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October 15, 2007 


Fourteen foreign troops wounded in Afghan ambush
KABUL (Reuters) - Fourteen troops from the NATO-led force in Afghanistan were wounded in a Taliban ambush southwest of the capital Kabul, a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said on Monday.

The troops came under fire during a patrol in the province of Wardak, immediately southwest of Kabul, on Sunday. The troops called in air support, but there was no word on Taliban casualties and no reports that any civilians had been hurt in the fighting, the spokesman said.

Turkish troops make up most of the ISAF contingent in Wardak, which has seen escalating violence in the last year as Taliban militants have spread their influence northwards from their traditional strongholds of support in the south.
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Three civilians among eight dead in Afghanistan 
By IANS Monday October 15, 05:07 PM
Kabul, Oct 15 (Xinhua) A gun battle between security forces and militants in central Afghanistan's Wardak province left five Taliban insurgents and three civilians dead, an official said Monday.

'Forces and militants came in contact in Jalriz district Sunday,' said Mohammad Asif Banuwal, a senior police officer.

The exchange of fire also left three civilians dead and seven injured, the official said.

Insurgency-related violence and conflicts have claimed over 5,200 lives, mostly of insurgents, so far this year in war-torn Afghanistan.
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Air strike kills three Afghan civilians: police
Mon Oct 15, 7:07 AM ET
GHAZNI, Afghanistan (AFP) - Three Afghan civilians were killed when international war planes bombed an area outside Kabul during a fierce battle with Taliban rebels, provincial police said.

Five Taliban were also killed in Sunday's prolonged battle near Jalriz, about 40 kilometres (25 miles) west of Kabul, acting Wardak province police chief Mohammad Asif Banwal told AFP.

Seven other civilians were hurt, he said.

Banwal said the fighting erupted after a foreign patrol struck a mine and was ambushed. "The troops called in air support which bombed the attackers. I believe one of the bombs hit a civilian home," Banwal said.

"A man and his wife and another man were killed in that attack," he said.

The US-led coalition and separate NATO-headed force could not immediately confirm the incident.

Civilians are regularly caught up in fighting between Taliban and Western and Afghan forces. Many occur during the use of air power.

The Taliban, ousted from government six years ago, are waging an insurgency that in particular sees regular battles in the east and south, from where the hardliners first rose to power in 1990s.
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Afghanistan struggles with heroin addiction scourge
By Hamid Shalizi Sun Oct 14, 8:24 PM ET
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan, the world's biggest heroin producer, is struggling to cope with a drug problem as thousands of Afghans -- trying to cope with the traumas of war, displacement and poverty -- are becoming addicted to narcotics.

On the outskirts of Kabul, a sprawling bombed-out building that was once a centre for culture and science is home to over 100 squatters whose main concern is feeding their heroin habit.

Ghulam Ahmad, a 17 year-old addict, has been injecting heroin for almost two years now. Like many living in the squalid, filthy building, he started using drugs in neighboring Iran.

"I used to work nights in a factory in Iran, and the factory owner, an Iranian man, was addicted to opium himself," he said.

Later, Ahmad moved onto heroin, before being deported back to his native Afghanistan. He now spends his days begging on the streets of Kabul to feed his habit.

Afghanistan produced some 8,200 tonnes of opium in 2007, or 93 percent of the world's supply. More land is used to cultivate drugs in Afghanistan than Bolivia, Colombia and Peru combined, the United Nations says.

In the past, opium was smuggled abroad from Afghanistan and then processed into heroin before it hit the streets of Europe, the Indian sub-continent and the Middle East.

But now the problem is coming home.

In recent years, Afghan drug lords have sought to maximize profits by processing opium into heroin at home before sending it abroad.

Some drugs inevitably remain inside the country where there is a ready market for heroin due to the high rate of drug use among the hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees returning or deported from neighboring Iran and Pakistan.

MISERY
The rates of addiction in Afghanistan have increased sharply since 2003 to nearly 4 percent of the population, the UN says. There are now roughly 150,000 opium users, 50,000 heroin addicts and 520,000 cannabis smokers. Of those 120,000 are women and 60,000 are children.

"Decades of war, poverty, unemployment, post-war trauma and the availability of a variety of drugs in Afghanistan have created tens of thousands of young Afghan drug addicts," said Jehanzeb Khan, of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Afghanistan.

"Most of them are deportees from neighboring countries -- Iran and Pakistan," he said.

Mohammad Bashir, 24, who also lives in the Russian-built former cultural centre has been addicted to heroin for more than seven years. He was recently deported from Iran.

"I was a good tailor, I used to work very hard. In order to (get) relief from my load of work, I used to either smoke or eat opium as a pain killer every day," he said scratching his face with both hands. "I don't know if I can get out this misery."

"My daily spending on heroin is about 200 afghanis ($4). I have to manage to find it by all means," he said. "If I don't get the money, my entire body will be in severe pain."

According to Afghan drug analysts, 98 percent of Afghan drug addicts do not have jobs and find money for drugs through begging or loading and unloading goods from trucks in nearby markets.

Most Afghans, struggling to make a living themselves, look down on drug addicts and refuse to give them money, thinking it will fuel their addiction.

"People usually don't give us jobs, money or food, because drug addiction is one of the worst habits the normal people can think of," Bashir said.

"This evil habit will never let me work until I die."

"CURSED FOR LIFE"
There is some help for available addicts in Afghanistan, but in a country ravaged by 30 years of war there are many other demands on the government's small budget and limited amounts of international aid.

Around 39 foreign-supported centers treating drug addicts in Afghanistan.

Zendagi Naween -- or New Life -- is a British-funded Afghan organization that has been helping Afghan drug addicts since 2003 in three provinces through community and drug demand-reduction centers.

But its treatment centre in Kabul has only 10 beds despite a long waiting list of drug addicts, especially heroin users, the centre's director Dr Naseemullah Bawar explained.

"(To) rid the (patients) of the drug needs from their body, we need to keep them in the bed for 28 days," he said.

"The number of drugs users is rising dramatically everyday," he added. "We need more assistance to build more centers to help these people."

Ekhtiar Gul, an Afghan heroin addict, is one of the lucky ones as he is receiving treatment in Zendagi Naween.

"I can feel a big difference in me and after my treatment is complete, I will start a new life ... drug free," he said.

But Gul's optimism may be misplaced.

"Some 70 percent of treated drug users go back to drugs due to joblessness, stress and having no proper family or community support," said Khan, of the UNODC. "When someone is a heroin addict he is cursed for his whole life."
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Opium in Afghanistan: Eradicate or subsidize?
By Donald G. McNeil Jr. International Herald Tribune Sunday, October 14, 2007
 As opium harvests in Afghanistan have steadily increased, some politicians and think tanks - mostly in Britain - have raised a trenchant question: Rather than trying to eradicate Afghanistan's poppies, why not buy them and make morphine?

Given that the World Health Organization estimates that more than 6.2 million of the world's poor are dying of cancer, AIDS, burns and wounds without adequate pain relief, the argument goes, wouldn't it make sense?

Most prominent among these proposals is an analysis by the Senlis Council, a drug-policy research group with offices in London, Brussels and Kabul. The council argues that the United States and Britain waste more than $800 million a year, as well as soldiers' lives, trying futilely to eradicate poppies.

Instead, it calculated two years ago, Afghanistan's whole crop could be purchased for about $600 million - the "farm gate" price, not the street value of the heroin into which it is refined, which is over $50 billion. (The "farm gate" estimate has gone up as the crop has increased, and may be $1 billion now.)

Whatever the price, "enforcement will not work," said Romesh Bhattacharji, a former narcotics commissioner of India who has investigated the Afghan situation for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. "The Afghan farmer will not switch to alternative crops as long as there is a market for his opium."

Bhattacharji says he now endorses the idea of buying the crop.

The U.S. and British governments are vigorously opposed; instead, they favor tough eradication tactics and more encouragement to farmers to grow wheat, cotton or fruit.

"They're growing a poison, sir - one that kills Afghanistan's neighbors and corrupts officials," Thomas Schweich, chief of the U.S. State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, said in an interview by telephone. "There needs to be better and more forceful eradication."

There is an American precedent for buying. In the late 1960s, the Nixon administration, fighting a heroin epidemic, pressured Turkey, then the world's chief grower, to eradicate its poppy crops.

Unable to do that (both because of corruption and because peasant farmers in Turkey can vote), Turkey started licensing farmers in 1974 to grow poppies for the morphine trade, and the United States gave protected-market status to Turkey and India in 1981, obligating itself to buy 80 percent of the raw material for American painkillers from them. Why not, the Senlis Council and others argue, let Afghanistan join the legitimate supply chain?

Schweich and others reply that it is simply impractical - Afghanistan grows 93 percent of the world's poppies; its crop is 15 times the size of India's.

Also, heroin smugglers pay better. For example, India officially paid its legal farmers only $20 to $50 per kilogram last year, or $9 to $23 per pound, while farmers interviewed in central India in May said illegal buyers were offering $100 to $190 per kilogram. Prices in Afghanistan, at roughly the same time, were about $125.

"Why would anybody switch to legal opium when they can get those prices?" Schweich asked. Making up the difference with price supports - another idea with U.S. precedents - would cost as much as an extra $800 million.

"You can do the math," he said. "If we did it, no one in Afghanistan would grow any other crop, we'd be paying billions for it, and it would become a narco-welfare state."

The idea meets opposition from other quarters, too. Jagjit Pavadia, the current narcotics commissioner of India, said in an interview that if the world became ready to buy more morphine for the dying poor she would like Indian farmers to benefit first. Because of falling demand, India has slowly cut its licensed farmers from 150,000 to 62,000.

A third-generation opium farmer in Neemuch, India, was even more adamant. "We have 150 years' experience in selling to government," said Ramchandra Nagda, who also grows wheat, garlic and spices.

"There is better control here than there ever will be in Afghanistan."

The UN drugs office estimates that heroin rings buy about 30 percent of the Indian crop, despite the efforts of 1,200 narcotics control bureau officers. Diversion in Afghanistan, a lawless warlord state, would presumably be far harder to control.

In the British press, there has been some serious discussion of the Senlis proposal. But in the United States, the idea has attracted little attention. The council attributes this partially to the lobbying power of the religious right and law enforcement groups, both of which react with horror to any talk of legalization.

"It's almost theological, their opposition to our idea," said Norine MacDonald, the council's founder.

Also, both she and Bhattacharji said, with a $600 million annual budget for eradication, the field attracts paramilitary contractors with deep connections to the Bush administration, including Blackwater USA and DynCorp International, both of which train Afghan anti-narcotics police.

Schweich called such a view "cynical and inaccurate" and maintained that local Afghan governors were the leading force in eradication, though he acknowledged that their efforts were plagued with nepotism and corruption.

In any case, many experts - even those favoring the use of Afghanistan's crop for morphine - say it does not change one looming reality: the heroin trade is so large and so lucrative that someone, somewhere, is going to grow the poppies for it.
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Germany-Afghanistan/WRD German chancellor plans to visit war-stricken Afghanistan
Berlin, Oct 15, IRNA
German Chancellor Angela Merkel plans to visit Afghanistan to get a first-hand picture on the situation in the country, however no date has been set for the trip, deputy government spokesman Thomas Steg told journalists here Monday.

"The chancellor intends to travel to Afghanistan at a due time ... but no date has been set," the Merkel spokesperson said.

The chancellor also wants to see how the cooperation between the German armed forces and aid workers functions, Steg added.

The chancellor faced harsh criticism by the opposition Greens for her failure to visit German NATO-led troops in Afghanistan Green party leader Renate Kuenast said a Merkel trip to the war-ravaged country was "overdue".

As expected, German lawmakers voted last week in favor of extending the controversial Afghan military mandate for another year.

Some 453 legislators approved renewing the mission, while 79 opposed it and 48 abstained.

The new mandate allows the deployment of up to 3,500 soldiers in Afghanistan and will primarily focus on northern Afghanistan and the Kabul region.

Meanwhile, the mandate covers also the stationing of six Tornado econnaissance fighter jets in Afghanistan.

Around 3,000 German soldiers are also presently based in northern Afghanistan as part of the NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

Germany has faced intense pressure in recent months from its Nato allies, notably the US, Britain and Canada, to widen its military presence into southern Afghanistan where NATO troops are battling a revitalized Taliban insurgency.

The recent spate of kidnappings of German nationals in Afghanistan has also negatively influenced public opinion about the futile western military campaign in the war-ravaged country.

According to the latest opinion polls, most Germans oppose the NATO-led war in Afghanistan.
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U.S. denies Quran desecration allegation
By AMIR SHAH, Associated Press Writer Mon Oct 15, 6:15 AM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - The U.S. military said Monday it had looked into allegations that soldiers had desecrated the Quran during a raid on an Afghan home and found no evidence that soldiers had defaced the Muslim holy book.

The allegations sparked an outcry among villagers in the eastern province of Kunar, who met with the governor, provincial leaders and U.S. military commanders on Sunday over the issue.

Kunar deputy provincial governor Noor Mohammad Khan said American soldiers raided the home of Mullah Zarbaz on Saturday morning, arresting him and three others.

Villagers alleged that soldiers ripped, knifed and burned a Quran during the raid, allegations that sparked an angry demonstration on Saturday, Khan said. Two Afghan officials had been assigned to investigate the allegations, and a U.S. commander at the meeting Sunday said the military would punish anyone who had defaced the holy book, Khan said.

But Maj. Chris Belcher, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, which oversees Special Forces soldiers who usually carry out nighttime raids, said Monday that the allegations had been investigated and were found to be baseless.

"We looked into it. There was no desecration of the Quran or any religious symbol by U.S. forces," Belcher said. "Had a soldier desecrated it, we would take action."

Khan said that elders on Sunday told the U.S. commander attending the meeting of Afghan leaders that U.S. soldiers should tell Afghan officials before searching a house, a complaint frequently voiced by Afghans. He also said U.S. officials should tell Afghan leaders when they arrest someone.
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Koran tested after claims against US troops in Afghanistan
Mon Oct 15, 5:40 AM ET
ASADABAD, Afghanistan (AFP) - Investigators have sent burnt pages of a Koran to Kabul for tests to verify when they were set ablaze after allegations they were torched by US soldiers, Afghan police said.

The US military has rejected that its soldiers burnt the Muslim holy book during a raid in the eastern province of Kunar early Saturday but said it would investigate what happened.

The issue is highly sensitive in devout Afghanistan and has prompted angry protests.

"We have sent burnt pages of the Koran and ash samples to the capital to the interior ministry criminal investigation branch to find out if the pages were set on fire that night or earlier," Kunar police chief Abdul Jalal Jalal told AFP.

At a heated meeting in the Kunar capital Asadabad on Sunday, villagers from the Narang district where the raid occurred demanded an apology.

"If the perpetrators do not apologise... and if they are not brought to justice and punished for what they have done, we will stand against you, you will see an uprising," said one local, Azem Khan.

There are about 55,000 foreign soldiers here, about half of them from the United States, helping Afghan security forces fight back an insurgency by the extremist Taliban movement that was in government between 1996 and 2001.
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Taliban sets out demands to Afghan president
· Contact raises hopes for eventual end to conflict
· Militants want control of southern provinces
Declan Walsh in Islamabad, Sami Yousafzai in Peshawar Monday October 15, 2007 The Guardian  (UK)
Senior Taliban commanders in Helmand province have sent a list of demands to the Karzai government as part of tentative back-channel talks to bring a peaceful end to the conflict.
The militant leaders - who include a key aide to Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar - want control of 10 southern provinces, a timetable for withdrawal of foreign troops, and the release of all Taliban prisoners within six months. The demands were passed through a former Taliban foreign minister, Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, and the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef.

The demands are unlikely to be taken seriously. However, British and Afghan officials supporting such contacts consider them a sign that a negotiated settlement may be possible with at least some insurgent commanders. But officials on all sides stress that the contacts are in their infancy and are unlikely to trigger an early end to the violence that has claimed more than 5,000 lives this year.

A senior diplomatic source in Kabul confirmed that Mr Muttawakil and Mr Zaeef, who was released from Guantánamo Bay in 2004, were part of a wide group of intermediaries between the government and Taliban commanders. "There are many groups involved. It's a very wide range," he said.

The contacts are a tacit recognition from the coalition and the Taliban that, in the short term at least, neither side is capable of winning the Afghan war.

They face stiff hurdles, some in Kabul. The idea of negotiations is anathema to ethnic Tajiks who fought the Pashtun-dominated Taliban in the late 1990s. "There is controversy in the non-Pashtun community about something horrible coming in through the back door," said the diplomatic source.

President Hamid Karzai also faces a more practical problem of which phone number to call. Analysts describe the Taliban as a network of loosely linked groups divided by region, tribe and criminal affiliation. Motivations vary enormously - some are involved in the lucrative heroin trade or petty crime, while some are driven by nationalist sentiment or a hardline Islamist ideology. "It's a shifting group of alliances and networks. They have to adapt constantly to survive," said the diplomatic source.

All are united behind Mullah Omar, the undisputed Taliban leader. The one-eyed cleric heads a 30-member shura - leadership council - and a smaller 10-member military council. Both bodies are believed to operate out of the lawless borderlands in neighbouring Pakistan, which provide a crucial sanctuary.

One node centres on Quetta in western Pakistan. Black-turbaned fighters openly roamed the streets until a Pakistan government clampdown earlier this year. However, the Taliban's operations hub is thought to be Kuchlak, a small town 12 miles north of the city.

The other node is 250 miles to the north-east in North Waziristan, where Sirajuddin Haqqani, the son of a famous jihadi commander, controls military operations that span Pakistani, Afghan and al-Qaida fighters.

Waziristan is considered a major training hub and the source of many of the suicide bombers who have struck across Pakistan and Afghanistan this year.

Nato and Taliban officials said a turning point in talks came after the Korean hostage crisis this summer in which two aid workers were killed but 21 were freed unharmed.

After that, a Nato official said, "both sides had faith that talking could actually work".

Mullah Omar has repeatedly spurned Mr Karzai's advances. Six years after September 11, the fugitive leader remains more of an enigma than Osama bin Laden. He rarely makes public statements. When he does it is through Mullah Brader, a commander in Helmand with whom he has marriage ties.

One Taliban source said that Mullah Brader supported the recent list of demands sent to the Karzai government.

Mullah Omar's lieutenants are under immense pressure. Nato and Pakistani military actions have taken out a slew of mid-level commanders and three major figures this year. The ruthless battlefield commander Mullah Dadullah was killed in a special forces raid; Mullah Akhtar Usmani was killed after crossing over from Pakistan; and Mullah Obaidullah was arrested in Quetta. Due to these and other losses the Quetta shura has been unable to meet for the past two and a half months, said the diplomatic source in Kabul.

Taliban officials admit they are worried about losing their sanctuary in Waziristan. Major clashes with the Pakistan army in the past eight days have left 200 militants and 50 government soldiers dead, according to army figures.

And for some, talks of any sort give the Taliban an unwarranted legitimacy. One official in Kabul, who declined to be named, was enraged by the defence minister, Des Browne, comparing the Taliban to Hamas. "It's utter nonsense. You can't compare a coherent political organisation like Hamas with a non-unified movement with little grassroots support."
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Disabled Recruited for Afghan Suicide Bombings
by Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson NPR
Morning Edition, October 15, 2007 · Afghanistan has suffered at least 110 suicide attacks this year. There's dispute about who the attackers are, but a commonality is revealed by an Afghan doctor who conducts their autopsies. Up to 80 percent of suicide bombers in Kabul have disabilities.
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Afghanistan would welcome more troops
15th October 2007, 21:42 WST  The West Australian
Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai says his country would welcome an increased troop commitment from Australia, a plan Labor says it would consider if elected.

Labor has said it would be "attentive to any requests" for more troops, but would make the judgment based on Australia's defence resources at the time.

The coalition says it plans to maintain the current troop presence but is refusing to commit to any additional personnel in the near term.

Mr Karzai said Afghanistan would welcome any moves for Australia to increase its troop numbers, as well as other types of aid.

"We would want more Australian assistance," he told ABC television.

"Now, that assistance can take various fronts.

"If Australia can send us more troops, in order to stabilise the country further, in order to conduct a more vigorous campaign against terrorism, that would be welcome."

Australia currently has just under 1,000 troops in southern Afghanistan, comprising the reconstruction task force and special operations task group, both operating in Oruzgan province.

Mr Karzai said Afghanistan needed more international troops to man the borders and prevent insurgents entering the country, and also train and equip local security forces.

He did not want to put a timeframe on how long foreign troops would be needed.

The Afghan army was now 45,000 strong, but the government was aiming for 70,000 troops, and for it to be properly equipped with weapons, planes and other equipment, he said.

"If I tell you now that we'll be ready in five years' time, I may prove wrong," he said.

"What I can say is that let's make all-out effort to train Afghan institutions and to get it done as soon as possible, perhaps within a time span of five to 10 years."

Mr Karzai also said he was sorry about the death of Australian soldier Trooper David Pearce, who was killed in Afghanistan last Monday.

Private Pearce, a member of the Brisbane-based 2nd/14th Light Horse Regiment, was killed by a roadside bomb while driving a light armoured vehicle in Oruzgan province.

"I convey the grief and sorrow (of) the Afghan people to the family of that soldier, who sacrificed his life, far away from his home, in Afghanistan, to fight terrorism," he said.

Mr Karzai said Australian troops in the central part of Afghanistan had set a very good example of bravery and conduct.

"My message to both sides of politics of Australia is that we are grateful, and that I hope Australia will continue for us," he said.

Meanwhile, Mr Karzai said victory had already been achieved in Afghanistan when the Taliban was overthrown in 2001.

But a complete victory against terrorism would take time and effort, he said.

The struggle against terrorism was complicated in part because the Taliban and al-Qaeda were receiving funding from various sources, including to some extent from the cultivation of the opium poppy in Afghanistan.

Mr Karzai said Afghanistan and Pakistan had to work together to stop terrorists crossing the border from Waziristan in Pakistan.

Pakistan had a very professional army that was capable of a lot, but the fight against extremism was not a military fight alone.

Intelligence was also crucial, he said.

Mr Karzai said officials had also spoken to the Iranian government about reports weapons and roadside bombs were being smuggled in from Iran.

Afghanistan would continue to raise the matter, he said.
AAP
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More Defence Force personnel off to Afghanistan
NZPA via Yahoo!Xtra News - Oct 14 9:14 PM
Another contingent of New Zealand Defence Force personnel will leave for a six-month deployment to Afghanistan on Wednesday.

The 77 servicemen and women will fly out of Ohakea Air Force Base.

Three members of the deployment will serve as trainers for the Afghan National Army or as staff officers at the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Headquarters in Kabul. The other 74 will serve with the New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Team in the Bamyan Province of Afghanistan.

The departure ceremony will be attended by the Chief of Defence Force Lieutenant General Jerry Mateparae and Chief of Army Major General Lou Gardiner along with family and friends.
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Afghanistan issue won't be solved by panel: Rae
Sun. Oct. 14 2007 1:18 PM ET CTV.ca News Staff
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is obviously hoping to "defang" the Afghanistan issue with his new panel, said Liberal Foreign Affairs critic Bob Rae.

"I don't think frankly that's possible. The issue is much too alive for Canadians, much to important to Canadians, to simply say we're going to let five individuals go off in a corner and tell us what to do," he told CTV's Question Period on Sunday.

The panel has to be part of a broader discussion, he said.

For the Liberals, the important things are that an exclusively military solution isn't possible in Afghanistan, and that Canada remain engaged there, Rae said.

Many Liberals were surprised Friday, when Harper appointed former Liberal cabinet minister John Manley as chair of the five-member panel.

"That's Mr. Manley's choice," Rae said, sidestepping questions about whether some Liberals saw Manley's action as providing political cover for Harper.

"Imagine if he was not there," Liberal Leader Stephane Dion said of Manley in a separate Question Period interview.

"All the others -- three out of four -- have strong connections to Mr. (former Progressive Conservative prime minister Brian) Mulroney," he said.

The other panel members are:

Derek Burney, Canada's former ambassador to Washington and former chief of staff
to Mulroney
Broadcaster Pamela Wallin, who was Canadian consul general in New York
Former Mulroney-era Progressive Conservative cabinet minister Jake Epp
Paul Tellier, former Clerk of the Privy Council during the Mulroney era and former president and CEO of Canadian National Railway and Bombardier
"All of them have no understanding at all of Afghanistan," Dion said, adding while those four were honourable Canadians, they are better known for their connections to the United States.

The panel has four options to consider before it is scheduled to report at the end of January:

Option One -- continue training the Afghan army and police with the goal of creating a self-sufficient indigenous security force in Kandahar province so that Canadian troops can withdraw in February 2009
Option Two -- focus on reconstruction work in Kandahar, which would require other countries to take over security role
Option Three -- shift Canadian security and reconstruction efforts to another region in Afghanistan
Option Four -- withdraw all Canadian military forces after February 2009 except for small contingent to provide security for aid workers and diplomats
Rae said the Liberal party would be putting forward its own option to the people of Canada, "whether it's in an election campaign or in Parliament."

Industry Minister Jim Prentice told Question Period that the panel's appointment "is an attempt to have a reasoned, thoughtful, non-partisan discussion about the options available to us in Afghanistan.

"There's been no attempt to put the Liberals into an impossible position. The Liberals, led by Mr. Dion, find impossible positions all by themselves," he said.
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Afghanistan struggles to preserve rich past despite ongoing war
The Canadian Press
MURAD KHANE, Afghanistan - Hedayatullah Ahmad Zai slaps his hand against one of the ancient mud brick walls that separate this historic neighbourhood from the rest of Kabul, a bustling city now despite the remnants of war.

"There was garbage up to here," he says, shaking his head. "We hauled it out for weeks. And there were people living in that."

Murad Khane was once a thriving area that played host to Afghan royalty. It had grand houses that people loved to live in and a busy market along the Kabul River.

Through decades of war, the area had fallen far from its glory days.

The landmark buildings were crumbling. Raw sewage ran in the streets. The wells were dry, and the only people who remained were those too poor to have anywhere else to go.

"This area has a story that is 300 years old," says Ahmad Zai, the head of engineering for an ambitious project to rebuild the area.

"The people like living in these houses," he says as he strolls through a maze of alleys and construction sites. "They have been here for generations."

And for generations they had watched as the grand buildings of Murad Khane buckled from neglect and returned to mud.

Like the buildings, the people showed the signs of neglect.

Poor and uneducated, few had the prospect of earning a living. Children worked if they could, and women stayed hidden inside their homes in fear of Taliban reprisals.

Enter Turquoise Mountain.

Born of a meeting between Prince Charles and Afghan President Hamid Karzai in January 2006, the Turquoise Mountain project aims to rebuild Murad Khane one brick at a time.

The neighbourhood's ancient buildings are slowly being restored to their former glory.

There is an embroidery centre where the neighbourhood women earn a stipend for their work, and an elementary school for the children. Eventually, there will be a school for traditional arts and architecture. It will teach subjects ranging from carpentry, tile-making to calligraphy.

Every afternoon, a volunteer doctor runs a medical clinic and health workers visit local families. The well has been restored and proper sewage drains have been dug.

Earlier this month, Canada's International Co-operation Minister Beverley Oda announced $3 million for the project, funded so far by individual donations from philanthropists including Prince Charles and the Crown Prince of Bahrain.

"It is a hard-hit city and one of the ways that it helps people here initially is with instant job creation," says Anna Woodiwiss, spokeswoman for the project, as she strolls through the returning bazaar area.

"Any unemployed man in Murad Khane who wants a job on this project has one - whether it's clearing garbage, doing brick work or restoring these buildings."

The idea is to build a visible symbol of regeneration amid the ruins, one that will draw Afghans from across the country and, eventually, foreign visitors.

Looking at the rocket-pocked landscape of poverty and decay, it is difficult to imagine that one day anyone would come to Afghanistan of their own accord. Many buildings left standing are doing so by the slimmest of margins. Even cherished mosques have fallen into disrepair.

It is easy to forget that this land was once a celebrated stop along the Silk Road between China and Rome. Its history stretches back over thousands of years of civilization.

But Afghanistan has also been plundered throughout history - by Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, the Persians, the Ottoman Empire, to name a few.

At one time, the national museum in Kabul hosted the world's richest collection of artifacts from central Asia.

But the museum was bombed in 1993. Then the Taliban sacked the place in 2001, around the time they blew up two giant 5th century Buddha statues in Bamiyan.

What hadn't fallen victim to war or the strict Islam of the Taliban has been looted.

Museum staff tried to preserve what they could, squirrelling away artifacts across the country for safekeeping. But it has been estimated that about 75 per cent of the original collection has been destroyed or stolen and sold off to private collectors around the world.

The museum re-opened in 2004 but most of its collection is still missing.

"We have a lot of work to do," says curator Omar Khan Masoodi. "Our museum was looted and damaged and destroyed."

Some progress is being made.

More than a thousand works taken to the Afghanistan Museum in Exile in Switzerland during the Taliban years have now been returned. Thousands of other pieces have been recovered, and museum staff are busy trying to restore damaged works.

The museum itself still needs much work but with the help of UNESCO, the United Nations cultural organization, and various foreign governments and museums, "the work is going well," Masoodi says.

Six thousand visitors have come through the doors already this year.

"It's important for us to preserve our ancient civilization, not only for our younger generation, but for the whole world," Masoodi says.
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AFGHANISTAN: Battling the Taliban With Soviet-era Weapons
Inter Press Service News By Fawzia Sheikh
KANDAHAR, Oct 15-In the dry Afghan heat a small band of hopeful soldiers, vying to become elite commandos, swiftly falls into line as drill instructor Lt. Abdul Hussein barks orders during a physical fitness exam.

Located minutes from the coalition-run Kandahar Airfield, a southern Afghan military base known as the 205th Hero Camp, that is marked by nondescript white structures known as connexes and a yard of old Soviet tanks, is the site of this morning's test.

Sgt. Hussein Anwary, a 22-year-old from Herat province who has served for two years, eagerly talks to reporters about his "pleasure to be a soldier" and the chance to defend his country.

But though he believes the Afghan army can take the fight to the Taliban and other insurgents, he laments that his country's armed forces have "weak" equipment, lacking body armor and air support like fighter jets.

Like most issues in Afghanistan, the debate about the military's skill to act alone, as well as the availability of weapons and equipment, is a complex one.

The Afghan army is arguably well ahead of the police in its readiness to defend the nation, but is still wracked by equipment problems due to limited economic progress, a lack of maintenance facilities, slow-paced NATO weapons contributions meant to be a short-term solution ahead of American equipment deliveries, among other issues.

Brig. Gen. Gul Aqa Nahibi, who commands over 13,000 soldiers of the 205th Afghan army Hero Corps scattered throughout the southern provinces of Kandahar, Zabul, Helmand and Uruzghan, acknowledged that his corps' arsenal stems back to the 1980s war with the Soviets and the civil war between mujahideen factions in the 1990s.

Speaking from his Hero Camp office, Nahibi, a 41-year veteran of Afghanistan's army, said the Afghan military more recently has collected old weapons acquired from civilians but many are ineffective. He was quick to point out, however, that Western forces have provided combat and telecommunications vehicles as well as uniforms.

"It's the coalition's responsibility to equip the Afghan, as they promised the Afghan government . . . but they have a schedule," he said. His soldiers can carry out independent operations if properly armed, he said, adding that checkpoints stationed outside the camp are manned by Afghan National Army soldiers with coalition forces acting only in supportive roles.

Back in Kabul, Maj. Gen. Robert Cone, commanding general of the U.S. Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan, told IPS that the U.S. is on track to issue most weapons, including M16s and other machine guns, in the fall of 2008.

"What we're really working to do is get donations from NATO right now in the interim until the U.S. weapons are available" but the process could be better, conceded Cone, the senior-most American general in charge of training and coaching the Afghan army. He said some countries have been quite generous, noting recent offers from Canada and a donation of some 1,500 brand-new weapons from Montenegro.
The security forces, seen as a prominent fixture throughout the country driving Toyota pickup trucks and similar light tactical vehicles, are in line to receive heavy trucks, he added. The process is 50 percent completed, he said.

"And again, my concern is getting it into the hands of the right people that can account for it and are not going to lose it," he stressed. "And that sometimes slows this process down. One of the problems you have is you can't just give them equipment. You have to build maintenance facilities. They have to know how to maintain them otherwise they'll just be broken down all over the countryside."

Cone said the debate on assigning vehicles has included questions about the extent to which the Afghan army and police should be "uparmored," since the country's insurgency has featured fewer roadside bombs and suicide bombers than neighboring Iraq's.

"This is an insurgency and you need the support of the people," he concluded. "And it is essential that the Afghan security forces can move in and among the people ... without being, I think, decked out like an American soldier", known for travelling in conspicuous convoys of humvees.

To that end, certain force-protection items like body armor, helmets and a limited number of unarmoured vehicles will be issued to security forces operating only in "really high-risk areas", he told IPS.

Cone, echoing the earlier concerns of aspiring young commando Sgt. Anwary on the Afghan military's need for close air support, said coalition forces have turned their attention to building systems such as logistics, command and control, casualty evacuation and air support.

Describing Afghans as fearless in combat, he went on to say there is no doubt several Afghan units can, and have, battled the Taliban on their own but he questioned whether they can do so "without needless loss of life". In some instances, at least on the logistics side, the best-performing Afghan units are ones that show initiative by operating apart from American systems, he said.

For example, one Afghan solution has been to scrap ready-made halal meals the U.S. military bought for local soldiers and instead ask field-ordering agents to buy and slaughter goats, he said.

"In my view that's a success," said Cone. "I tend to think we have to look at different solutions for the Afghans and stop imposing sort of the Western standard for things like logistics. The Afghans were very happy that they happen to eat three hot meals a day as opposed to eating a lunch out of a plastic bag."

Despite coalition efforts to help develop a logistics system for the Afghan army, U.S. navy Lt. Col. John Matthew Anderson, a senior mentor of the navy garrison of the Afghan army's 205th Corps, said nearly 30 years of war have exacted a huge toll on Afghan economic life. He has been posted in Kandahar since April.

"There's no tax base and they literally do not have the financial resources to even have a supply system," Anderson said in an interview at Kandahar airfield. "The government brings in no revenue from the people of Afghanistan, so they have no money to buy bullets. They have no money to buy uniforms. They have no money to buy rifles, pick-up trucks," food, medicine and other supplies.

Summing up the country's woes, Anderson doubted military logistics progress will be made until Afghanistan develops an economic base but acknowledged the war-torn country is hard-pressed to develop an economy until it achieves security.

Although the Afghan government is striving to attract investment, foreign aid drives the country in which the war-weary south sees little business development, said Norine MacDonald, president and lead field researcher of the international non government organisation (NGO) the Senlis Council.

Surprising pockets of success have emerged, though.

The absence of land lines has boosted the growth of cell-phone networks, offering people -- including the insurgents -- communications in even the poorest corners of the country, MacDonald, who is based in Kandahar, said in an interview.

Yet, arguably the most robust economic activity in the country is road-building financed by the international community, she told IPS. She said for the most part non-Afghan businesses lead these operations, hiring Pakistani and Chinese nationals and in the past rightfully prompting complaints from the Afghan government.

In the midst of Afghanistan's uncertain economic future, the building of the military forges on.

The Afghan army's 203rd and 209th Corps, in particular, have shown the greatest promise in leading operations against their enemies, said Cone, the American lead trainer. He predicted that certain Afghan units will be poised to carry out independent missions in the spring but will still rely on the coalition for casualty evacuation. He said the process of readying units will continue for about 18 months.

Regardless of international agendas to shape the Afghan security forces, the army's ultimate effectiveness will be "in the mind's eye of the Afghan people," he concluded.

"I'm reluctant to just to go to any kind of a timetable simply because I think it does not reflect the complexity of the task or the reality," he said.

(*Fawzia Sheikh was recently embedded with US troops in Afghanistan)
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UK backs plan to split Taliban from within
The Guardian Julian Borger and Declan Walsh in Islamabad Monday October 15, 2007
The British government has thrown its backing behind an ambitious Afghan strategy to split the Taliban by securing the defection of senior members of the militant group and large numbers of their followers. The strategy, spearheaded by the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, reflects a significant shift in British policy, and is showing initial signs of success. The Guardian has learned that members of the Taliban's leadership council have used go-betweens to negotiate their defection.

"There is a remarkable amount of contacts between senior and serious [Afghan] government figures with people who are in the Taliban movement," said a senior British official. "It is conceivable you could have chunks of the Taliban breaking off and giving up violence. Some have already done so." Tribal elders, former Taliban ministers and UN officials have opened multiple back-channels between the two sides.

As British troops are being withdrawn from Iraq, the military presence in southern Afghanistan is to be bolstered in the next few months by the deployment of the Parachute Regiment and new Eurofighter/Typhoon fighter-bombers.

At the same time, however, British officials have concluded that the Taliban is too deep-rooted to be eradicated by military means. Following a wide-ranging policy review accompanying Gordon Brown's arrival in Downing Street, a decision was taken to put a much greater focus on courting "moderate" Taliban leaders as well as "tier two" footsoldiers, who fight more for money and out of a sense of tribal obligation than for the Taliban's ideology.

Such a shift has put Britain and the Karzai government at odds with hawks in Washington, who are wary of Whitehall's enthusiasm for talks with what they see as a monolithic terrorist group. But a British official said: "Some Americans are coming around to our way of seeing this."

A senior diplomatic source in Kabul confirmed the contact, but stressed it was one of multiple strands. "This is not shaping up to be a single dialogue with a core Taliban entity," he said. The source said many of the contacts were initiated by Taliban commanders themselves, dispirited by losses at the hands of Nato bombing campaign and worried about the loss of the sanctuary in neighbouring Pakistan. Fighting raged in North Waziristan last week as Pakistani F16 warplanes bombed suspected Taliban and al-Qaida positions.

"Effectively what some of the commanders are offering is to capitulate," he said. "They are worried for their own skins and the skins of their families." The official refused to quantify the contacts, only saying they were "numerous".

The Taliban leadership, which is under the influence of foreign al-Qaida fighters, is thought to be vehemently opposed to talks. In a message released on Friday the group's leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, rebuffed an offer of talks from Mr Karzai.

Some worry the talks are a Taliban stalling tactic at a time of intense military pressure. "Everyone on the ground thinks they've had a real effect this year and they want to keep the pressure up through the winter," said a Nato official. "It's in the Taliban's interests to appear more conciliatory when they're under pressure."

The strategy is deeply controversial in Kabul, where memories of brutal Taliban rule in the 1990s are still fresh. "It is a complete misunderstanding of the local situation to believe that negotiating with violent extremists will result in peace," said Joanna Nathan of the International Crisis Group. "This will simply add more fuel to the conflict, not quell it."
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Over 155 civilians killed in suicide attacks, fighting in September
KABUL, 12 October 2007 (IRIN) - Over 155 Afghan civilians died in ground military operations, aerial strikes and suicide attacks by Taliban insurgents, US, NATO and Afghan government forces in September alone, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) has told IRIN.

"At least 80 civilians lost their lives in suicide attacks and over 75 others were killed in military operations and aerial strikes in September," said Farid Hamidi, an AIHRC official.

The AIHRC is yet to verify the gender, age and other details of the civilian victims.

Dozens of civilians are also feared wounded and many others have been displaced as a result of insurgency-related violence, the rights watchdog said.

Suicide attacks were all but unknown in Afghanistan until 2002 but have soared in the last two years. Since January 2007, over 103 suicide attacks have been recorded compared to 100 in the whole of 2006, the UN reported in September.

Noncombatants make up to 80 percent of suicide attack victims, found the UN study Suicide Attacks in Afghanistan (2001-2007).

"Unfortunately, all warring parties have continuously disregarded our repeated calls that all measures must be implemented to avoid harm to civilians during armed hostilities," the AIHRC's Hamidi said.

Southern and southwestern parts of Afghanistan are widely considered to be hotbeds of insurgency. However, two-thirds of civilian casualties in September resulting from military operations, aerial strikes and suicide attacks were reported in the eastern Afghan provinces of Nangarhar, Kunar and Laghman, AIHRC preliminary findings show.

More violence than in 2006

Apart from rising civilian casualties, around 250 alleged Taliban fighters and at least 30 Afghan and international soldiers reportedly died in armed conflict in September.

On 21 September the UN Secretary-General reported to the Security Council that insurgency-and-terrorism related violence in Afghanistan had seen an increase of at least 20 percent compared to 2006.

"An average of 548 incidents per month were recorded in 2007, compared to an average of 425 per month in 2006," said the report, entitled The Situation in Afghanistan and its Implications for International Peace and Security.

In one of the deadliest incidents, on 29 September, a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a bus packed with Afghan army officers, killing 30 people, including six civilians, the Afghanistan Ministry of Defence said.

Furthermore, in separate military operations in Helmand and Uruzgan provinces on 25-26 September, US and Afghan forces killed over 160 Taliban insurgents, the US military stated in two press releases.

The Associated Press news agency said that by September this year the tally of war-related deaths had surpassed 5,000, compared to a total of 4,019 deaths in the whole of 2006.

"Condolence" payments

Suicide attacks killed more than 80 civilians only in Afghanistan, Sepetember 2007.Suicide attacks killed more than 80 civilians only in Afghanistan, Sepetember 2007.Only a few of the over 30 nations that have contributed troops to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan provide modest ad hoc "condolence" payments to the families of civilians who die in their military operations, a spokesman for ISAF said.

In May 2007 the AIHRC found that US soldiers used "indiscriminate shooting and excessive force" during an incident on 4 March in Nangarhar Province in which at least 11 civilians were reportedly killed.

The rights watchdog said the US army formally apologised to the affected local people and paid a "condolence" sum of US$2,000 to each directly affected family.

The AIHRC has, however, repeatedly demanded the establishment of a regular and fair "compensatory" mechanism which would provide financial assistance to families affected in armed conflicts.

"There must be a transparent system of payments to the families of every civilian victim of armed conflict, in conformity with Afghanistan's domestic laws," Hamidi maintained.

According to Afghanistan's current penal code, a person who mistakenly kills an individual should pay Islamic compensation (`Diyat') equivalent to the price of 40 camels to the affected family - roughly $25,000.
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U.S. contractors may disrupt Afghan effort
14, 2007 at 1:55 PM
Print story Email to a friend Font size:KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 14 (UPI) -- British officials are concerned an influx of U.S. military contractors in Afghanistan's Helmand Province could disrupt their plans there.

With British officials focusing on gaining the support of regional citizens, they have suggested the planned arrival of additional U.S. military contractors could serve as a bitter reminder of the Blackwater scandal in Iraq, The Independent reported Sunday.

"The worry is that there will be a blast, and some contractors will panic and open fire, as happened with Blackwater in Baghdad. That is the very last thing that Helmand needs at the moment," one unidentified diplomat said of the plan.

The U.S. personnel are coming to Helmand Province as part of a reconstruction project in the war-torn region, but at least one of the military companies has already earned a bad reputation there.

The British newspaper said resentment against DynCorp is already in place throughout the province due to the contractor's involvement in an earlier eradication campaign against the region's opium poppy crop.
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Herat's silk weavers struggle to keep an ancient trade alive
by Beatrice Khadige
HERAT, Afghanistan (AFP) - An important stop on the ancient Silk Route, the beautiful city of Herat has for centuries lured travellers and businessmen.

But today it is fighting to keep alive one of the symbols of this splendid past -- silk spun from the delicate cocoons of silk worms.

About 120 kilometres (74 miles) east of the Iranian border, the key city in the 14th century Timurid empire of conqueror Tamerlane still prides itself on the skill of producing the precious material.

But the small industry is being crushed by competition from China, which has 70 percent of the world silk market, and its neighbours Pakistan and Iran.

Of the 156 enterprises in the province, few are dedicated to the production of silk and only 100 families make their living from the craft. This is a marked drop from a few years ago.

"In 2002 there were more than 300 manufacturers with 800 employees in the province," says the head of Herat province's trade unions, Abdul Qadir Akbari.

"We prefer to invest in products that are easy to export, like biscuits sold in the neighbouring former Soviet republics," explains the secretary of the province's separate industrial union, Mir Mohammad Mashouf.

In Afghanistan the delicate work of producing silk is still done by hand because there is no money to bring in modern machines, says Akbari, himself involved in sericulture.

"It takes between 45 and 50 days for an average family of five people to raise 40 kilogrammes (88 pounds) of cocoons," he says.

"We give them boxes imported from China that contain the leaves of the white mulberry tree to feed the eggs, which will develop into the cocoons," he says.

The next stage is unravelling the cocoon, when one has to avoid breaking the fine thread that can reach between 300 and 1,500 metres (yards).

In Herat, just four to five manufacturers are in the industry and they "barely survive," says Akbari.

Ghalem Haidar Azimi runs his business from an old suburb of mudbrick houses.

His dozen employees work eight hours a day, six days a week, to produce 40 kilogrammes a month of rough silk which he says he can sell for 40 dollars a kilogramme. This thread then has to be treated and refined.

It is too expensive to hope to export on a world market where one can bargain for silk half the price.

"Here we find silk from China and more often a Pakistani imitation (polyester) much cheaper," says Azimi.

Mohammad Amine, who runs a fabric shop near the city's landmark Friday Mosque, says: "Today, artificial silk from Pakistan costs 20 dollars for a quarter kilogramme, already dyed. Here, four kilogrammes of silk costs 160 dollars and it still has to be dyed."

The Pakistani thread is also easier to use, says this former warrior who lost a leg fighting the Taliban in the 1990s. "In one day, we can make three shawls with this material, compared to one with the real silk from here."

Silk shawls are prized in the region. Men traditionally keep them for their turbans, even though it's a sign of wealth forbidden by Islamic teaching.

"It is hard work that benefits few people," says Jamshedi Ghulam Mohammad, an expert in their manufacture.

There are also silk carpets, he says, although those from Iran are more valued.

"Thirty years ago, Afghan silk carpets sold well: 75 percent of them were exported compared to hardly two percent today," Mohammad said.
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Afghanistan: Top NATO Official Defends ISAF's Record
By Ahto Lobjakas
BRUSSELS, October 15, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- One of NATO's highest-ranking officers in Afghanistan says the alliance's International Security Assistance Force won't be able to secure the country before the Afghan National Army achieves full strength "in three to four" years' time.

Speaking this month to journalists via videolink from Kabul, ISAF Chief of Staff and German Major General Bruno Kasdorf also said most of the responsibility for stabilizing Afghanistan rested with other international organizations, like the United Nations and the European Union.

NATO appears increasingly on the defensive in attempts to stabilize Afghanistan. But Major General Kasdorf offered a spirited defense, in his video meeting with reporters on October 11, of the achievements of Western forces in that country.

He cited ISAF's military successes in fighting insurgents, as well as growing access to education, health care, and jobs for the general public. Kasdorf blamed what he called the "mainstream media" for complicating ISAF's job with its "negative" and "alarming" coverage of events in Afghanistan -- all of which, he said, served to "give a false impression of an all-out war."

'Lack Of Troops'

Kasdorf also conceded that many of the benefits of the ISAF presence were limited to about two-thirds of the country -- the relatively stable north, west, and center -- but not the Taliban-contested south and east.

He said the problem was a "desperate" lack of troops, and challenged NATO states to rectify the situation.

"With 40,000 troops, ISAF has not [what] is really required to ensure security throughout this big country, [which] is more than twice as big as Germany, for instance," he said. "So we desperately need all the contributions from the different member nations of NATO."

But with a seeming lack of resolve among contributing Western states, there is little hope that ISAF troop levels will rise. Instead, Kasdorf went on to say, ISAF and Afghanistan will continue to be hamstrung in the south and the east.

"Since we haven't got enough forces, we can ensure security only in certain areas," he said. "We do hope that we have enough forces available at the latest in three to four years for all of Afghanistan when the Afghan national security forces have been built up and trained."

Kasdorf also said NATO and allied troops would be well served by better equipment, although their adversaries in Afghanistan are generally armed with much less advanced weaponry.

While ISAF struggles to hold territory in the south in the absence of a strong Afghan military or police presence, Kasdorf said two important elements must wait: reconstruction and governance. He said ISAF's main job -- facing down the insurgency -- accounts for just "20-25 percent" of the total task in Afghanistan. Kasdorf suggested that the rest of the work must be done by international organizations like the UN and the European Union.

Kasdorf, who is also Germany's highest-ranking military official in Afghanistan, defended Berlin's reluctance to send troops to the volatile south. He described German forces as being "optimized" for service in northern Afghanistan, and said it would "make no sense" to dislocate them to the south.

Kasdorf characterized the Taliban insurgency as Pashtun-derived, with its leaders recruited mostly on the Pakistani side of the disputed border. He said Taliban foot soldiers were mostly recruited with promises of cash or through intimidation.

But Kasdorf suggested that many locals worked with insurgents out of ignorance of ISAF's goals. In an attempt to reduce popular resentment among a predominantly illiterate population, ISAF is setting up its own network of radio stations and is also handing out "wind-up radios" to reach listeners in areas with poor infrastructure.

He said ISAF was also trying to reach locals in restive areas in "traditional ways," by working through elders and other community leaders. But he said there was room for improvement in ISAF's work in that area.

"What we also do is [that] we work with the Afghan government to use, to take advantage of, the traditional ways of communicating -- to talk through the maleks, through the mullahs, and by taking also advantage of the mosques," he said. "That is the way you reach the people. But it is tough, and we [could do it] better."

Kasdorf stressed that ISAF continued to see military success as its main deterrent against Taliban recruitment in the east and south of the country.
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Injured Afghan children travel to Germany for hospital treatment 
EARTHtimes.org - Oct 15 1:09 AM 
Hamburg - A flight carrying 57 injured Afghan children requiring surgery is to arrive in Hamburg this week, German health authorities said Monday. The return charter flight is to bring home 20 Afghan youngsters who have successfully undergone treatment in German hospitals.

The 57 children, who arrive in the northern city on Wednesday, are to be sent to 30 hospitals across Germany for treatment under a scheme run by the organization Kinder brauchen uns (Children need us).

They are being accompanied on their flight by five doctors and other medical staff from Hamburg's Albertinen Hospital.

The flight is budgeted to cost 110,000 euros (156,000 dollars). The organization plans two such flights a year, if it can collect sufficient funding.

Some 300 Afghan children have undergone surgery in Germany since 2002, most of them victims of bomb blasts, burns or heart complaints.
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Sparsely populated valley a haven of Afghan prosperity
The Washington Post 10/14/2007 By John Ward Anderson
PARAKH -Slashed across the side of a rugged mountain like the sign of Zorro, the Z Road started as a simple $59,000 US project to put a radio tower atop a small peak in the Hindu Kush, so people in the remote Panjshir Valley could for the first time pick up commercial radio from Kabul, about 60 miles away.

After road crews conquered the mountain's 270-foot face last November, other forces took over. By the new year, private companies had extended the road to the next hilltop, two-thirds of a mile away and 640 feet higher, for a bank of cellphone towers.

Then came another half-mile extension to the next peak for a television tower, then plans for a wind farm, and, last month, a series of switchbacks down the far side of the range to give villages in the next valley their first road to the outside.

This is the way reconstruction in Afghanistan was supposed to be. A little bit of US pump priming, combined with profit motive and human need, would be harnessed by a grateful, liberated population to transform their lives and country. In the process, the people would become loyal allies in the fight against terror.

It hasn't always worked that way. Afghanistan is besieged by a growing insurgency that is shifting US money and manpower from reconstruction to security, undermining vital road, electricity, school, and other projects that are designed to extend the authority of the national government and win hearts and minds.

But in Afghanistan's famed Panjshir Valley - a remote, sparsely populated mountain region that is almost entirely ethnic Tajik - an unprecedented synergy among the local government, the people, and US soldiers has helped spark a development boom that is modernizing and transforming the valley, which became Afghanistan's 34th province three years ago. Underpinning it all is an unusual sense of calm that has come with the people's success in keeping the Taliban at bay.

When a US reconstruction team recently returned to Forward Operating Base Lion about 10 miles inside the valley, troops parked their military vehicles for the duration of their stay and traveled throughout the province in regular sport utility vehicles, without body armor and helmets. They often eschewed convoys and went out on missions in single vehicles.

Ambassadors, politicians, and NATO and US military officials "all ask the same thing: Can we do this in other provinces?" said Governor Bahlol Bahij of Panjshir. He extols his zero tolerance for opium poppy cultivation and his systems for working with the US military and foreign aid workers, and for stopping the spread of the extremist Taliban into his province.

In addition to being mostly Tajik, Panjshir Province is almost entirely Sunni Muslim, so the region lacks many ethnic, religious, and cultural differences that have fueled the insurgency elsewhere in Afghanistan.
The province, about 1 1/2 times the size of Rhode Island, has 300,000 residents and is isolated. An indigenous intelligence network with a knowledge of the landscape enabled Panjshir fighters to repel repeated Soviet, mujahideen, and Taliban offenses in the 1980s and '90s and helped this region remain the only unconquered area of Afghanistan.

The fighters were led by national hero Ahmed Shah Massoud, the so-called Lion of Panjshir, who was killed in an Al Qaeda suicide bombing two days before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in the United States. Today, nomad sheep herders graze their flocks on the valley floor among rusting Soviet tanks and decrepit armored vehicles. Terraced gardens line the lower slopes, which climb to slate gray mountaintops scarred by foxholes and trenches.

Pictures of Massoud peer out from the windows of mud-brick houses, car windshields, billboards, and storefronts. Women in all-encompassing sky blue burqas walk along roads with girls in black dresses and white shawls - the traditional school uniform in the valley. Irrigation canals feed groves of walnut, almond, and mulberry trees and fields of potatoes, beans, and grapes.

"This is the safest part of Afghanistan, because the people of Panjshir stick together," said Mansor Azimi Panjshir, 23, a construction worker.
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Afghan Hostage Horrors
By ANN MARLOWE  New York Post - Oct 15 2:52 AM
October 15, 2007 -- LATELY, Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, has shown a genius for doing exactly the wrong thing for the Afghan people and their fledgling democracy.

He has been asking, indeed begging, the Taliban to negotiate with him. Not because the rebels are gaining ground - in fact, more and more of rural Afghanistan is finally seeing the benefits of government. The Taliban's destructiveness is limited to bombings that kill Afghan civilians and lightly armed Afghan police. Sad, yes, but not a threat to the state.

Part of the problem is Afghanistan's "friends." On Thursday, Karzai bowed to German pressure and exchanged five prisoners and, German sources say, a few hundred thousand dollars for the freedom of Rudolf Blechschmidt, a German taken hostage in July, and five Afghans kidnapped with him.

The initial kidnappers seem to have been radicalized gangsters unaffiliated with the Taliban's leadership. But higher-ups endorsed their act, and the demands grew to include the withdrawal of Germany's 3,000-some soldiers from Afghanistan.

While the lower house of Germany's legislature just voted to extend the troops' stay, the Taliban's Mullah Omar posted an online statement calling the prisoner release "a great victory."

But the reason lots of foreigners have been getting kidnapped is that Karzai has been so willing to negotiate with kidnappers - and European governments have been even more willing.

The day after Blechschmidt's abduction, another group calling itself Taliban kidnapped 23 South Korean missionaries nearby. Two were executed before South Korea's government cut a still secret deal for the release of the other 21. Taliban officials have claimed that $10 million paid by South Korea for the release of their citizens is being used to fund operations both in Afghanistan and overseas.

In March, the Afghan government exchanged five Taliban prisoners for an Italian journalist, under heavy pressure from Italy's government. Karzai refused to trade prisoners for the life of the journalist's young Afghan fixer, whom the Taliban promptly murdered.

No Americans have been kidnapped in Afghanistan - probably because the Taliban and other criminal gangs know that our government won't negotiate with thugs or even consider withdrawing our troops there under duress. Indeed, the kidnappings are plainly meant to drive a wedge between our wavering Coalition partners and us.

Bowing to kidnappers' demands is always a bad idea, because it encourages more kidnapping. That's why it's illegal in many countries for the relatives of a kidnap victim to pay a ransom. (The very severe U.S. penalties have virtually eliminated kidnappings for ransom here.)

But negotiating with kidnappers is an even worse idea in a country like Afghanistan, where the government's ability to maintain a monopoly on force is just now being established.

Afghanistan has never had a central government whose writ ran throughout the land. It still doesn't, but it's getting nearer day by day, mainly because Coalition troops are building roads connecting Afghanistan's districts to major highways and establishing combat outposts farther and farther out into the rugged countryside. The last thing the Afghans need is a president who undermines his own authority - and allies who push him to do so.

What Karzai should have done the first time the Taliban asked for a prisoner exchange is said no and then added, "And by the way, we really appreciate the list of prisoners you want released. If you haven't returned the hostages you took within 24 hours, we will kill these prisoners one by one."

But that would have taken a decisiveness and courage that Karzai has never shown and an understanding of what a government is supposed to do.

Karzai may think he can't afford to antagonize Coalition nations or endanger foreigners working to help the people of Afghanistan. But, in reality, negotiating with kidnappers makes life much more dangerous for non-American foreigners there.

The president's overtures to the Taliban have nothing to do with their strength, only with his weakness. Perhaps he's angling to win fundamentalist votes in the 2009 election (toleration of corruption among his intimates and appointment of fundamentalists to high positions having lost him the respect of Afghanistan's progressives).

But it's a bad bet: The Taliban are overwhelmingly unpopular in Afghanistan, even in Helmand and Kandahar Provinces, where the Afghan government's opium-eradication policy is resented. According to an ABC/BBC poll done last year, 89 percent of Afghans view the Taliban unfavorably and 93 percent doubt it can provide them with security.

Karzai seems unable to appreciate or to make the world understand that his people have been doing a great job of growing their way out of poverty, vindicating the trust we placed in them when we tossed the Taliban out.

Afghanistan is still poor, but it's been making spectacular progress, with its economy GDP growing at a clip above 9 percent a year since 2003. An International Monetary Fund review in July noted that "economic developments in 2006/7 have been generally favorable," with progress in fighting inflation (down to 4.8 percent) and collecting taxes - even as bank deposits have grown, as has currency in circulation.

The Afghan people are doing it for themselves, with help from our military and our economic advisers. But they need a resolute government that upholds the law and punishes those who transgress it. Our allies shouldn't be undermining Aghan resolve: Their governments should refuse to deal with kidnappers - unless they are proud of handing the Taliban "a great victory."

Ann Marlowe has been visiting Afghanistan regularly since 2002 and was embedded with the U.S. Army in eastern Afghanistan in July.
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Spend whatever it takes on the war on terror
The U.S. cannot stop fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan until it defeats Al Qaeda.
Los Angeles Times, CA By Frederick W. Kagan October 14, 2007
Victory in Iraq and Afghanistan is vital to U.S. national security, and we must spend whatever it takes to win in both places. The $190 billion requested for this year is still less than 1.5% of our gross domestic product, a small burden given the enormity of the stakes. We are in a desperate war against terrorists who have vowed to destroy us, yet our military remains about the same size as it was in the 1990s.

America's top priority for weakening Islamist terror groups should be to defeat Al Qaeda in Iraq, which is the increasingly important offshoot of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. It cannot be allowed to grow stronger. Already, Al Qaeda has used the Soviet failure in Afghanistan and U.S. retreats from Somalia and Lebanon as proof of the strength of its ideology. Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, head of Lebanese Hezbollah (whose agents are supporting Shiite extremists in Iraq), has said that the U.S. will withdraw in shame from Iraq as we did from Vietnam. We must not allow that prediction to come true.

Some people say we must get out of Iraq immediately because our presence there serves only to recruit more people to the ranks of theradical Islamists. But honestly, the presence of American forces in any numbers in a Muslim land can serve as a recruiting tool. It doesn't matter to the terrorists if there are 160,000 Americans in Iraq or 160 -- the propaganda about "U.S. occupation" will be just the same. It does matter if they can claim to have defeated us again.

Other critics would abandon Iraq and shift resources to Afghanistan. Current efforts to fight Al Qaeda inside Afghanistan must be stepped up. But how would we actually rout Al Qaeda from its bases in the tribal areas of Pakistan? Shall we invade Pakistan, a nuclear weapons state with 125 million people? Using American forces to defeat Al Qaeda in Pakistan would be extremely difficult and dangerous, but we are already defeating Al Qaeda in Iraq. It makes no sense to abandon a critical effort in Iraq that is going well to start a riskier campaign from scratch in Pakistan.

Moreover, Iraq is a potentially wealthy country in the heart of the Middle East; Afghanistan is an isolated land with few resources and central to nothing. Al Qaeda would happily trade Afghanistan for Iraq -- indeed, it has done so, funneling its own resources into Iraq to fight us where we are strongest. Ceding either Iraq or Afghanistan to them would be a tragic mistake.

Frederick W. Kagan is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of "Finding the Target: The Transformation of the American Military."
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Suspected militant detained in Zabul
KABUL, Oct 14 (Pajhwok Afghan News)-The US-led Coalition troops have detained a suspected militant during an operation in the southern province of Zabul, a statement said here on Sunday.

Acting on credible intelligence, the Coalition troops went to the Deh Chopan district where anti-coalition militants were suspected to be hiding, said the military statement.

"Upon search of the compounds, Coalition forces detained an individual with suspected ties to militant forces," said the statement, adding that the individual would be questioned as to his involvement in extremist activities.

"Minor damage" occurred to buildings during the course of operations; however, no non-combatants were killed or injured, it added.
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Afghan trade team to import Pak made diesel engine
Islamabad, Oct 13 (Pajhwok Afghan News): A high level private sector trade delegation from Afghanistan will visit Lahore after Eid ul Fitr to import Pakistan made diesel engines for agricultural purpose.

Chief executive officer KAM Engineering, Engg Khalid Saeed Khan told Associated Press of Pakistan (APP)  Saturday that the Pakistan made KAM diesel engines have become very popular in Afghanistan, compared to all brands of those made in other countries , and are being successfully used for agricultural purposes.

He said the Afghan team will visit the state of the art plant and see the engine assembly process, using indigenous technical know how and expertise, which has helped to control the price of the product with minimum overhead expenses.

In their war torn country, the Afghanis are now inclined to bring maximum area under cultivation to meet the ever increasing need for food grains. For this purpose, they need quality agri inputs and implements, and Pakistan made products offer the guarantee to compete in terms of quality and price, said the firms director marketing, Sh Amin Akhtar
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Govt claims killing seven rebels in Nuristan
JALALABAD, Oct 13 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Officials in the remote Nuristan province said they had killed seven fighters following a clash in Kamdesh district.

Yousaf Nuristani, spokesman for the provincial governor, told Pajhwok Afghan News the militants were eliminated in Marwa area of the district. The spokesman said the rebels had established a secret cell in the area.

He said the militants were ambushed by police. He said the police personnel remained huhurt in the fighting. Operation was still underway in the area to kill or arrest the remaining militants, he added.
Abdul Mueed Hashmi
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Ex-Indian FM opposes NATO's presence in Afghanistan
NEW YORK, Oct 13 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Questioning NATO's role in Afghanistan, former Indian foreign minister Jaswant Singh has said that he was against the presence of NATO troops in that country.

"What has NATO got to do with Afghanistan? I do't want international forces to be unduly interested either in India or Indias neighborhood," Jaswant Singh, leader of the opposition in the Upper House of Indias Parliament, told reporters here.

As foreign minister, Jaswant Singh had visited Kandahar when an Indian plane was hijacked by Taliban backed terrorists. "I tell my friends in Pakistan, are you not disturbed that you have NATO in Afghanistan today. I'm certainly disturbed," he said.

Questioning the role of NATO in Afghanistan, Singh said: "Who is NATO today? What has NATO got to do with Afghanistan? Designation of that organization is North Atlantic Treaty Organization. I do't realize that now the geographical definition is so altered that North Atlantic has really reached Kabul today."

Singh said the three countries - India, Russia and Iran - which worked together against the Talibans when they were in power and the international community had turned a blind eye to it, were not even in the scheme of things in Afghanistan today.

"India is still denied direct access to Afghanistan through Pakistan. I have told this government, I have told the Americans. But nothing has helped," he said.
Lalit K. Jha
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Canadian PM forms panel to decide troops's future
NEW YORK, Oct 13 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has announced a five-member committee that would look into the issue of future of Canadian forces in Afghanistan beyond its present mandate of February 2009.

Continuation of Canadian troops in Afghanistan after February 2009 has been a major issue of political debate in this country, with major opposition parties and several groups demanding that the Canadian troops be called back after its present term expires.

In an announcement, Harper said the five-member panel of experts would be headed by the former deputy prime minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs John Manley. Other members of this committee, which has been asked to submit its report along with its recommendations by January end, are Derek Burney, former Canadian ambassador to the United States; Pamela Wallin, the former Canadian consul general in New York City; Paul Tellier, a Montreal business executive and a former Clerk of the Privy Council; and Jake Epp, the former federal Cabinet Minister and current chair of Health Partners International, a non-profit organization that is providing medical aid to Afghanistan.

Making these announcements, Harper emphasized that the final decision in this matter would be taken by the Canadian parliament.

Harper said he had asked the panel to examine four main options for the future of the Afghanistan mission, although they may consider others. "Option one is to continue training the Afghan army and police with the goal of creating self-sufficient indigenous security forces in Kandahar province so that Canadian troops could start withdrawing in February 2009.

Option two is to focus on reconstruction in Kandahar, which would require some other country or countries to take over our security role. Option three is to shift Canadian security and reconstruction efforts to another region of Afghanistan. Option four is to withdraw all Canadian military forces after February 2009 except a small contingent to provide security for our remaining aid workers and diplomats, he said.

Observing that Canada had made considerable progress in improving the lives of the Afghan people, at great expense to Canadian troops and its treasury, Harper said: "We must also be cognizant of the risk of a return to chaos in Afghanistan, and of the potential regional and international implications. We must also bear in mind our obligations to the United Nations and our NATO allies."

He also urged the experts panel to take into consideration the implications of Canadas international reputation of the recommendations it makes.
Lalit K. Jha
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