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October 16, 2007 

Afghanistan Hosts International Economic Conference
By Ron Synovitz
October 16, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Afghanistan this week is hosting an international governmental conference for the first time in decades.

Officials from the 10 member countries of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) are gathering in the western Afghan city of Herat today for the five-day conference continuing through October 20. The organization brings together Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, and the five former Soviet republics of Central Asia.

The Council of Ministers meeting of the ECO takes place each year. But for Afghanistan, hosting the conference represents a step toward normalcy after decades of war: a gathering of senior governmental officials from across the region who will discuss how they can work together for the prosperity of their people.

RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan spoke to Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman Sultan Ahmad Beheen today in Herat as he and other Afghan officials were finalizing preparations for the event. Beheen explained that deputy foreign ministers and other high ranking officials will meet during the first days of the conference, to be followed by the foreign ministers' meeting on October 20. “That is when the deputy foreign ministers will present their conclusions to the foreign ministers for approval. At this meeting, economic issues, trade, transportation, and other issues of regional cooperation will be discussed,” Beheen said.

Beheen says he hopes the ministers also will discuss an international donors' fund that has been opened to promote the reconstruction of Afghanistan.

For Kabul's part, Beheen says officials will be promoting Afghanistan's potential as a future regional hub for trade and transportation between the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia.

“The policy that we have been following is to promote regional cooperation. We want Afghanistan to be a bridge between the Asian countries. If you look at the map, in principle, we have already achieved this goal," Beheen said. "Just in the area of transit and transportation -- and if we also consider energy transit -- all of this can go through Afghanistan. And all of this is important -- not only from an economic point of view, but also from the point of view of security and social development. This is a golden opportunity for Afghanistan.”

U.S. government officials specializing in agriculture are expected to attend the event as observers. Also attending are representatives of international organizations like the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Islamic Development Bank, and several UN organizations.

Beheen said security has been bolstered in Herat ahead of the event to prevent possible attacks by Taliban militants. He added that more than 2,500 additional police from the Afghan National Police force have been deployed in Herat.

The ECO Council of Ministers last met in Baku in 2006. Heads of State from member countries are scheduled to gather in Pakistan in 2008 for the ECO summit.

(RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan correspondent Sharafuddin Stanakzai in Herat and Radio Free Afghanistan's Hasheem Mohmand in Prague contributed to this report.)
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Afghan suicide bomber kills own family
By AMIR SHAH, Associated Press Writer Mon Oct 15, 4:40 PM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - A mother who tried to stop her son from carrying out a suicide bomb attack triggered an explosion in the family's home in southern Afghanistan that killed the would-be bomber, his mother and three siblings, police said Monday.

The would-be bomber had been studying at a madrassa, or religious school, in Pakistan, and when he returned to his home in Uruzgan province over the weekend announced that he planned to carry out a suicide attack, Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary said.

Surviving family members told police that the suicide vest exploded during a struggle between the mother and her son, said Juma Gul Himat, Uruzgan's police chief. The man's brother and two sisters were also killed.

Family members said the would-be bomber gave his family $3,600 before telling them he intended to carry out the attack, Himat said.

Bashary said the explosion happened on Sunday, but Himat said it occurred on Monday morning. It was not clear why the two accounts differed.

In a second accidental explosion, another would-be bomber died Friday in Paktika province after he identified himself to police and began taking off his bomb vest, Bashary said.

The bomber said he changed his mind and was aborting the suicide mission because he saw people praying in a mosque. But he accidentally triggered a blast as he slipped off the vest that killed only himself, Bashary said.

The U.S. military, meanwhile, said it had looked into allegations that soldiers had desecrated the Quran during a raid on a home in the eastern province of Kunar and found no evidence of wrongdoing. The allegations had outraged villagers, who met with the governor, provincial leaders and U.S. military commanders on Sunday.

Kunar deputy provincial governor Noor Mohammad Khan said American soldiers raided the home of Mullah Zarbaz on Saturday, arresting him and three others. Villagers claimed that soldiers ripped, knifed and burned a Quran during the raid, allegations that led to an angry demonstration, 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 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."

In the latest violence, Taliban militants ambushed a NATO patrol in central Afghanistan on Sunday, leaving about a dozen soldiers wounded, a NATO official said. The troops called for an airstrike on the militants in Wardak province, but there were no reports of casualties, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the matter.

The official did not identify the nationality of the wounded troops. Most of the troops in Wardak province, which borders the capital of Kabul, are Turkish.

In an interview with Australian Broadcasting Corp., President Hamid Karzai said Afghanistan has suffered "the law of unintended consequences" because of the war in Iraq.

"We did suffer by movements of people, by movements of extremist ideology, by transfer of knowledge by extremists to one another," Karzai said in the interview, which was broadcast Monday. "There is no doubt that al-Qaida is linked all across the world."

Karzai said he knew "with confidence" that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and Taliban chief Mullah Omar were not in Afghanistan. But he said he did not have "precise information" on where they were. Afghan officials say the two are hiding in Pakistan.

The top U.N. envoy in Afghanistan, meanwhile, urged countries contributing troops to the NATO force not to "wobble" in their commitments to fight the Taliban and help counter a campaign of intimidation, abduction and killing by government opponents.

Tom Koenigs said at the United Nations in New York that while the Afghan national army will have 47,000 troops at the end of the year, and hopefully 70,000 by the end of 2008, "numbers are not a measure of capability" and NATO remains the most capable force to defend the government against a tough insurgency.

Insurgent violence in Afghanistan is at its highest level since U.S. forces invaded the country in 2001 to oust the hard-line Islamic Taliban rulers, who harbored al-Qaida leaders blamed for planning the attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.

The focus of the violence has been in Afghanistan's southern and eastern provinces, but the insurgents are increasingly using Iraq-style tactics, such as roadside bombs, suicide attacks and kidnappings to hit foreign and Afghan targets around the country.
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Associated Press writers Noor Khan in Kabul and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.
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Three civilians killed, 12 NATO soldiers hurt: officials
Mon Oct 15, 3:57 PM ET
GHAZNI, Afghanistan (AFP) - Twelve NATO-led soldiers were wounded when their patrol came under attack from the Taliban outside Kabul in a fight that police said also left three civilians dead, officials said Monday.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) however denied civilians were killed in the incident in Jalriz district of central Wardak province on Sunday.

"We double-checked that. There were no civilian casualties," ISAF spokeswoman Major Christine Nelson-Chung told AFP. "But I can confirm the incident -- there was a small arms attack, 12 soldiers were wounded."

The soldiers were in a stable condition, the spokeswoman said.

Acting provincial police chief Mohammad Asif Banwal told AFP earlier that three civilians -- a man, his wife and another man -- were killed in the incident, which he said led to a fight to which NATO called in air support.

Five Taliban rebels were also killed in the battle, Banwal said. Seven other civilians were injured, he added.

Civilians are regularly caught up in fighting between Taliban and Western and Afghan forces.

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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Afghan president concerned over alleged US Koran abuse
Tue Oct 16, 6:57 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai is concerned over allegations US troops burnt a copy of the Koran and will take "suitable action" should the claims be proven, his spokesman said.

"The president heard the news from the Afghan authorities and the media with much concern and is aware of it," Homayun Hamidzada told reporters.

"We contacted the forces urgently and they have assured us they will investigate the issue," Hamidzada said.

He said if it was proven the soldiers had committed "such an obscene crime," his government would take appropriate measures to punish the troopers.

"If proved, Afghanistan will take suitable action for such an important and serious matter. So far there is not sufficient evidence to prove the issue," he said.

Members of parliament and village elders have claimed that US troops burned and tore up a copy of the Muslim holy book early Saturday during a raid in the eastern province of Kunar.

The US military has rejected the allegations but said it would try to find out what had happened. Afghan investigators have sent burnt pages from a Koran to Kabul for tests to verify when they were set ablaze.

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

Iran called on Monday for worldwide protests.

There are some 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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Foreign Fighters Reinforcing Taliban in Afghanistan, Envoys Say
By Bill Varner
Oct. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Hundreds of foreign fighters responding to calls from the Taliban and al-Qaeda have entered Afghanistan, according to United Nations and Afghan envoys who cautioned against any cut in U.S. or NATO forces.

``There has been an increased use of foreign extremist elements,'' Zahir Tanin, Afghanistan's ambassador to the UN, told the Security Council today. Tanin said in an interview after the meeting that Arabs and Muslims from across southern Asia have filled leadership roles left by the deaths of Taliban figures.

``Now is not the time to wobble,'' Tom Koenigs, Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon's special representative to Afghanistan, told the Security Council. ``Nations should resist the temptation to reduce their commitment.''

With military casualties on the increase this year, the Netherlands and Canada are weighing full or partial pullouts within the next 18 months. Meanwhile, leaders in Germany, France, Spain and Italy, mindful of polls showing a majority of Europeans oppose the conflict, are resisting calls to send troops to relieve them.

Koenigs told the Security Council that there has been a 50 percent rise in suicide attacks in Afghanistan this year, to 133 from 88 during the first nine months of 2006. He said roadside bombings have increased about 30 percent to 606.

``The sad result,'' Koenigs said, has been a ``significant increase'' in civilian deaths, to at least 1,200.

Some `Locals' Unhappy

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has 41,000 troops in Afghanistan battling the resurgent Taliban, the radical Islamic movement toppled from power by the U.S. and Afghan allies in 2001. Some 15,000 American troops are part of the NATO mission, and Britain has 6,700 soldiers.

Koenigs said the Taliban has lost a large number of mid- level leaders who have been replaced by foreign ``elements.'' In some cases, he said, ``that has not gone down well with the locals.''

Tanin and Koenig said they couldn't confirm a Washington Post report today that U.S. success against al-Qaeda in Iraq has caused the terrorist group's leaders to order a shift in forces to Afghanistan.

Koenigs detailed what Pakistan Ambassador Munir Akram later called an ``overall negative trend'' in Afghanistan this year.

The biggest threat to civilians ``is the ongoing campaign of intimidation, abduction and execution being carried out by anti-government elements against all those seen to have a connection with the Afghan government or the international community,'' Koenigs said.

`Disjointed' Approach

Emphasis on the central government of President Hamid Karzai has left provincial administrations ``weak and under- supported'' and created a ``culture of patronage and corruption,'' he said. ``A disjointed international community approach, combined with a lack of Afghan leadership at the national and sub-national levels has allowed drug traffickers to prosper.''

Afghanistan's 2007 opium harvest rose to a record 8,200 tons from 6,100 tons last year, according to the Vienna-based UN Office on Drugs and Crime. Land cultivated to grow the raw material for heroin increased by 17 percent, to 193,000 hectares (477,000 acres).

U.S. Deputy Ambassador Alejandro Wolff told the Security Council that while security in Afghanistan remained an ``enormous concern,'' progress was being made. He cited a record 6 million children in school, projected economic growth of 8 percent this year and a ``bumper'' wheat crop of 4.5 million tons.
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U.N. envoy says no time to "wobble" in Afghanistan
By Claudia Parsons Mon Oct 15, 2:39 PM ET
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A U.N. envoy on Monday urged countries with troops in Afghanistan to resist the temptation to reduce their roles, saying security still was a challenge and the Afghan police was plagued by corruption.

Reporting to the U.N. Security Council, special representative for Afghanistan Tom Koenigs said while there was a dip in violence in the last two months, the number of violent incidents was still up 30 percent from last year.

"The sad result is a significant increase in the numbers of civilian casualties -- at least 1,200 have been killed since January this year," Koenigs said, noting the United Nations had recorded 606 roadside bombs and 133 suicide attacks, up from 88 suicide bombs by the same time last year.

Koenigs said the Afghan army should be up to a strength of 70,000 by the end of the year, but development of the police force was more difficult because of "a culture of patronage and corruption" stemming from the interior ministry.

"For the time being we must recognize that ISAF represents the most capable defense of the government against the insurgency," he said, referring to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

"Because of this, nations should resist the temptation to reduce their commitment. Now is not the time to wobble," he said.

U.S. deputy ambassador Alejandro Wolff said Afghanistan was going through a "critically important and difficult transition" and security was still an enormous challenge.

Wolff urged the international community to "dig deep" to maintain financial support for rebuilding Afghanistan.

Representatives of a string of countries, from Britain to Iran, expressed concern about Afghanistan's poppy production hitting a record high this year and about links between drugs traffickers and Taliban insurgents.

Afghanistan produced some 8,200 tons of opium in 2007, or 93 percent of the world's supply, according to U.N. figures.

"A disjointed international community approach, combined with a lack of Afghan leadership at the national and sub-national levels, has allowed drug traffickers to prosper," Koenigs said.

Afghan Ambassador Zahir Tanin said Afghanistan could not act alone to fight drugs. "Real progress towards reduction and elimination requires a more robust effort from the transit and consuming countries," he told the council.
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'No plan' for more troops to Afghanistan
October 16, 2007 - 6:14PM The Age, Australia
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer says the Howard government has no plans to increase troop numbers in Afghanistan.

Speaking on the ABC's Lateline program on Monday night, Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai said his country would welcome more Australian troops.

"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 is also helping us in other ways. We would welcome an increase in all manners," Karzai said.

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

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer says the Howard government has no plans to increase troop numbers in Afghanistan.

Speaking on the ABC's Lateline program on Monday night, Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai said his country would welcome more Australian troops.

"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 is also helping us in other ways. We would welcome an increase in all manners," Karzai said.

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

Speaking in Tonga, where he is attending the Pacific Islands Forum, Downer said the coalition government did not intend to raise troop numbers in Afghanistan.

"We have no plans to increase the number of troops that we have in Afghanistan," he said.

He said The Netherlands - Australia's partners in Afghanistan - was considering a drawdown of its forces, and NATO was looking for partners to fill any gaps left by a smaller Dutch force.

"But we are not proposing to fill those gaps with Australians," Downer said.

He also said there were no plans to reduce the number of Australian soldiers in East Timor, where they are serving as part of a peacekeeping mission.

"I think there is still a need for that deployment.

"I think the situation in East Timor is still fragile," he said, but added "they are making strides forward".
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Japan voters seek compromise on naval mission
By Linda Sieg Tue Oct 16, 5:38 AM ET
TOKYO (Reuters) - About two-thirds of Japanese want a political compromise on Tokyo's naval support of U.S.-led operations in Afghanistan, a survey showed on Tuesday, the latest to gauge public opinion on a row that could trigger an election.

Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda wants to enact a new law to let the navy keep refueling U.S. and other ships policing the Indian Ocean against drug and arms smugglers and terrorists after current enabling legislation expires on Nov 1.

He argues that Japan must play its role in combating terrorism in the region.

The cabinet is expected to endorse a new bill on Wednesday to extend the operation for another year.

But it is almost certain that the November 1 deadline will be missed because the main opposition Democratic Party and its smaller allies, who won control of parliament's upper house in July, are opposed.

A survey conducted on October 13-14 by the Asahi newspaper showed 48 percent of voters opposed the government bill compared to 28 percent who backed it. Sixty-four percent, however, wanted to see some sort of compromise, the paper said.

Democratic Party leader Ichiro Ozawa has rejected calls by both the government and Japan's close security ally, Washington, to rethink his stance.

Ozawa has said that instead, Tokyo could provide support for the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan (ISAF), a U.N.-authorized, NATO-led peacekeeping mission battling insurgents led by the country's former Taliban rulers.

On Tuesday, though, he stressed that the best way to root out the causes of such conflicts was by reducing poverty.

Fukuda's government says taking part in ISAF would violate Japan's pacifist constitution.

ELECTION RISK
Fukuda said resistance to continuing the naval support was decreasing, even among opposition parties.

"When I explain matters with the government, there are opposition lawmakers who nod," he told reporters.

"The situation has changed a lot. But it's not enough, so I want to do my best to keep explaining."

The ruling bloc could override the upper house with its two-thirds majority in the lower chamber.

But doing so would risk a public backlash and potential paralysis in parliament that could trigger a snap election over a matter that appears of less concern to many voters than issues such as pension and health care reform.

Ozawa said on Tuesday his party had not decided whether it would present a counter-proposal on support for Afghanistan in the form of a bill, but added that the Democrats' goal was still to have a lower house election as soon as possible.

"Our biggest goal is to have a general election as soon as possible and to win and form the next government," he told a news conference.

Many voters, however, are not so keen for an early poll.

Sixty percent of those responding to the October 13-14 Asahi survey said there was no need for haste in holding a lower house election, compared to 32 percent who favor an early poll.

Both ruling and opposition camps might well be reluctant to go to the polls at a time when voters seem evenly split over which party they want to see lead a new government.

The Asahi poll showed that 33 percent want the next administration to be led by Fukuda's Liberal Democratic Party, while 32 percent want the Democrats to take the helm.

No election for the lower house need be held until late 2009, but Japanese media have speculated that a poll could come next April, after the enactment of the state budget for 2008/09.
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Top general says Afghanistan mission unaffected by political furor
Matthew Fisher CanWest News Service Tuesday, October 16, 2007
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - The senior general directing Canada's war in Afghanistan says the political furor at home over the future of the mission has not changed how he does his work.

"All of these discussions do not really impact my job. It does not affect planning," Lt.-Gen. Michel Gauthier, head of Canadian Expeditionary Force Command, said in an exclusive interview Monday. "Our focus is on the mandate period. The horizon that I look at is 12 to 18 months. There is not much need at my level to look beyond that."

As Parliament prepared to hear today's speech from the throne, in which Afghanistan could be a central theme, the commander of all Canadian Forces overseas added that he welcomes the involvement of a blue-ribbon panel struck by the Harper government last week to recommend what Canada should do here after the current mandate ends in February 2009.

"It provides an opportunity to generate a better understanding of the full scope of Canadian operations," Gauthier told CanWest News Service, referring also to the presence here of officials from the departments of Foreign Affairs and Corrections, as well as the Canadian International Development Agency and the RCMP.

"I hope that it will lead to a better understanding for Canadians, beyond 15-second sound bites, of all that needs to be done here and the role that we ought to play."

Moments before he boarded an aircraft for Canada at the end of his 18th visit to Afghanistan since 2002, Gauthier quietly outlined the successes and failures of the mission so far and the long, slow road ahead.

The three-leaf general, who seldom speaks at length with journalists, had "observed a sense of confidence that is palpable up and down the chain of command," during his most recent visit. "We have the initiative. From our perspective, the insurgents are in disarray. The leadership has been seriously interrupted. We are getting indications that they are losing their willingness to fight."

But, at the same time, he added, "I don't want to sound too rosy."

"The Taliban are continuing to fight. They will still launch attacks and plant IEDs (improvised explosive devices). From time to time they will mount an offensive. But they are outmatched and they know it."

It has been a steep learning curve with some miscalculations along the way, Gauthier acknowledged, particularly involving the Afghan National Police.

An especially difficult time occurred last summer as the first Canadian battle group to go to war in southern Afghanistan was replaced by another, just as a major offensive, dubbed Operation Medusa, began at Pashmul, not far to the west of Kandahar City, with some of the heaviest fighting of the war.

"At the point of transition we had insurgents who chose to make a stand and go conventional on us," Gauthier said. "Over a thousand bad guys were dug in around Pashmul. We could not travel on Highway 1 and as the next rotation arrived there was a clear and present danger to Kandahar City."

At the time, most of the battle group was deployed along a line that was to become Route Summit, with "platoons dug in, First World War-style," said Gauthier, whose early military training was as a combat engineer. With the Taliban flushed out of Pashmul by the end of Medusa and the subsequent opening of Route Summit by Canadian engineers, the battle group pushed out to establish a security bubble for the Zhari and Panjwaii districts. This, in turn, allowed for the return of 10,000 Afghans who had fled the fighting, and for reconstruction projects such as irrigation ditches to proceed.

Part of the plan had been for Afghan police to take over some of the security responsibilities after last year's battlefield successes, "but as we came into (this) summer, and the height of the fighting season, we were not able to hold the checkpoints," Gauthier said. As the checkpoints failed, Canadian forces pulled back.

"This was a conscious retraction. It was not a retreat. It was a consolidation," Gauthier said. We gave up some ground because of the support that was available to us at the time."

As part of NATO's mentoring plan, the Afghan National Army, which is generally held in high regard by the Canadians, has been deploying with Canadian help into new areas over the past two months. But the police, who also have Canadian mentors, have not yet inspired similar confidence.

"It used to be that the police at a checkpoint were interested in taxation. They would slap faces and they have stopped that," Gauthier said. "As long as we are with them, it looks very promising. We obviously want to get to the point where we can leave them alone, but that won't be for a while. The police really need mentoring."

Recalling a conversation he had in June with Brig.-Gen. Guy Laroche, who was about to deploy from Quebec as the commander of the incoming Royal 22nd Regiment battle group, Gauthier said that a holding operation was planned through the summer fighting season. But the regiment, dubbed Van Doo, exceeded expectations by quickly establishing new checkpoints and building police substations across the Zhari and Panjwaii districts.

"We have not taken back all of the land, but the bubble has been expanding," Gauthier said. "We are carefully managing how far and how fast. It is hard work with overlapping considerations."

The general, who once headed Canadian military intelligence, was an advocate of "full-spectrum operations," a military doctrine that shifts the emphasis away from traditional military operations toward counter-insurgency tactics that include mentoring local security forces and using other assets to strengthen local government. This has not only required learning how to work with the Afghan army and police, but also how to co-operate with the different cultures that exist in the other Canadian departments with staff in Kandahar.

"We were thrown together in a complex place and had to get our gears meshed," Gauthier said. "It was a challenge, but it is working now. This is all about leveraging different elements."

Notwithstanding a recent UN report that found violence has increased in southern Afghanistan, "Kandahar City is not 100 per cent safe, but it is safer," he said.

"It is not Ottawa and will not be like Ottawa soon. But shops are staying open longer, and this speaks to a level of confidence of the people. I was on Route Summit two days ago and there were Afghans out on motorcycles or walking with their kids. Where three platoons were dug in last year, there is now a police substation."

As for the overall picture, "clearly progress is fragile," the general said. "I don't want to be a propagandist. What we have done in the past year are small steps forward."

With the security situation in Zhari and Panjwaii more stable now than at this time last year, the intention was that when the traditional fighting season wanes soon, significant progress should have been made on reconstruction projects, in cooperation with Foreign Affairs, CIDA and the Afghan government.

Military planners spent the past six months "looking at where we want to be next summer," Gauthier said.

"Fighting will not end then, but if we are successful over the next eight months, there will be a lot fewer Afghan and Canadian casualties," he predicted.

"I am confident of this as an immediate objective. I am not saying everything will be OK next summer. But it will be better than this summer, which was better than last summer."
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AFGHANISTAN: Widespread child marriage blamed for domestic violence
16 Oct 2007 07:34:13 GMT
More  KANDAHAR, 16 October 2007 (IRIN) - Fifteen-year-old Razia (not her real name) has been imprisoned in Kandahar Province, southern Afghanistan, for escaping from her husband's house and eloping with another man.

She was only 12 when her father married her to an elderly man for a significant dowry payment. "He [her husband] was very brutal and was treating me violently," Razia said.

"No one was helping me escape my husband's cruelty," the distraught teenager said, adding that her only resort was to elope with a young man whom she thought would give her a new life.

Months later Razia registered for divorce from her elderly husband. "As I filed for divorce the police arrested me and put me in prison," she told IRIN.

Not only is elopement unlawful for a married woman in Afghanistan, it is also taboo.

It is unclear how long Razia will remain in prison. She could be sentenced to death or get 10-15 years. Sexual relations outside marriage are considered a serious offence in Afghan civil law, which is derived from Islamic Sharia law.

Afghanistan recently ended a three-year moratorium on the death penalty. [http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2007/10/afghanistan-ends-death-penalty.php].

If sexual relations outside marriage are not proved, she could still face an unspecified sentence for running away from her home with a stranger ('na-muhram'), said Kandahar judge Haji Karim.

Poverty, illiteracy exacerbate problem

Research by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) shows that over half of marriages in southern Kandahar Province are in essence child marriages.

"A vast majority of families [in Kandahar] wed their daughters before their legal age [16]," said Najiba Hashimi, an AIHRC official.

Child marriage is prevalent, rights activists say, but the degree to which it is practiced varies from province to province according to different levels of public awareness and local customs.

According to the AIHRC, conservative traditions, widespread illiteracy among parents (up to 70 percent of Afghanistan's 24.5 million people are reportedly illiterate) and nationwide poverty are some of the factors driving families to wed their underage daughters.

Up to 70 percent of registered cases of violence against women have their origins in early marriages, Hashimi said.

"Young children and teenagers often do not fully realise the complexities of marriage and mostly fail to comply with their wedding vows, and this can lead to both physical and mental violence," said Fawzia Amini, director of the legal affairs department at Afghanistan's Ministry of Women's Affairs.

Child marriage is also considered to be contributing to the country's high maternal and child mortality rates, health experts say.

Long-term problem

Suraya Subhrang, a women's rights expert working for the AIHRC, says child marriage is a complex social phenomenon which can only be tackled by the long-term educational, economic and cultural development of the whole Afghan nation.

"We need strong institutions to ensure the rule of law in society and reliable access to justice for all, regardless of gender," Subhrang told IRIN.

Until such institutions are built up, widespread illiteracy is tackled, and viable protective mechanisms established for Afghan girls and young women, predicaments such as those faced by Razia will remain an unfortunate reality, rights activists say.
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Afghanistan 'a success story,' World Bank says
ALAN FREEMAN October 16, 2007 Globe and Mail, Canada
OTTAWA -- Economic and social conditions in Afghanistan have improved dramatically since the fall of the Taliban, despite continuing problems with security, corruption and the drug trade, according to the World Bank's top official responsible for the country.

"This is a success story," Alastair McKechnie, country director for Afghanistan at the World Bank, said in an interview yesterday. "Afghanistan has defied predictions and has achieved a lot in a short period of time."

Mr. McKechnie, in Canada for meetings with officials in Ottawa and a speech in Toronto, pointed to a series of positive indicators, including double-digit economic growth, an expanding road network, a surge in school attendance - particularly by girls - and a drop in infant mortality from 165 per 1,000 live births to 135 in 4½ years.

He said it is easy to get a negative view of Afghanistan if one focuses on the south and east of the country, where the insurgency is strongest. In two-thirds of the country, there is no insurgency and conditions are improving more quickly.

Some of the credit goes to the World Bank, which has committed $1.5-billion (U.S.) of its own money to the country and set up the Afghanistan Reconstruction Fund, which has so far gathered $2.4-billion in pledges from two dozen countries.

This year's single top donor to the fund is Canada, with $211-million. Britain is second, with $145-million.

The Canadian money goes to a variety of projects and uses and is a major source of funding for the daily operations of the Afghan government, which still does not generate enough tax revenues to fund these activities on its own.

"Otherwise, teachers and health workers don't get paid," Mr. McKechnie said.

He conceded that much remains to be done in reducing corruption in the police and improving the functioning of the justice system.

Another challenge is to reduce the influence of the poppy trade. Afghanistan is estimated to furnish 93 per cent of the world's illegal opium supply, used in the manufacture of heroin, and opium production accounts for one-third of economic activity.

Even there, Mr. McKechnie said, the picture is not as bad as it seems, with only 4 per cent of the country's total arable land being cultivated with poppies and more provinces becoming poppy free.

To battle the opium trade, the most effective methods include the interdiction of traffickers, encouraging alternative cash crops such as grapes and appealing to the religious values of Afghans, he said.
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Most Canadians want troops to stay in Afghanistan: poll
Juliet O'Neill, CanWest News Service Monday, October 15, 2007
OTTAWA -- A slight majority of Canadians -- 54% -- want Canada's troops to stay in Afghanistan but few want to extend their current combat mission past the February, 2009, scheduled date of withdrawal, according to the findings of a poll released Monday.

Forty-four per cent of Canadians want a full withdrawal of the troops, while 40% would like to see them redeployed to "do something like train Afghan soldiers or police officers."

Just 14% believe the government should "extend our current role and mission as required," says the poll of 1,001 adults conducted by Ipsos-Reid. The results are considered accurate to within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Residents of Quebec are most likely (51%) to support withdrawal of troops, while residents of Alberta are most likely to support redeployment (45%) or an extension of the mission (22%).

Women (51%) are more likely than men (36%) to support withdrawal of troops, as are younger Canadians aged 18 to 34 (49%) compared to older generations.

The poll was conducted Oct. 9-14, a period that encompassed telephone interviews before and after last Friday, when Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced a five-member panel to recommend what the military should do after the mission in Kandahar expires.

The panel appeared aimed at defusing political tensions over the mission that has splintered Parliament for more than a year and has threatened to cause a political showdown in the session that begins today.

The minority Conservative government has vigorously defended the mission; the New Democratic Party has called for the immediate withdrawal of the soldiers; and the Liberals and Bloc Quebecois have sought confirmation that the combat mission will expire as scheduled in early 2009.

About 2,500 members of the Canadian Forces are participating in a NATO-led force to provide security in the volatile Kandahar region of southern Afghanistan. The Harper government inherited the mission from its Liberal predecessor.
Ottawa Citizen
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German lessons: the Afghan conundrum
The Globe and Mail ULF GARTZKE Special to Globe and Mail Update October 16, 2007
Last Friday, the German parliament extended the Bundeswehr's 3,100-strong ISAF mandate in Afghanistan for another year. It is revealing that a military deployment backed by more than two-thirds of all MPs is increasingly viewed by German public opinion as a lost-cause mission with little moral legitimacy. Surveys now indicate that two-thirds of all Germans favour a military withdrawal.

For Chancellor Angela Merkel and her conservative allies, the Bundeswehr's bloody, seemingly open-ended Afghan engagement is a political time bomb that could go off in the run-up to the next federal elections, to be held by 2009.

So far, only the post-Communist Left Party is calling for a pullout. But left-wing MPs from the Social Democratic Party and even a growing number of MPs from their conservative Christian Democratic Union-Christian Social Union coalition partners, under strong pressure from constituents, are increasingly skeptical of the Afghan mission. Given this highly charged domestic political context, international demands that German troops deploy beyond the "safe" parts of northern Afghanistan to support terrorist-hunting operations in the south are not only misplaced but also play into the hands of those who want a swift German pullout.

First of all, the north is not a safe area. Suicide attacks on German forces there have increased sharply in recent weeks and months, bringing the total body count to 21. Second, if Germany's continued Afghan presence were to be seen as the result of conforming to U.S. pressure, the public diplomacy case for sustaining the mission would certainly be lost at the hands of left-wing demagogues, who are waiting to play the potent card of latent anti-Americanism. There is already a growing German perception that the Afghanistan mission forms part of George W. Bush's "war on terror" crusade.

Finally, any move to significantly reduce or withdraw its deployment could cause a dangerous chain reaction across the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. German politicians and public opinion are following the Afghan debates in Canada, the Netherlands and elsewhere quite closely, and vice versa. After all, no country wants to be the last to sacrifice troops for a lost cause when others are already beginning to retreat.

So how can this conundrum be solved? In essence, there are two options. The first — politically tempting but strategically dangerous — would be for the allies to cave in to public pressures and pull out of Afghanistan. In the short term such a move would defuse the concerns of disgruntled voters who no longer believe in the moral legitimacy and military necessity of the Afghan intervention the way they did shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The huge risk, of course, is allowing Afghanistan to revert to a failed-state haven for international terrorists and drug lords.

The second option is to go on the offensive and try to convince domestic public opinion that Afghanistan is still worth fighting for. For instance, Germany narrowly escaped disaster a few weeks ago when a group of Islamic terrorists, trained at al-Qaeda camps along the Afghan-Pakistani border, were arrested before they could set off massive car bombs at airports in Frankfurt on Sept. 11. But making the case for the mission directly to the public is a politically risky strategy that demands honesty and strong leadership. The brutal truth is that we are unlikely to successfully transform Afghanistan into a thriving Western-style democracy. Rather, the litmus test should be to make sure that the country can never again serve as a safe haven for international terrorism.

Political leaders from the NATO countries involved can no longer afford to avoid engaging in a fundamental public discussion of why losses in Afghanistan are justified in terms of our core national security interests. So far, Ms. Merkel has successfully managed to stay out of Germany's acrimonious Afghanistan debate, opting instead to bask in her many foreign-policy accomplishments. But with al-Qaeda and the Taliban on the rise in Afghanistan, and increasing domestic opposition to the German deployment there, a defensive, reactive strategy ultimately carries huge political and security risks, both at home and abroad.

Ulf Gartzke is a visiting scholar at the BMW Center for German and European Studies at Georgetown University in Washington.
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'Kite Runner' author supports late release to protect young actors
Chris Cadelago, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer Tuesday, October 16, 2007
 San Jose resident Khaled Hosseini has led multiple professional lives: medical doctor, international bestselling novelist, envoy for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and, now, Hollywood consultant and spokesperson.

On Monday at a press junket in San Francisco, the 43-year-old author said he commends Paramount Vantage for postponing the release of "The Kite Runner," the film adaptation of his bestselling novel, in order to protect three adolescent Afghan actors who appear in the movie.

"I applaud the studio for delaying the release of the film even though it goes against whatever commercial wisdom there is," he said.

The movie's release was delayed six weeks, until Dec. 14, after three of its male stars said they could be attacked for their portrayal of a homosexual rape, which is hinted at in the movie but does not appear on screen. The studio agreed to move the boys and their families from Afghanistan before the film is released, after its consultants concluded that the boys and their families could face possible reprisals.

"Afghanistan has become a pretty violent place within the last year," said Hosseini, who was born in Kabul and immigrated to San Jose in 1980. "If the boys and their families think there is a reasonable risk of threat to them, then you have to take all of the steps that you can to make sure they are OK."

Although he has heard of no direct threats, Hosseini said the precautionary measures to keep the boys safe are well worth it.

"I have been told there are people in Kabul who think there is no real threat," he said. "And that there are people who think differently. So the feeling on the ground is mixed."

The son of a diplomat with the Afghan Foreign Ministry and a professor of Farsi and history at a large Kabul high school, Hosseini said he enjoyed a comfortable childhood, similar to the character Amir in "The Kite Runner."

"I always remembered as a child that I felt some strange discomfort," he said. And it "always had to do with issues of class."

Hosseini's novel about a father-son relationship set against Afghanistan's tumultuous period of civil war and occupation grew out of this discomfort, he said.

The author said he finds it ironic that people have criticized the rape scene because the victim in the story, Hassan, who is a member of the long-oppressed Hazara ethnic group, is "the real hero, the person whose goodness and heroism everybody aspires to."

As for his involvement in the film, Hosseini said he served as director Marc Forster's ("Monster's Ball") consultant. He also reviewed drafts of the film's screenplay by David Benioff ("Troy").

Forster "would call me from time to time and ask about language and dress," he said. "I wanted to stay out of the way and be of help and not intrude in the process of making the film."

Addressing concerns of Bay Area Afghan Americans who believe the rape scene should be cut, Hosseini said it is too pivotal a moment in the story because it defines the central character.

"Without that moment, the tower of cards really falls apart," he said.

The rape scene is one minute of a two-hour film and two pages of a 380-page novel, yet it has managed to garner most of the recent headlines about "The Kite Runner." Hosseini said it is unfair to judge the entire project based on such a short moment.

"The overall message of the film is tolerance, love, friendship and forgiveness," he said. "It denounces bigotry, it denounces violence, and hatred and discrimination. I don't think anyone who walks out of that film does not understand that."

Hosseini hopes that the movie version of "The Kite Runner" will renew people's interest in and charity toward Afghanistan, which he said has fallen off the mainstream media's radar.

"Look at the reaction that this book has received around the world: Afghanistan has become familiar in millions of living rooms around the world. People who had no interest in Afghanistan suddenly are interested."

Now, he said, "A whole slew of aid organizations are pouring money into the country around the release of this film - building schools, building libraries, doing teacher training, promoting literacy, and so a whole lot of good is coming out of this."

E-mail Chris Cadelago at ccadalego@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page D - 4 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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Doc: More than 80% of Afghan suicide bombers are disabled
NPR, Morning Edition 10/15/2007
There have been at least 110 suicide attacks in Afghanistan this year, more than in any other country except Iraq.

Most of the Afghan bombings are linked to the Taliban, but the identity of those recruits is often a mystery.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his security officials claim the attackers are foreigners, often from Pakistan. But a recent United Nations report says that bombers who were caught before they could carry out their attacks were overwhelmingly Afghan.

Whatever their nationality, many of the bombers have one major thing in common. A senior Afghan doctor who examines their remains finds that most of them were disabled or sick.

In his classroom at Kabul Medical University, Dr. Yusef Yadgari keeps the eyeball of a suicide bomber in a glass jar. Attached to the eye is a tumor that, Yadgari says, left the attacker partially blind.

It is one of many ailments the Afghan pathologist says he has found while autopsying the remains of bombers who carried out attacks in Kabul, Afghanistan, during the past three years. Some were missing limbs before the blasts. Others suffered from cancer. One had leprosy.

80 Percent Have Physical, Mental Disabilities

Based on such autopsies, Yadgari estimates that at least three of every five bombers suffer from a physical ailment or disability. Adding those who suffer from mental illnesses, the number of sick and disabled bombers climbs to more than 80 percent, he says.

"They are probably resentful because in Afghan society they are outcasts," Yadgari says. "They hold a grudge because many of them can't get a job. So, to make money for their families, they agree to become suicide bombers."

Yadgari says guessing the bombers' motivation is easy, but identifying who they are is a lot tougher.

Police say the bombers never carry identification, and their remains are rarely claimed.

Christine Fair, who co-authored a United Nations report released in September on Afghanistan's suicide attacks, says there are other factors that make it difficult to figure out who the bombers are.

She says Afghan investigations into suicide bombings leave a lot to be desired.

Afghan Gen. Nik Mohammed Nikzad, who heads crime scene investigations here, agrees. He complains that by the time his team is permitted to enter the scene, evidence has often been compromised or removed — sometimes by Western soldiers.

Afghan Bombers Not Celebrated

Fair says another obstacle is that Afghan suicide bombers are not celebrated like their counterparts in other Arab nations. Afghan bombers are not featured on posters or in videos as martyrs, and their remains are not carried through town in raucous funeral parades.

"Many parents don't even seem to know that their child or their relative blew themselves up in this act," Fair says.

She says there is another difference between bombers in Afghanistan and other countries. A bomber in Afghanistan kills an average of three victims, compared with an average of 12 elsewhere. Also, United Nations interviews with would-be bombers in Afghanistan have found that most are young and poorly educated.

"So, the good news is that they are not as lethal as they are in other theaters. The bad news is it's not really clear what it would take to get the campaign of suicide attacks to abate," Fair says.

University student Qais Barakzai believes there is nothing that could have stopped his friend from blowing himself up two years ago in Kabul.

Barakzai says Qari Sami was a brooding loner who was upset about the Taliban's ouster.

Barakzai says his friend grew a Taliban-style beard and wore traditional baggy tunics and trousers, shunning the Western jeans and shirts preferred by other university students.

"He was depressed. He would fight with people. He was emotional, especially when it came to religious issues," Barakzai recalls.

He says his friend took antidepressants daily, but they failed to lift his mood.

Sami talked of joining the Taliban in waging holy war, or jihad, after graduation, but never said he had been recruited as a suicide bomber, Barakzai says.

In May 2005, the young man walked into the Park Internet café and blew himself up. He killed a U.N. worker from Myanmar and an Afghan customer and wounded five others.
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India warns against underestimating resurgent Taliban
Times of India, India 16 Oct 2007
UNITED NATIONS: Warning the international community against underestimating the ferocity of Taliban and Al-Qaida resurgence in Afghanistan, India has favoured robust political solution and a strong domestic military response to meet the challenges of terrorism, including its nexus with drug trafficking.

As terrorism cannot be fought piecemeal, the international community must provide "appropriate responses," including security enforcement and economic and developmental strategies that rapidly bring the benefits of governance and development to people in the worst-affected districts, India's UN Ambassador Nirupam Sen told the Security Council.

Intervening in the discussion on situation in Afghanistan, Sen said the central task involves addressing, "in the face of insecurity created by vicious terrorist violence," the socio-economic challenges that are the result of decades of strife, destruction and privation.

The challenge before the international community, he said yesterday, is, on the one hand, to ensure security while helping resolve these problems, and on the other, to transform the high-level political commitments into operational strategies and concrete outcomes on the ground.

"Only if we succeed in all three tasks can we create the conditions that engender greater national ownership of security, reconstruction and developmental processes in the long-term," Sen said, adding that it is an "unavoidable reality" that it is only in the long-term that we can rebuild national institutions destroyed over the decades.
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RCA distributes aid in Kabul
Source: Government of the United Arab Emirates 16 Oct 2007
Kabul - The UAE Red Crescent Authority (RCA) in the Afghani Capital, Kabul has distributed aid to the needy as part of its continuous help to ease burden on the needy. Abdullah Khalifa Al Murshidi, director of the RCA office in Kabul said the "donation of President H.H. Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan was delivered during Ramadan for breakfast meals at mosques. Food stuff items have been delivered to the needy in co-operation with the Afghani Red Crescent Society. About 1111 families benefited from US$50, 000 donations".

He added that 1362 needy people benefited from Al Fitr alms at cost US$11, 000. The alms parcels included rice, beans, sugar and oil. Eid clothing at cost US$8174 have been distributed to 545 needy people. 625 blankets at cost US$10, 000 were also distributed in co-ordination with the Afghani Red Crescent Society and the International Committee of Red Cross Committee (ICRC). 400 copies of the Holy Quran have been distributed to Kabul mosques.

Murshidi said 495 orphans were paid their six month dues and 120 new wells were dug in the villages and remote areas, indicating that construction of US$4 million Sheikh Zayed city has been completed and would be opened and delivered soon to the Afghani Government. (Emirates News Agency, WAM)
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No plans to offer resettlement to Afghan interpreters, says UK
London, Oct 16, IRNA
The UK has no plans to extend assistance to local staff employed by British troops in Afghanistan similar to the resettlement programme offered to Iraqi interpreters fleeing persecution, according to Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells.

Howells said that his government acknowledged the "invaluable contribution" made by locally engaged Afghan staff working for the UK armed forces and civilian missions in Afghanistan to help support the spread of security, stability and development in their country.

"But given the difference in circumstances between them and their colleagues in Iraq, there are no plans for a similar scheme of assistance," he told MPs in a written reply to parliament, published Tuesday.

The refusal comes after Prime Minister Gordon Brown last week announced a resettlement scheme for Iraqi interpreters after his government came under criticism for refusing to help those who were at risk after working with British forces.

Howells also ruled out that the scheme would apply to non-Iraqi nationals who worked for UK armed forces since the 2003 invasion or had become injured as a result of their service.

"I respect and value the brave and selfless service of all our staff, including those from third countries. But their circumstances are qualitatively different from those of our Iraqi local staff," he said.

The minister emphasized that there were "no plans" to extend the assistance scheme" that was clarified last Tuesday by Foreign Secretary David Miliband following Brown's announcement of a u-turn in his government policy towards Iraqi translators.

Miliband detailed that locally employed staff in Iraq, who had been in continuous service for British troops for at least 12 months would be able to apply for a one-off payment to cover the costs of relocating themselves and their families in Iraq or elsewhere.
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Afghan President to visit Britain 
October 16, 2007 People's Daily
Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai will soon pay a visit to the United Kingdom at the invitation of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Afghan Presidential spokesman Hamayon Hamidzada said Tuesday.

"At the invitation of Prime Minister Brown President Hamid Karzai at the head of a high ranking delegation would soon visit Britain," Hamidzada told newsmen at his weekly press briefing.

During his stay in the Untied Kingdom, the President would hold talk with Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Prince Charles and the Queen, the spokesman said.

However, he did not disclose the exact date of the visit but added that the President's talks with UK leaders would cover matters pertaining mutual interests including the war on terrorism and the role of Britain in rebuilding the war-ravaged Afghanistan.

With having some 7,000 troops in Afghanistan the United Kingdom is the second after the United States being involved in fighting Taliban and the al-Qaida operatives in the post-Taliban central Asian state.
Source: Xinhua
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A Golf Course Where Water Is No Hazard
By KIRK SEMPLE Qargha Journal Correction Appended October 15, 2007 The new York Times
QARGHA, Afghanistan — Gazing down the valley here on Kabul’s western outskirts, Mohammad Afzal Abdul does not see the sun-blasted sweep of scrubland and rocks apparent to everyone else.

He sees a lush landscape of verdant fairways and whispering greens, mischievous sand traps and dazzling blue ponds, and a gallery of fans whose approving roar carries to the craggy peaks of the Hindu Kush.

For several years, Mr. Abdul, 48, has nudged his dreamy vision closer to reality, by about the same small degree that Afghanistan has moved toward lasting political and economic stability. Now, this barren patch of earth is, at least in name and spirit, a golf course.

It is the Kabul Golf Club, Afghanistan’s only one, and Mr. Abdul, who picked up a putter for the first time when he was 10, is its director and golf pro.

The nine-hole course is extraordinarily rugged by any standard. It has no grass and no delineation between the fairways and the rough, and the greens — the course rules call them browns — are a concoction of sand and oil packed with a heavy roller and swept with a broom vaguely resembling those dragged along the base paths at the seventh-inning stretch in baseball.

When it opened in 2004, the course was a charming oddity that reflected the ascendant optimism of the time and seemed to point toward a brighter Afghan future. Recovery was in full swing , as development money, aid workers and diplomats poured into the country. Scores of foreigners came to play each week. Sensing that his dream of an emerald course was within reach, Mr. Abdul dug a grid of ditches across the course in anticipation of a modern irrigation system.

But three years later the ditches remain empty of pipes, the flow of players has dropped to about a dozen in a good week and the course is as forlorn as ever.

With the economy still a wreck, crime on the rise, aching poverty everywhere and Taliban fighters resurgent, the course now seems wildly out of place.

On a recent Friday, the Muslim day of prayer, Mr. Abdul was sitting on a battered sofa in the small concrete pro shop, waiting, as always, for a resuscitative flood of players. “It’s a little sad,” confessed Mr. Abdul, a slender man with broken teeth and deeply grooved, leathery skin. Several sets of ancient rental clubs, some with old-fashioned wooden heads, leaned against the wall.

But asked whether he would consider shutting down the course, he stiffened. “I won’t close it,” he said sharply. “I’ll be patient.” Then he added, “People need to play golf.”

As he does nearly every day, he had arrived before 7 a.m. to open up and put out the flagsticks, handmade of rebar and tattered swatches of red fabric.

Early that morning, he had given lessons to a group of local boys, who took turns hitting iron shots up a hill. Since the golf ball supply was down to seven, he posted two of the youths up the slope to retrieve the balls and toss them back down.

The opening of the Kabul Golf Club in 2004 was technically a reopening. A six-hole course existed at the same location when Mr. Abdul was a child, and it looked like the real thing, he said, with manicured grass and a membership that included ambassadors and scions of the royal family. He worked as a caddy and played on the side, he said.

The course closed in 1978, and during the next 25 years, the vicissitudes of war kept Mr. Abdul away from his sport. He was twice imprisoned on charges of spying because of his association with diplomats — first by the Soviets and later by the Taliban — and fled with his family into Pakistan, where he drove a taxi.

In 2003, after American bombers had driven the Taliban from power, he returned to his beloved course. Abandoned tanks and heavy weapons were scattered around the valley, which was pocked with mortar craters and denuded of trees and grass. The clubhouse was pitted with shrapnel and bullet holes.

The property owner, a former warlord, agreed to pay to clean the land, and a United Nations worker and golf aficionado donated clubs and balls and helped to draft the course rules. (“Tip #1: Attack the course! Play aggressively. There are no gimmes. This is golf with an attitude.”)

“I want the people to come help me, to make good grass, because I don’t have money,” Mr. Abdul said.

At about 8 a.m., an armored Land Cruiser came into view kicking up a cloud of dust, and six foreigners, all international development workers, tumbled out. Mr. Abdul’s students became caddies, two for each player: one to carry the clubs and a swatch of artificial turf for shots from the rocky fairways, and the other to stand downfield to keep an eye on the ball.

“When you’re in this business, you’re in some strange spots in the world,” said Jim Hellerman, 66, an American contractor with the Agency for International Development from Santa Fe, N.M., as he walked down the rutted first fairway. “You have to make your fun wherever you are.”

Back at the pro shop, Mr. Abdul challenged this reporter to play a few holes.

Mr. Abdul’s swing was basically sound, if a little stiff, and on the first hole, a 371-yard par four, he blasted his drive a couple of hundred yards down the center of the fairway. He was on the green in three and one-putted for par.

“Hopefully with better security, Afghanistan will improve and golf will improve,” he said, as he headed to the second tee.

His second drive flew high and long, albeit with an unintentional draw that put him far to the left. But he was in motion now, striding briskly down the fairway, smiling for the first time all day.

“I like golfing people,” he said happily. “I like golf.” And for that moment, at least, it seemed as if he could feel the plush grass underfoot and hear the buzz of the crowd.

Correction: October 16, 2007
Because of an editing error, the Qargha Journal article yesterday, about the only golf course in Afghanistan, situated in Qargha, near the capital Kabul, misstated the course’s official name. It is the Kabul Golf Club, not the Kabul Golf Course. (The archway entrance to the club, pictured on the front page, reads “Kabul Golf Course.”)
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South Korea denies paying Taliban ransom for hostages
Mon Oct 15, 5:14 AM ET
SEOUL (AFP) - South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun's office denied a report that Seoul paid Taliban militants a ransom of 10 million dollars in exchange for the release of aid workers held hostage in Afghanistan.

The Sunday Telegraph, quoting Taliban fighters, reported that the South Korean government paid the ransom in two instalments on August 29 and 31, resulting in the release of the final 19 hostages in captivity.

Roh's spokesman Cheon Ho-Seon dismissed the report as groundless.

"I want to repeat again the South Korean government's official position that not a penny was paid," Cheon said.

The Taliban abducted 23 South Koreans on July 19. They killed two men and released two women, while the other 19 walked to freedom after a deal between the Seoul government and their captors.

South Korea agreed to ban missionary work by its citizens in Afghanistan and to withdraw its troops from the country as previously scheduled by year's end.
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