province as one of their main bases for fighting against international forces.

And Helmand residents are upset about the level of fighting in their daily lives.

Foreign Troops Blamed For Civilian Deaths


Haji Shah Wali, a resident of Helmand's relatively peaceful Nawa-i-Barakzai district, tells RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan that foreigners -- both those in Al-Qaeda and their Taliban allies as well as the international forces -- are responsible for causing the insecurity in society. The troops kill civilians "without reason," he says. "They also do random aerial bombings and [the international troops] force people to leave their houses and to take up guns."

International media estimates of more than 5,000 deaths would make the current year the most violent in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001. Much of that violence has been concentrated in Helmand, where ISAF troops have fought fierce battles against Taliban insurgents.

While originally mandated to provide security assistance to the Afghan government and thereby bring reconstruction and development to Helmand, the international troops increasingly find themselves mired in a violent insurgency.

For many Helmand residents, the indifference by ISAF forces to local customs and traditions and their unwillingness at times to listen to tribal elders has contributed to the problems in Helmand.

Mullah Haji Habibullah, a Helmand tribal elder, says international forces frequently depend on unreliable local informants who sometimes lead ISAF troops to bomb or arrest the informants' enemies, who are often innocent civilians.

"They hardly listen to our tribal elders, district administrator, or police chief. They often rely on their own unreliable people [or informants]," Habibullah says. "For the past 25 years, we have been at war and we have a lot of rivalries and enemies here. And [the foreign troops] became part of it by relying only on one source. If these Americans had acted on the advice of our district administrator, the police chief, or the tribal elders, then they would have rebuilt Afghanistan by now."

Government Demands Progress

Civilian deaths in NATO's military operations targeting Taliban militants often lead to tensions between the international forces and their Afghan allies, and they contribute to a general hostility toward foreign troops. Westerners are also accused of ignoring the tribal, linguistic, and regional complexities of Afghanistan.

Helmand's soaring drug production, a roaring Taliban insurgency, and civilian casualties from NATO's aerial bombing have led to fissures between President Hamid Karzai's administration and NATO.

Many Helmand districts have changed hands between ISAF and the Taliban in the past year.

In a late-August speech, Karzai blasted the international community for its actions in Helmand.

"The international community should assist Afghanistan in strengthening its institutions," Karzai said. "This should be done in a way to empower an Afghan governor or a police chief and other institutions. Helmand's governor cannot improve things [on his own] because [the international community] took matters into their own hands in Helmand. And they gave it back to the Taliban. Now the [militants] are sitting there and Al-Qaeda roams around freely. Our friends [in the international community] need to listen to us. We are partners and our strategic vision is one and we share our successes and failures. But we can only be successful if we coordinate and if the Afghan view is listened to. If we are not listened to we will have more setbacks similar to Helmand."

ISAF soldiers in Helmand are adamant that they are making a difference.

Lieutenant John Larma, an ISAF officer in Helmand, says that ISAF deeply regrets all civilian casualties, but he insists that with its Afghan allies they are making steady progress. He cites the example of the northern Helmand district of Sangin, which last year changed hands between the Taliban and NATO but is now stabilizing and added that families who were displaced from Sangin are now returning home. "This all takes time, and things can't be changed overnight," Larma says.

Massive Aid, But What Impact?

The international community is pouring in aid dollars in an effort to help stabilize Afghanistan's restive south. Helmand is the fifth-largest aid recipient from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The most ambitious reconstruction project is the renovation of the Kajaki Dam in northern Helmand. Currently under threat by increased Taliban activity around the dam site, the project is estimated to cost some $500 million and might employ 4,000 Afghans. Once fully operational, Kajaki Dam should provide electricity to some 1.7 million Afghans.

Lieutenant Colonel Richard Eaton, ISAF's spokesman in Helmand, maintains that NATO has a long-term commitment to reconstruct and develop Helmand Province. In the short term, they are undertaking several "quick-impact projects" -- such as building bridges and helping to restore irrigation channels for farmers -- although they say they are also keeping an eye on events in the long term.

"We try to do things that will have an immediate impact and make the quality of life of people better," Eaton says. "But, at the same time it is important to understand that the longer-term projects -- schooling, education, health care, the rule of law, a really capable military force, and a police force that has the people's trust and respect -- is going to take time to develop."

Eaton maintains that Helmand's main problem -- the insecurity created by the Taliban and Al-Qaeda insurgency -- will need something more. It will need a political settlement involving all sides.

"The important thing is for the democracy to prevail and these are decisions for the Afghan people," Eaton says. "ISAF is here on a UN-mandated mission to help build the circumstances in parallel to the political process. This is a process that is going to unfold in time and it's a process of inclusion of all of those who are involved. But it can't be resolved in a day."
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Taliban suicide bombs not strategic threat: NATO
By Jon Hemming Thu Oct 11, 5:43 AM ET
KABUL (Reuters) - The NATO-led force in Afghanistan on Thursday rejected Taliban rebel claims that suicide bombs were an effective weapon to drive out foreign troops, saying the effects on the military were strategically insignificant.

The number of Taliban suicide attacks in Afghanistan -- more than 100 so far this year -- is set to top last year's record of 123, the United Nations says, and most victims are civilians.

The Taliban have increased the number of suicide attacks after suffering heavy casualties in conventional clashes with foreign forces and the Afghan army, security analysts say.

But a top Taliban commander in southern Afghanistan urged a group of around 200 followers to carry out more suicide attacks, saying in a video obtained by Reuters last week they were an effective weapon that damaged foreign and Afghan forces.

"The reality is quite the opposite," said Major Charles Anthony, spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), referring to the video footage.

"So far this year more than 100 suicide bombers have blown themselves up in Afghanistan, killing and injuring hundreds of Afghan civilians," Anthony told a news conference. "These deaths and injuries are most regrettable, but the complete responsibility rests with Taliban extremists.

"The number of ISAF and coalition soldiers who have been killed by suicide bombers this year is a total of nine. I am not implying that these losses are trivial ... but from a strategic standpoint it is not militarily significant," he said.

The United Nations said last month that 183 Afghans were killed by suicide bombers during the first half of 2007 and 121 of them were civilians. Afghan forces, particularly the police, have borne the brunt of the other casualties.

But more people have been killed since those figures were released. Three suicide bombs hit the capital, Kabul, in less than eight days, killing 28 Afghan soldiers, five Afghan police, one U.S. soldier and 14 Afghan civilians.

While Western forces, alongside the Afghan army, have claimed victories against Taliban rebels in the south, many remote areas and some towns remain under rebel control and insurgent attacks have also spread north to regions previously considered safe.

Frustration with the government over the slow pace of development, official corruption and the lack of law and order have all played into rebel hands.
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Afghan ambassador defends executions
ALAN FREEMAN - From Thursday's Globe and Mail October 11
OTTAWA — Afghanistan's ambassador to Canada says his government's decision to resume executions is a reaction to growing criminality in the country and not a sign of a return to the Islamic fundamentalism of the former Taliban regime.

“This is not a society run by hard-core religious fanatics whose word is higher than any other law,” Omar Samad said in an interview. “This is a society where people have all the freedoms that they didn't have six years before.”

On Sunday, the government of President Hamid Karzai lifted a moratorium on the death penalty and allowed the firing-squad execution of 15 convicted criminals, sparking an outcry from civil-rights advocates and the United Nations.

Mr. Samad insisted Afghanistan is a profoundly different place than it was under the Taliban, but said the Afghan public expects the government to abide by its own constitution, which allows for capital punishment.

“We have public opinion that is very much concerned about security and criminality and they expect the Afghan government to deliver on both counts,” Mr. Samad said. “And public opinion is very strong in this regard.

“Afghans are looking for a more peaceful and a more just and fair society and they hold the elected government of Afghanistan responsible,” the ambassador said. “The goal is not only to provide justice but also to be a deterrent to others who may resort to such actions.”

Public executions were common under the Taliban, which was overthrown by the Northern Alliance in 2001, backed by a massive U.S. bombing campaign. But Mr. Samad, who became his nation's envoy to Canada three years ago, said there's no comparison between the Taliban and the Karzai government.

“There was no due process under the Taliban. The difference with the Taliban is that they could have taken anybody off the street and accuse them of anything and without any due process, execute them.
“Now there is due process. There is a process in place where individuals have a right to defend themselves and the right to appeal and have the right to [go to] the supreme court.”

He said that even after the 15 defendants had gone through the appeal system, Mr. Karzai added two additional steps in the process. First he set up a special commission of legal experts to review the cases. When that group reaffirmed the convictions, the President himself chaired a separate review along with the Attorney-General and the head of the supreme court.

“The President personally is not a man who easily decides to take the life of another human being,” Mr. Samad said, “even if that human being is a bad person.”

Mr. Samad became noticeably ill at ease when asked about whether the death penalty would apply in cases involving adultery and refused to comment on the record.

The ambassador said Canadians should not be concerned that any of those executed were detainees handed over by Canadian troops to Afghan authorities.

Canadian Defence Minister Peter MacKay insisted there is no connection between Canada and the executions, pointing to the detainee agreement between Ottawa and Kabul. “We have always made it clear in the agreement, both the old one and the new one, that there are to be no executions,” Mr. MacKay told The Globe and Mail.

He indicated the question of capital punishment is for the Afghans to decide. “We've been very clear as a country where we stand on the issue of capital punishment. … This is a policy decision for Afghanistan.”
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Afghanistan: Poor Helmand Farmers Find Themselves In Eye Of Drug Storm
By Abubakar Siddique and Salih Muhammad Salih
October 10, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- The southern Afghan province of Helmand has, with this year's bumper crop, become the world's largest opium-poppy-producing region.

Awash in some places in red poppy flowers as far as the eye can see, Helmand is thought to have produced half of Afghanistan's 9,000 tons of opium this year.

For most poor Afghan farmers and sharecroppers, poppy cultivation is a desperate survival strategy. Highly resilient to drought and disease, opium poppy is also 10 times more profitable than any other cash crop.

One Helmand farmer tells RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan that he grows opium poppies out of economic necessity. "I am 20,000 rupees [$350] in debt and I cannot earn even 50 rupees [$1] a day, so I have to plant poppies -- because I am anxious," he explains. "I know that it is a bad thing and the Holy Prophet Muhammad says that 'all intoxicants are forbidden.' But we need it [to survive] and so it is fine to plant it in a situation like ours."

Farmers Caught In Vicious Circle
The anxiety of Afghan farmers and the greed and ambitions of Afghan and international drug traffickers have turned Afghanistan into what some officials call a "narcostate." The UN Office on Drugs and Crime says this year's 9,000-ton Afghan opium crop is unprecedented in the past century and can be only compared to China in the 19th century. This year's Afghan crop alone surpasses estimated global demand by 3,300 tons.

With Helmand and the surrounding southwestern Afghan provinces in the lead, opium production shot up this year despite an increase in the number of poppy-free Afghan provinces from six to 13.

Abdul Ahad Masumi, a Helmand tribal leader, says that Helmand farmers are not part of any organized drug cartel. He says they seldom engage in smuggling, but must plant poppies out of desperation. "Over the past five years, the Afghan regime and the international community have done little to solve the problems of the people of Helmand," he says. "That left our people with little choice, and they have to plant poppies to survive."

Since the ouster of the Taliban government in 2001, the Afghan government and the international community have tried several uncoordinated and largely futile policies to combat narcotics. Although the United States is now funding the counternarcotics efforts to tune of $600 million, most efforts still concentrate on poppy eradication -- and little is being done to provide poppy farmers with alternative livelihoods.

A former Helmand governor, Mohammad Daud, says the failure to combat drugs is hindering progress in all areas. He adds that poppy cultivation and the drug trade have enabled the Taliban to stage a comeback in Helmand and stalled reconstruction. "Similar to the fact that the people of Afghanistan are the worst victims of terrorism, people in Helmand are being hounded by [the cultivation] of this evil [poppy] plant," he says.

Peasants and farmers in Helmand frequently mortgage or borrow from drug smugglers against future crops. While the practice guarantees food for families, it also makes it difficult for farmers to exit a vicious cycle.

Links To Insecurity, Crime

Haji Mahuddin Khan, a tribal leader in Helmand, says that international drug rings are the main benefactors in Helmand, while poor peasants remain chained to poppy cultivation. "The farmers have never benefited from poppy cultivation," he says. "The profits are taken by those [officials] who tell farmers to engage in cultivation but then threaten their crops with eradication. The international mafia is the main benefactor, while we are being held responsible for it and portrayed as criminals."

There are indications that Afghan opium is now increasingly being processed inside the country. This year, the estimated number of laboratories processing raw opium into heroin grew from 30 to 50.

While the Taliban have always denied links to the drug trade, poppy cultivation has increased with insecurity and the spike in violence over the past three years. Enemies of the Afghan government encourage poppy cultivation and protect farmers against eradication, and they provide protection to drug smugglers in return for weapons and funding for their war effort.

Even now in the Helmand towns of Marjeh and Nade-Ali, opium bazaars operate with impunity. In the provincial capital, Lashkargah, many new villas belong to drug lords, and locals are clearly intimidated when asked to discuss these newly affluent.

More Carrot, Less Stick Needed
Tribal leader Ali Shah Mazlumyar argues that there is a simple way to rid Helmand of poppy cultivation. "If 1/100th of the antidrug aid dollars were spent on helping poor farmers [through alternative-crops schemes], the situation would be much different -- if the government could buy their crops en masse and then sell them cheaply [on the open market]," he says. "This would be an enormous help and might solve the problem [of poppy cultivation] without the use of guns, artillery, and tanks."

Some experts have expressed similar views recently, citing the example in 2002 when Afghanistan successfully shed old banknotes and replaced them despite strong reservations within the international community.

Most experts agree that transforming a largely rural Afghan economy must be one pillar of a successful policy to combat drugs. A crackdown on drug gangs -- including jailing drug lords -- must accompany economic transformation.

Thus far, the Afghan government has failed to arrest any significant drug traffickers in Helmand or elsewhere. Most arrests have been of low-level drug couriers.

Abdul Haleem Khalid, an adviser to the Afghan Interior Ministry on counternarcotics, was unable to name a single drug baron that the government has apprehended in Helmand. But he maintains that the government is trying hard. "We are in hot pursuit of the drug lords, and we have so far nabbed a few hundred people," he says. "We have plans to prepare a list of the major drug traffickers and put them into prison."

But official pronouncements might provide little solace to those in Helmand who are impatient to see their lives change for the better.
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Afghanistan: Ring Road's Completion Would Benefit Entire Region
By Ron Synovitz
October 10, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Financing is in place and construction is expected to begin soon on the last remaining section of Afghanistan's "Ring Road," a highway that loops the rugged mountain terrain and sparsely populated countryside to connect its major cities.

The Ring Road was conceived in the 1960s as a highway that makes a giant circle within the country to link its major cities. Secondary roads are meant to link provincial capitals and smaller towns to the Ring Road -- much like the spokes of a bicycle wheel.

But despite its name, the Ring Road has never been a proper ring. War broke out in the 1970s before the northern section of the Ring Road was built. And in the decades of fighting that followed, large stretches of the existing 3,000-kilometer highway fell into disrepair or were destroyed.

A main focus of internationally backed reconstruction since the collapse of the Taliban regime in late 2001 has been to repair the existing highway and finish building the remainder of the Ring Road.

But it wasn't until October 2 that a loan to finance the final section of unbuilt highway was announced by the Asian Development Bank -- a stretch passing though mountainous terrain in northwestern Afghanistan near the border with Turkmenistan.

"We're providing $176 million, along with the government of Afghanistan, which is also contributing $4 million," says Brian Fawcett, the Asian Development Bank's country director for Afghanistan:

"And this will be for the road from Bala Murghab to Leman, which is 143 kilometers," he adds. "This section of road will almost complete the Ring Road. The government of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Development Bank will do [the financing for the 50-kilometer section] from Leman to Amalick. And then the complete Ring Road will be finished."

Still Much To Do

The bank describes the Ring Road as the "backbone" of Afghanistan's transportation network, and its completion will be a major milestone for internationally backed reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan.

But Fawcett tells RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan it is unlikely the work will be finished by the proposed deadline in the Afghan National Development Plan, a strategy that was approved at a conference of international donors in London in April 2006.

"First, the [Afghan] government has to recruit the consultant for the project. And then, after the consultant finalizes the design of the road, then the contractor will be recruited," Fawcett says. "So I think that the work will start, perhaps, in the first quarter of 2008. And the work will take 2 1/2 years to complete."

Fawcett says the security of consultants and construction workers is a concern that the Asian Development Bank has raised with the Afghan government. He says the Interior Ministry has responded by sending additional police to Badghis Province and the northeastern part of Herat Province, where the work is to take place.

Regional Economic Impact

Niklas Swanstrom is a specialist on Central Asia and director of the Institute for Security and Development Policy, an independent think tank in Stockholm, Sweden. He says that the completion of the Ring Road will be a major benefit not only to Afghanistan but also to the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.

"The reason why it hasn't been completed is, first of all, financing. It's tremendously difficult to get good finances. And then, of course, the political situation has been very unstable. So even if you had financing, you would have a problem securing the actual construction of the Ring Road," Swanstrom says.

"The consequences of this have been very negative," he says. "Afghanistan has been a crucial factor in the whole economic equation of Central Asia. There have been estimates, for example, that the impact of [completing the Ring Road along with] all the regional network of trade would be 771,000 full-time jobs. It would be immense. It would be very positive."

Swanstrom sees the Afghan Ring Road within the larger scope of infrastructure and transportation projects aimed at improving trade ties in the entire region.

"Financially, it will be very important if Afghanistan can act as a link for the Central Asian states toward" a seaport like Karachi in Pakistan, he says. "Trade could increase tremendously. I don't think the impact will be that large in the initial stage.

"You have to connect Afghanistan with Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and, more importantly, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan -- because that's really where the economy comes from. Then you have the Persian-speaking crescent [of Iran, northern Afghanistan, and Tajikistan]. For the Iranians, I don't think we should exaggerate the geopolitical impact of this network. On the contrary, I think the Iranians will struggle very hard to actually get the same benefits as many other countries."

Other Infrastructure Still Needed

Swanstrom says that with no railroad network in Afghanistan, completion of the Ring Road will aid Afghans enormously. But he says there are other benefits than simply making overland travel within the country easier.

"Afghanistan's exports will increase by 54 percent over the next five years," Swanstrom says. "Very much of that is through agriculture. And you will see quite substantial job creation -- long-term employment. It is also an increase in freight. Transit trade. Cotton going from Uzbekistan into Afghanistan and shipped all over the world. And, of course, if you can have oil and gas transit through Afghanistan, that's where the major gains will be made for Afghanistan in particular. "

But although Swanstrom says the development of transit corridors is "all good," he says there is one potentially negative aspect of completing the Ring Road and tying it into the highway networks of neighboring countries -- the possible strengthening of organized criminal groups in Afghanistan and Central Asia.

"With this new infrastructure development, it will be much easier for the Afghani drug lords to transport heroin and opium from Afghanistan to the rest of the region. That's something that needs to be dealt with because it's going to be very, very difficult to handle it," he says.

"We need to construct new institutions -- legal institutions. We have to strengthen the police, the military, the drug-enforcement agencies. We have to make sure that judges and political leaders are uncorrupt," he adds. "That's a huge commitment not only from Afghanistan and the Central Asian states, but also from the international community. And we haven't done much. We're looking at the restructuring of much of the Afghan institutions. That's fundamental."

(RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan correspondent Ayaz Barhar contributed to the story from Kabul.)
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PM's Afghan stand bad for NATO: Dion
Extension of Canada's combat role would weaken the alliance, Liberal leader warns - The Edmonton Journal , Thursday, October 11, 2007
EDMONTON - Canadian troops can pull out of Afghanistan in 2009 with no dishonour and without abandoning the Afghan people, says Liberal Leader Stephane Dion.

The future of the mission is one of the issues that could convince the Liberals to support a non-confidence motion after the new session of Parliament starts Oct. 16 with the speech from the throne.

Recently, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Canada has a moral responsibility to stay in Afghanistan after the current mission ends in early 2009, and not leave the country "cold turkey."

But Dion said the choices are not so simple. "My problem is that the prime minister did not raise the issue of replacement but the choice of leaving with dishonour or staying alone," Dion told The Journal editorial board during a visit to Edmonton Wednesday.

It will be time for Canada to end its military mission and other NATO allies to step in, he said."I think we can't succeed in Afghanistan if NATO is not working," he said. "It can't be the burden of a few countries if you have a coalition of 27 countries."

Dion said that every month Canada delays is a mistake that makes it more difficult for NATO to find a replacement for the Canadian mission.

Extending the mission indefinitely also threatens future NATO missions because other members will hesitate to participate if they see a country accepts a two-year mission and ends up staying forever, he said.
Canada wouldn't pull out of Afghanistan totally, but would remain to train local troops, police and justice officials, and perform other non-combat duties that would need to be done, he said.

With Liberal fortunes hit by three byelection losses in Quebec and internal problems, including Wednesday's resignation of national party director Jamie Carroll, Dion is not in a hurry for an election.

If the Liberals consider the throne speech to be reasonable on issues such as Afghanistan and the environment, the party won't move to bring down the Tory government, but Dion said he is waiting to read the speech before deciding on the next move.

He also said Canadians have no desire to go to the polls again, especially with two provincial elections this week.

Dion was in Edmonton to meet with local Liberal candidates, attend a town-hall meeting and address the chamber of commerce, a luncheon speech that managed to attract only 120 people, many of them party faithful.

Alberta historically has been a hard sell for the Liberals, who currently hold none of the province's 28 seats, but Dion managed to raise a chuckle from the lunchtime crowd when he referred to the province as the "Liberal heartland of Canada."

Dion said he's confident he can sell Albertans on his party's greenhouse-gas-busting carbon budget program, although it proposes hard caps on carbon emissions in line with Kyoto targets while Alberta's version deals with the intensity of emissions out of fear that hard caps would stifle the expansion of the energy sector.

This summer, Premier Ed Stelmach had a warning for Ottawa when the issue of a hard cap was raised: "Don't mess with Alberta."

"I think it will be very possible to work in good partnership with everyone," Dion said, adding that it doesn't make sense to have 10 provincial versions of a carbon market. "Albertans will be involved in the carbon market and this will be good for Alberta."
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Acclaimed author urges Canada to rethink 'dishonest' approach in Afghanistan
The Canadian Press - 10/11/2007 By Sue Bailey
OTTAWA - NATO has bitten off far more than it can chew in Afghanistan while expounding a "strange, dishonest rhetoric" that overstates progress as much as it builds false hope, says former British diplomat and best-selling author Rory Stewart.

Canada should help lead a major refocus on parts of the country, namely in the north, that actually support democratic reform and development, he says.

"NATO has set itself up for failure by taking on far more than it could possibly achieve," he said Wednesday during a visit to Ottawa.

"Canada's great challenge is to identify three or four things that could realistically be done with the kind of resources, commitment and will that we have. And to make sure we achieve them in a way that leaves Canadian people feeling proud, NATO feeling that it's done something and, most important of all, the Afghans feeling that they've gotten something out of this intervention."

Those three or four things may include efforts to improve education and infrastructure in Kabul and other relatively peaceful zones where such development is welcome, Stewart says.

Military action could be channelled to keep insurgents from controlling major cities, he suggests, while special forces could be used to monitor religious schools that double as training cells for terrorists.

That would leave huge swaths of the South without the kind of development many Afghans want, he concedes. "You can only do what you can do."

Citizens who want greater freedoms and services may eventually gravitate toward centres where they've been allowed to flourish, he says.

Stewart, 34, now lives in Kabul after increasingly harrowing diplomatic stints in Indonesia, Montenegro and finally Iraq. The Oxford-educated former British army officer set off in 2001 on a 10,000-kilometre walk across Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nepal. The dangerous, epic journey started in the months just after the Taliban fell and was the basis for his acclaimed memoir The Places in Between.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper stressed during a news conference Wednesday that Canada accepted a mission to protect "the poor people" in the volatile southern region of Kandahar.

"We took the responsibility as a country. I think that we should see that responsibility through to the best of our ability. "We think we have a moral responsibility there. It's not a matter of just playing to the polls."

In a thinly veiled shot at Liberal Leader Stephane Dion, Harper said it would be unwise for anyone aspiring to be prime minister "to play to short-term or uninformed political sentiment on issues that are so critical."

Stewart says Afghans - like everyone else - want basic freedoms and a say in who governs them.

But many will never support a central government or free market, especially in the insurgent south where centuries-old tribal codes still shape an Islamic society that deeply mistrusts strangers, let alone foreigners.

Harper wants to extend Canada's combat role past February 2009, but faces three opposition parties that have vowed to fight it. The matter could be intensely debated this fall against the political backdrop of a potential election.

From politicians to military leaders and diplomatic brass, the mantra on Afghanistan has been to hold the course. Progress is being made. Failure means capitulating to the extremist anti-West forces that helped incubate 9-11.

Stewart says few people are willing to take the flak that goes with pointing out that proponents of the current Afghan mission are hopelessly optimistic in their belief that enough cash and goodwill can turn a fundamentally Islamic state into a Western-style democracy.

Besides, Afghanistan does not hold the anti-terrorism key, he adds. Another 9-11 could be planned in an apartment pretty much anywhere in the world. "What on Earth are we doing in terms of state building?" he said.

"Having fooled ourselves that all you need is more money and more troops ... let's try to redefine the problem and find a more honest, realistic objective."

Stewart is pushing for much more open discussion on a topic that makes scapegoats of naysayers.

"If you point out that our state-building enterprise is not working, people will quite quickly accuse you of being a reactionary or even a racist. They will try to suggest that if you raise problems, you're being denigrating towards Afghans, that you're not respecting the sacrifice of the troops.

"Anybody engaged in this debate comes under a lot of pressure from the military, from diplomats and from the Afghan government itself to try to suggest that everything is going well when it's not."
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Security worries, reprisal fears threaten Afghan food aid
Agencies, convoys under increased attack - National Post Thursday, October 11, 2007
The security situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating markedly, making it harder to deliver food shipments around the country and causing some Afghans to refuse food aid for fear of Taliban reprisals, says the head of the World Food Program's operations in Afghanistan.

Rick Corsino, an American with a master's degree in development economics from the University of Toronto, says the number of attacks targeting international aid agencies and food convoys is up and it has become difficult to operate in large sections of the country.

Roughly one third of the country is out of bounds because of armed attacks by insurgents or common criminals, he says.

"From our perspective, we have a very straightforward and rather simplistic mandate compared to some of the other agencies," he says. "We simply get food to people that need food.

"But there is certainly a growing insecurity in the country that is impeding our operations and impeding the ability of our staff to move around. If we look back to the beginning of 2006, we see an erosion of security in great parts of the country."

Areas of southern Afghanistan, like Kandahar, where Canada has 2,500 soldiers in a NATO-led force, have remained little changed over the last year, Mr. Corsino says, while southeastern areas of the country, closer to Kabul, have witnessed a significant deterioration in security.

The World Food Program expects to deliver 225,000 tonnes of food in Afghanistan this year, feeding 3.5 million people. But those deliveries have become more dangerous as attacks by criminals and insurgents opposed to foreign intervention in Afghanistan have increased.

WFP convoys carry shipments of wheat, beans, fortified biscuits and cooking oil to all 34 provinces in Afghanistan. But threats to UN staff have become so severe that the World Food Program frequently has to hire local drivers to make the deliveries through second or third parties.

"I've worked in probably 20 different countries in one form or another and I've never seen anything like this," Mr. Corsino says. "It's a threat to our staff, to our assets, our food."

"For the very first time anywhere, I've seen beneficiaries who are refusing to accept food because they believe that being found with it will put them at risk," he adds, explaining that Taliban insurgents might punish any recipients of foreign aid.

"Simply having food with the markings of donors makes them feel they can't take it," he says.

Still, the World Food Program is making headway in at least 24 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces and is having particular success with programs that encourage families to work on public works projects such as roads and irrigation ditches in exchange for badly needed food rations.

Another scheme provides 1.4 million Afghan school children with fortified biscuits each day they attend school, while others encourage families to send their daughters to school by giving female students a one-litre can of cooking oil to take home at the end of each month they spend in class.
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AFGHANISTAN: Rate of refugee return slows ahead of winter
KABUL, 10 October 2007 (IRIN) - Fewer Afghan refugees are returning home from neighbouring Iran and Pakistan than in the summer when uptake of a temporary repatriation assistance programme was at its peak, especially in Pakistan.

According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the number of returnees from Pakistan is currently averaging 200 per day, down from a peak of 12,000 per day in April.

The UNHCR return assistance programme, which provides every returnee from Pakistan and Iran with about US$100, will be suspended from 31 October 2007 to 1 March 2008 in Pakistan but continue throughout the winter in Iran, Nader Farhad, a UNHCR spokesman in Kabul, told IRIN.

“During September 16,718 Afghans returned home from Pakistan and Iran with UNHCR assistance, a 16 percent decrease on the month of August and a 25 percent decrease compared to July,” the UNHCR said in a statement on 9 October. A decrease in returns is normal in winter when many roads become impassable.

In the last seven months, the UNHCR has assisted over 347,500 Afghan refugees to return home from neighbouring Pakistan, but over two million Afghans still live as registered refugees in that country.

Since the UNHCR launched its voluntary repatriation of Afghans in 2002, over 3.2 million of them have been assisted to return to their country, according to the UNHCR.

Return from Iran

There are over 900,000 registered Afghans in Iran who can legally stay in the country. Only 5,500 have voluntarily returned home so far this year, UNHCR statistics show.

The numbers of Afghans returning from Iran voluntarily have reduced to an average of 40-50 per day, the UNHCR’s Farhad told IRIN.

A substantial number of Afghans live and work in Iran illegally, but their exact numbers are unknown. The Iranian authorities have deported tens of thousands of them in the last six months and have vowed to expel more.

“We have received a note from Iranian officials that about 20,000 Afghans will be deported from Iran in the very near future,” Sultan Ahmad Baheen, an Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman, told IRIN on 9 October.

Afghan officials and some aid workers say the country faced a humanitarian challenge and the government did not know how to respond when thousands of Afghans were expelled from Iran in April and May this year.

The UN and aid organisations have repeatedly called on Iran to deport illegal Afghans in a humane manner and gradually. Afghanistan’s capacity to absorb and effectively reintegrate its citizens returning from outside is limited, the UNHCR said.
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Japan opposition refuses to budge on Afghan mission
by Kyoko Hasegawa October 10, 2007
TOKYO (AFP) - Japan's main opposition leader on Wednesday refused to budge in his bid to end a controversial naval mission supporting US-led troops in Afghanistan, saying Tokyo should not simply follow Washington.

Ichiro Ozawa, president of the Democratic Party of Japan which took control of one house of parliament in July elections, said his party may propose alternative plans on troop deployments overseas.

"After the ruling coalition has submitted its new bill, we may submit our own bill to show our opinions on the matter," Ozawa told reporters.

"Joining a military operation just because the United States tells us, that's not a consensus of the international community nor a consensus of the Japanese people," he said.

The latest opinion poll, however, showed more voters supported extending the mission than ending it and that recently installed Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda enjoyed strong backing.

Japan refuels US and other coalition ships and planes in the Indian Ocean under legislation allowing participation in the "war on terror" passed after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

The new premier has vowed to renew the deployment, saying Japan must take responsibility in international security. His predecessor, Shinzo Abe, resigned last month citing the opposition's intransigence on the issue.

The legislation is set to expire on November 1. Chief government spokesman Nobutaka Machimura said Wednesday that the government would have a new bill ready around October 17.

The government has proposed a compromise to restrict refuelling to ships policing the Indian Ocean, not forces engaged in Afghanistan. Ozawa said the opposition would wait to see the government bill before commenting.

The opposition leader, famed as a shrewd political strategist, is pushing Fukuda to call an early general election.

Ozawa is a former ruling party stalwart who has long supported revising the pacifist constitution, which was imposed by the United States after World War II. He said he was not opposed to Japan taking part in "risky missions" so long as they were authorised by the United Nations. He has proposed sending troops to the NATO-led force in Afghanistan and peacekeeping operations in Sudan.

Ozawa dismissed government criticism that his own proposals would violate the constitution, saying: "Japan agreed to the UN Charter and joined the UN."

The opposition grilled Fukuda in parliament Wednesday, questioning his statement when he was chief government spokesman in 2003 that Japan had not provided fuel to the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier.

Japanese defence authorities one day later confirmed the refuelling.

"I apologise for the problem in collecting information," Fukuda, a 71-year-old centrist veteran, told a parliamentary committee. "We will disclose information promptly and correctly in the future."

He again denied that Japanese fuel for operations in Afghanistan was diverted to the war in Iraq. The USS Kitty Hawk was deployed for operations in both countries.

A survey published Wednesday by the best-selling Yomiuri Shimbun showed that 49 percent of voters supported extending the naval mission, with 37 percent opposed.

The newspaper, which interviewed 3,000 voters nationwide, said that Fukuda's cabinet enjoyed approval of 59.1 percent -- double the rate for Abe's government before he quit last month.
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Dangerous liaisons
Amit Baruah, Hindustan Times, New Delhi, October 11, 2007
Pakistan’s ‘war against terrorism’ escalated to a new level on Tuesday, when air force jets bombed Epi village in North Waziristan, close to the Afghan border, killing at least 50 persons. Both civilians and militants were killed in the bazaar bombing, a little after iftaar.

Islamabad’s use of firepower from the skies appears to be a direct reaction to the slaughter of 45 Pakistani soldiers in this tribal belt that shares a border with Afghanistan. The belated attempt to send a signal to al-Qaeda-led terrorists in the area, is at an enormous cost to civilian life. The scale of the fighting can be gauged from the fact that as many as 250 persons, including 45 soldiers, have died in the last four days. It’s throwing an open challenge to the Pakistani State, which, at best, is weak in this federally administered tribal area.

Seen together with what is happening on the other side of the border, the entire belt along the Afghanistan-Pakistan boundary now is a bloody battleground, the States against Al-Qaeda and its allies, which include a number of foreign fighters. It’s now pretty clear that the entire border region has become a seamless operating area for al-Qaeda, possibly even a safe haven for some of its top leadership. Islamabad’s use of firepower from the skies appears to be a direct reaction to the slaughter of 45 Pakistani soldiers in this tribal belt that shares a border with Afghanistan.

The leadership in Afghanistan and Pakistan have failed to take on the terrorists. Today, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants pose a robust challenge to both Kabul and Islamabad. In the meantime, the battle for political survival waged by General Pervez Musharraf, his ‘dealings’ with former PM Benazir Bhutto and legal wrangles have shifted attention away from Pakistan’s inability to cleanse its polity of Islamists. The air strikes could also be a message to the West that Pakistan is ‘serious’ about the terrorists operating on its soil, that General Musharraf remains committed to his ideas of “enlightened moderation”.

“In spite of the constant increase in troop level (close to the Afghan border) — from an initial 50,000 to nearly 100,000 now — the Taliban have not been weakened and are showing renewed vigour. The ‘deals’ said to have been negotiated with them have failed to produce results. The most serious development is that some of the security personnel seem to be succumbing to propaganda, or perhaps just criticism, that they are killing fellow Pakistanis,” the Dawn said in an editorial on Wednesday.

And, what is the situation in North Waziristan and South Waziristan, both run directly from Islamabad and both dominated by Pakhtun tribes? “They are probably the most neglected Pakistanis. Waziristan has one hospital bed per 6,000 inhabitants, and a literacy rate of around 10 per cent. More than 80 per cent of males are educated in madrasas and girls not at all,” the Economist wrote in April.

The point made in the Dawn editorial about Pakistani security forces succumbing to propaganda that they are killing fellow Pakistanis is serious. The Pakistani establishment has a long history of supporting Islamist militants: first in Afghanistan and then in Kashmir. There have been reports of a large number of missing ‘security personnel’ in North Waziristan. If, as is possible, some of these are instances of desertion, then there are clear discipline issues within the Pakistan army.

This is a matter of concern for India also. Wisely, New Delhi has avoided any comment on Pakistan’s internal situations, but the suicide attack on a Special Services Group (SSG) mess following the SSG operation in July against the Lal Masjid clerics in Islamabad has not been lost.

Following the Lal Masjid operation, Al-Qaeda’s Ayman Al-Zawahiri gave a clarion call to target General Musharraf and the Pakistani State, holding them squarely responsible for what happened. An al-Qaeda propaganda video shows a suicide bomber  preparing for his car bomb attack, mouthing all kinds of propaganda of ‘heavenly bliss’ while targeting Musharraf and Pakistan. Along with Afghanistan and Iraq, Pakistan is the new full-blown frontier for al-Qaeda, the Taliban and their affiliates. No surprise, given the history of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate and the CIA running the Afghan jehad in the 1980s.

Political change and transition is on in Pakistan, with Ashfaq Kiyani all set to take charge as Army Chief and General Musharraf readying to hang up his uniform. At the same time, Benazir Bhutto is preparing to return home, hoping to become prime minister for a third time. Any leadership that takes charge in Islamabad — presumably a new ‘troika’ of Army Chief, President and Prime Minister will have to take on the job of reversing decades of support/tolerance for Islamist forces. There’s a fourth element and that’s the assertive judiciary under Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.

The inexplicable decision of Pakistan’s Supreme Court to order the reopening of Lal Masjid sends out a signal to extremist forces in a country founded in the name of religion. Are Ashfaq Kiyani, Pervez Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto up to the task of dealing with extremists? We don’t know yet.
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Bookseller of Kabul extends his trade with a mobile shop
The Independent (UK) By Arifa Akbar, Arts Reporter  10 October 2007
The Bookseller of Kabul has a new literary ambition: to take a bus across the rubble-strewn roads of his war-torn homeland offering a "mobile" bookshop service to those living in the most remote regions.

Shah Muhammad Rais gained fame after the Norwegian journalist Asne Seierstad wrote a bestselling novel, The Bookseller of Kabul, on his life running a bookshop in the Afghan capital after the fall of the Taliban.

Mr Rais, who regards himself as a books missionary, told the BBC World Service yesterday that he is seeking to satisfy Afghans' voracious appetite for books and reading, even in the midst of conflict and poverty. He said he had recently returned from northern Afghanistan after selling almost all his books in 40 days.

He is preparing his converted, second-hand bus – the seats and toilet have been ripped out – for another journey north, and beyond, and is filling it with books. "Afghans love books, actually, but they don't have any... The war destroyed everything. Not only their houses and their irrigation systems but their soul is also damaged. Books will educate Afghans to live happily in Afghanistan and forget their sorrows and their tragedy and misfortunes.

"A new generation is thirsty for knowledge and we have a very good future, hopefully. I want to repeat my journey, to the northern part of Afghanistan with new experiences and new books which many people asked from me, and also I want to go to Tajikistan as well," he said.

Mr Rais has managed to keep his business afloat since 1972, despite Afghanistan's turbulent recent history, which has included the Soviet invasion in the Eighties and the Taliban's hardline approach to literature and learning. He has since become the country's leading bookseller with unique access to importing books from across the world.

In Afghanistan, he is respected for having risked his life to promote literature, being imprisoned twice by the Communists, then again by the Taliban who forced him to watch as some of his most precious books were burned. When he was freed, he hid the books in attics across Kabul and smuggled some to Pakistan. After the fall of the Taliban in 2001, the world's press sought to interview Mr Rais, who became known as "the man who saved the books", but Seierstad convinced him to grant her intimate access into his world.

Her book described him as a man whose love of literature had exposed him to great risks over 30 years in the trade. But it also depicted him as a committed Muslim with uncompromising views on the role of women, with the reader being introduced to his first wife, Sharifa, after she has just learned that he is taking a new, 16-year-old bride.

When published, it was an instant worldwide success. But Mr Rais, who had invited Seierstad to live with his two wives and five children, regarded her documentation as a betrayal and a gross misrepresentation, and he began legal proceedings against her as well as writing his own book to vindicate himself.
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From Washington to war in Waziristan
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Online / October 11, 2007
A dramatic sequence of events in Pakistan has grabbed global attention, but few have so far connected the dots between the hurried issuance of a National Reconciliation Ordinance on October 5 and the savage fighting that is currently raging in the North Waziristan tribal area.

The National Reconciliation Ordinance, issued by President-elect General Pervez Musharraf, grants immunity to current and former lawmakers who have been accused of corruption. It paves the way

for a political settlement between Musharraf and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, which is expected to result in a civilian-based consensus government after parliamentary elections in about three months' time.

The ordinance was issued just 24 hours before Musharraf’s reelection as president, yet only three days prior to the Musharraf-Bhutto deal, which is what the ordinance amounts to, Musharraf’s representatives had declined to accept Bhutto’s conditions.

And within 12 hours of Musharraf's reelection, he was commanding what has become the most bloody military operation against al-Qaeda and Taliban in North Waziristan.

On October 1, Bhutto announced in disillusionment that talks on a political settlement with Musharraf were completely stalled. Islamabad had categorically rejected Bhutto’s demand for tangible confirmation of a guarantee that if she supported Musharraf’s bid for the presidency and the formation of a new government after parliamentary elections, she would be absolved of all corruption charges pending against her in national and international courts. A verbal assurance that the cases would be withdrawn was not enough for the twice elected former premier, whose previous governments were both removed on charges of corruption.

News of the breakdown in the dialogue reached Washington - the chief broker of a Bhutto-Musharraf settlement - in a very short time. Indeed, Pakistan’s political transition is the most important link in US strategy in the southwest Asian region and to some extent in the Middle East. The US State Department's Richard Boucher has visited Pakistan and United Arab Emirates (where Bhutto has been living) six times in the past nine months in an attempt to reconcile Musharraf and Bhutto and thus ensure a friendly government in Islamabad, thus retaining an ally in the "war on terror" as well as curbing any adventurous designs by the Pakistani military and safeguarding Pakistan’s nuclear assets.

While last week's political machinations were under way in Pakistan, the US was providing intelligence to Islamabad about a massive regrouping of the Taliban in the Pakistani tribal areas in preparation for a big campaign against NATO forces in southeast Afghanistan. The US feared that a disruption of the political dialogue would mean a hiatus in Pakistan’s political transition, and delay military operations against the thousands of Taliban and al-Qaeda forces gathering in North Waziristan before launching attacks on the Afghan provinces of Khost, Paktia, Paktika, Gardez and Ghazni, and then Kabul with unending waves of suicide missions. If the Taliban were allowed to hatch their plans unmolested during a political vacuum in Islamabad, Washington believed the Taliban would seize the upper hand in Afghanistan.

That was the situation when a representative of the US spoke to Bhutto and noted her minimum demand for a political deal: “At least a signed letter by General Pervez Musharraf which would document his promises against my demands.” US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice then spoke to Musharraf by telephone, and immediately thereafter, Musharraf’s legal team promulgated the National Reconciliation Ordinance.

In Pakistan, certain circles are immune from ordinary legal recourse. Corruption in the military, for example, can only be probed and punished by the military. Under the new reconciliation ordinance, politicians and parliamentarians can now only be questioned by parliamentary committees and not through ordinary laws, and all past corruption cases against those who have held political positions in the past have been withdrawn. Some analysts have criticized the ordinance as permitting the rise of the rule of political mafias in Pakistan.

As soon as ordinance was issued, Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party separated itself from other opposition parties and did not resign from the assemblies. However, the party remained firm on its "principled stand" that it would abstain in Musharraf's reelection vote. Musharraf swept the election as there was virtually nobody to oppose him.

Within a day of Musharraf's victory, Pakistani F-16 aircraft were flying sorties from Kohat Airbase to bomb the North Waziristan town of Mir Ali, acting on intelligence and satellite maps provided by US intelligence. Top al-Qaeda ideologues, reportedly including the group's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, were believed to based in the town.

The fighting in the area is continuing for a fourth day, in what has become the biggest battle in the tribal areas since 2003. So far, over 600 casualties have been reported, the majority of them civilians. Several dozen militants have been killed. The Paksitani armed forces have reported 45 military casualties, but a jirga (assembly of elders) handed over 73 bodies of Pakistani soldiers to the commander of the 7th division of the Pakistan Army on Monday. Another jirga handed over 50 wounded soldiers to army commanders. The aerial bombardment continues, causing a mass migration of the local population to nearby cities.

The flames of Waziristan fires always reach Islamabad and Karachi. When Benazir Bhutto’s aircraft lands in Karachi on October 18, the battle of Waziristan will be reverberating there. The top commander of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, has already openly vowed to kill her, and a strong Taliban cell in Karachi is ready to perform the task.
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Large ammunition cache recovered in Zabul
KABUL, Oct 10 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), along with Coalition troops, have discovered and confiscated a major ammunition cache in the southern Zabul province.

The Coalition said on Wednesday the ANSF-led force executed the operation after receiving credible intelligence of a weapon cache located in a compound just outside of the limits of Qalat.

"The ANSF moved to the suspected area where they found and recovered the ammunition cache," said a Coalition statement emailed to Pajhwok Afghan News.

The cache, consisting of 100 rocket propelled grenade rounds, 6,400 PKM rounds and over 150,000 AK-47 rounds, was hidden in a compound near Jarullah village.  According to the ANSF, the ammunition was in brand new condition.
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Gul wants Pakistan to quit anti-terror coalition
ISLAMABAD, Oct 10 (Pajhwok Afghan News): A former Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) director-general has asked the Pakistan government to stop supporting the US-led international coalition against terror and withdraw forces from tribal areas.

Gen. Hamid Gul, in exclusive interview with Pajhwok Afghan News on Wednesday, said the war on terrorism was in no way in the interest of Pakistan and Muslims; it furthered American and western causes alone.

Dialogue offered the best solution to the issues facing tribal areas, believed an outspoken Gul, who stressed the traditional tribal jirga should be used to resolve tribal problems. He viewed President Pervez Musharraf as an unsuccessful general, killing his own people to please Americans.

Musharraf had nothing to show for his success on any front during his eight-year rule, the ex-ISI chief said, insisting he had failed in Kashmir and tribal areas. The security situation had deteriorated to the extent that even an ordinary citizen did not feel secure in Islamabad, he alleged. "Today, more suicide attacks are happening in Pakistan than in Afghanistan."

Gul condemned the ongoing operation against Pakistani Taliban in North Waziristan Agency as a dangerous game that must stop immediately. If the army did not change its policy, he warned, tribespeople would rise against it. He opined the army, with little guerrilla warfare experience, could not crush local Taliban or other war-hardened militants.

About the casualties inflicted on the army in Waziristan, Gul argued the soldiers were not familiar with the inhospitable terrain and the local population, having its own value system and culture. The current military operation in Waziristan was being carried out at Washingtons behest, he charged.

Ordinary people - not al-Qaeda fighters - were being killed in the crackdown, he said, contending civilian deaths had created a wave of resentment among the locals. As a result, the tribesmen saw the army as an enemy and foes of the military as their friends, he observed.

The outspoken retired general praised Pashtuns as a courageous people, saying they did not forgive anyone invading their areas. "The present game in tribal areas is not in the interest of Pakistan; it is in the interest of someone else." Should troops and civilians continue to suffer casualties there is the possibility that army will upraise against Musharraf.
Amir Khan
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Two Bamyan districts headed for famine, officials warn
Hadi Ghafari 
BAMYAN CITY, Oct 9 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The Bamyan Disaster Management Committee Tuesday said food crops in Punjab and Waras were extensively damaged by recent floods and asked for over 22,000 tonnes of food items for the vulnerable people.

Muhammad Ishaq Poya, member of the provincial council and the Disaster Management Committee told Pajhwok Afghan News on Tuesday more than 50 percent of food crops were damage by a persistent cold wave following floods earlier in the year.

According to an assessment by the committee, UNAMA and Agha Khan Development Network (AKDN), he claimed, 12,000 tonnes of wheat were needed for the dwellers of Punjab and 10000 tonnes for Waras residents.

Waras administrative chief Muhammad Azim Farid warned: "If the requested help is not delivered before the winter, residents of the two districts run the risk of being hit by a severe famine. Farid added residents of the two districts were heavily dependent on agriculture, but half of their crops had been harmed.

General Muhammad Nader Fahimi, deputy governor of the province, argued roads would be blocked by winter snows if assistance was not sent in time. More than 60 avalanches, floods and landslides in Bamyan took a toll on farmlands.

However, the Afghanistan National Disaster Management Authority (ANDMA) in Kabul assured it had taken steps to dispatch 20,000 tonnes of foodstuff to the affected districts, clear roads and provide health services to 18 vulnerable provinces.

ANDMA member Ghulam Haider identified Bamyan, Maidan Wardak, Ghazni, Logar, Paktia, Ghor, Daikundi, Parwan, Panjsher, Sar-i-Pul, Badakhshan, Faryab, Baghlan, Nuristan, Kunar, Takhar and Khost as vulnerable provinces.

Adrian Edwards, UNAMA spokesman, claimed 50 per cent of the food items had been rushed to the provinces. Forty percent of the food would be distributed to women and children and the rest to work-for-food programme workers.
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Afghans among 16 wounded in Peshawar explosion
PESHAWAR, Oct 10 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Sixteen people including two Afghan citizens have been wounded in a powerful time bomb explosion in a busy neighbourhood of Peshawar, capital of the NWFP.

Afghan refugee Ahmadzai and Ajmal were among those injured in the blast that rocked Hussain Plaza in Nishtarabad Tuesday afternoon. A senior police officer said the bomb, which damaged 20 shops, was planted in a water cooler outside a video store in the plaza.

Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) Abdul Majeed Marwat said the wounded - two of them in a critical condition - were rushed to the Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) for treatment. He viewed the explosion as a terrorist act, saying owners of CD and video shops were receiving threats from miscreants.
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Families settle in Afghan's Baghlan province after years on the road
By Maryann Maguire in Baghlan, Afghanistan
DARKHAT, Afghanistan, October 9 (UNHCR) – The Afghans have a proverb that says: "There is always a path to the top of the highest mountain." It has proved prophetic for a small group of internally displaced families carving out a future for themselves and their children on the fertile plains of Baghlan province.

"We have been living like nomads for 20 years," says elder, Shah Wali, speaking on behalf of 140 families now scattered across a cluster of eight neighbouring villages in Darkhat, a stone's throw from the provincial capital, Pul-i-Khumri. They're still afraid that they will be killed by those who took over their lands if they attempt to return home.

Originally from nearby Sari-Pul province to the west, the families found some measure of peace and stability when they were welcomed by locals to Darkhat three years ago and were allowed to stay after roaming around the north.

Today, young girls in brightly coloured scarves play hide-and-seek behind partially completed shelters provided by UNHCR. Their mothers, meanwhile, bake bread and send their older children to fetch water from a well across the valley, in another returnee settlement.

The air is crisp and the silence almost complete, occasionally broken by the cries of a baby or a donkey. But things weren't always so peaceful and the villagers have faced struggle after struggle.

When they first arrived, the families applied for plots in the nearby Khoja Alwan settlement, set up by the government to provide land to uprooted and landless returnees and internally displaced persons. But a mix of administrative complications and corruption at local government level prevented them from securing land.

"We felt angry and upset. So we decided to come together and buy the land," says Shah Wali. "We didn't have the money outright so we paid what we could and the landowner has given us a credit line for the rest."

Today, 24 families have started to build their homes with the assistance of UNHCR on six jeribs of land, the equivalent of 12,000 square metres. A third of the land has now been paid for. Agreement on how the rest of the money will be paid has also been reached. The initiative is raising hopes for other communities who are landless and who are trying to find land space to build their homes.

"We need to pay attention to what's happened here," says Alex Mundt, head of the UNHCR sub-office in Kunduz. "This is an example of a community that has found a durable solution almost entirely on its own and against all odds."

The issue of landlessness, alongside homelessness and security, is one of the major obstacles facing returnees. Many of them have no choice but to occupy land from which they will be later evicted and on which they cannot rebuild their lives in a durable manner. But despite many difficulties, solutions are being found through dialogue, community efforts and resilience.

"Throughout the country we are seeing returnees use their own initiative to try and solve the most urgent problems, such as homelessness, land ownership and a lack of jobs, water and basic services," notes the head of the UNHCR mission in Afghanistan, Salvatore Lombardo.

"But like all the other problems facing returnees, such initiatives take time, patience and effort. There is a need for a continued and consistent commitment to ensure that such problems can be dealt with on a durable and long-term basis."

For the community in Darkhat, it's a matter of one step at a time. Many of the families are putting the final touches to their homes. While they have now secured their own land and have been able to build their homes with the help of the UNCHR shelter programme, there is still much to do.

UNHCR has also been assisting the community in Darkhat with homes and shelters. Last year, many of the families spent the winter in holes dug in the ground and covered with plastic sheeting.

Today, they still don't have any access to drinking water and schools may be some 25 kilometres away. Job opportunities also remain a problem and the cost of transport to the nearest town is equal to a day's wage.

But for the time being, even if there is still some distance to travel, villagers hope they aren't just settling into new houses. As the last mud bricks are plastered over, they hope they have now reached the end of the path and can finally rebuild a community in a land they can call home.
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