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October 20, 2007 

Afghan president urges region to fight terror, poverty
HERAT, AFGHANISTAN (AFP) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on 10 Muslim-majority nations gathered here to work together to end terrorism, which he said is tarnishing Islam, and boost their economies.

Karzai was addressing a meeting of foreign ministers and senior officials from nations in the Economic Cooperation Organisation (ECO), a grouping of Central Asian states and regional heavyweights Iran, Pakistan and Turkey.

"Terrorism, poverty, organised crime, economic problems and corruption are among significant obstacles to development and our regional cooperation," the president told about 100 delegates meeting in the western city of Herat.

"We, the Muslims, must show the true image of Islam to the world and this will be impossible unless we eliminate terrorists whereever they are and fight them collectively," he said.

Pakistan, represented in Herat by Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri, was struck late Thursday by a terror attack which killed 139 people in a failed bid to kill former premier Benazir Bhutto on her return from exile.

Afghanistan is also battling a wave of violence by Taliban and other radicals trying to impose an extremist version of Islam.

The United States has alleged that advanced weapons are being supplied to the Taliban through Iran, likely with the knowledge of that country's military, a charge Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki dismissed in Herat Friday.

"Terrorists are misusing our noble religion," Karzai told the delegates from Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

He said ECO needed to follow the example of other regional groupings, such as the European Union, to work together to boost development, wealth and education.

"While other countries are getting closer in globalised active economic cultural and political partnerships, we still do not enjoy enough proximity despite those historical and cultural commonalities," he said.

Saturday's meeting follows two days of talks between ECO officials to review efforts to boost trade -- including by easing border bureaucracy and customs barriers and improving transport links -- and share resources like electricity.

ECO -- created in 1985 by Iran, Pakistan and Turkey -- is also looking at cultural, scientific and educational exchanges between member nations, who together represent six percent of the world's population.
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12 Taliban die in southern Afghan clash
Sat Oct 20, 4:43 AM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - A battle in southern Afghanistan between U.S.-led coalition forces and Taliban militants left more than a dozen of the insurgents dead, the coalition said.

Insurgents launched the attack with guns and rocket-propelled grenades on the coalition soldiers and the Afghan forces accompanying them on a patrol in northern Helmand province on Thursday, the coalition said.

Attack aircraft helped repel the initial attack but the insurgents tried to reinforce their numbers throughout the engagement, which lasted several hours, the coalition said.

This year has been the most violent since the U.S.-led coalition ousted the Taliban from power in 2001. More than 5,200 people have died in insurgency related violence this year, according to an Associated Press count based on figures from Afghan and Western officials.
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Most Afghans want foreign troops to stay: poll
Sat Oct 20, 1:38 AM ET
MONTREAL (AFP) - Most Afghans see NATO troops' presence in their country as positive, and want them to stay, a poll published in Canadian media found.

The survey done by the company Environics for CBC, The Globe and Mail and La Presse, questioned more than 1,500 Afghans.

According to the survey 60 percent of those polled saw the presence of foreign troops in their country as positive while 16 percent saw it as a bad thing.

In the south, in the Kandahar region, where the presence of Taliban is stronger than in the north, the percentage of people opposed to NATO troops' presence is higher at 23 percent but 61 percent still are in favor.

Fourteen percent of those surveyed said they wanted foreign troops out immediately.

According to Environics, 38 percent said they thought foreign troops should be in their country for periods of 1-5 years, and 43 percent said they should stay as long as it takes to defeat the Taliban and restore order.

A large majority, 73 percent, said they had a very or rather negative view of the Taliban.

Fifty-one percent of those polled said their country was headed in the right direction (48 percent in the Kandahar area) while 73 percent said conditions for women had improved.

Only 40 percent said they believed that with foreign support the Afghan government would defeat the Taliban. Twenty-nine percent said it was too early to say, and 19 percent believe the Taliban will be back in power once foreign troops pull out.

The poll of 1,578 people was taken September 17-24. It has a margin of errpr of 3.8 percent.
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The hazards of golfing in Afghanistan
by Bronwen Roberts Sat Oct 20, 1:34 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - Mohammad Afzal Abdul says he has been jailed twice for playing golf: once in the early 1980s after the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and then again by the hardline Taliban government more than 10 years later.

Both times he was accused of being a spy because he mixed with foreigners at the Kabul Golf Club, which sits under the steep wall of the Qargar Dam and looks down a gently sloping valley towards the capital.

Abdul, now the pro at Afghanistan's only golf club, doesn't rule out his hobby landing him in jail again.

The extremist Taliban, who banned all sport including even kite-flying, were removed from government in 2001. But now, as an insurgent movement, they often accuse any Afghan who associates with foreigners of spying -- and have killed several.

"Even right now, I feel some danger," Abdul says in a dusty room, surrounded by donated clubs for hire and caps and t-shirts embroidered with the club logo for sale. "But I won't leave," he says.

"This is a place for fun and people need it. People always need to have a good time, even during war."

Abdul says he spent two months clearing the nine-hole course of military hardware that remained after the 1990s civil war between the commanders who had months earlier driven out the Soviet invaders.

"Everything was destroyed, there were tank tracks, guns and weapons," he says.

Then the Taliban built bases in the area and the golf course and the dam -- now one of Kabul's favourite picnic spots -- were abandoned.

Today it has been cleared of landmines, but it is still a bit of a wreck.

It is difficult to tell the fairways from the rough, and litter is caught in the stubs of scraggy, dry grass that cover only some of the dusty and stony ground.

A ragged trough runs through the course from the dam wall -- Abdul hoped to could bring in some water but there is no money for pipes.

But there are red flags fluttering at the "greens" -- which are actually black being made of compacted sand and oil, as is normal at desert courses -- and Abdul says he has a steady stream of players and students.

This year there will be three tournaments: Friday's Kabul Desert Classic, in which mostly expatriates played, and two in November that are likely to attract mostly Afghan players.

It was the third time the Desert Classic had been held and 33 men and women entered, most of them bidding for a place to raise money for charity, says organiser Amaury Coste.

The contest was won by one of four Afghans who played despite being unable to afford to bid. "It was a great day, we had lots of people," says Coste.

The tournament has attracted international media attention in the past, but for Coste, spreading the word about a sport that is new to post-conflict Afghanistan, is not really the point.

"I am not sure it is a priority for Afghans today to discover and play golf. The intention is more to raise money for charities and have a fun activity for expats who live in Kabul," he says.

Abdul remembers the 1970s, when bankers and ministers would come to the course on Fridays. Today, he sometimes gets diplomats and other officials, who bring along armed guards.

But developing the sport would benefit Afghanistan's young people, he says. "It is good for their health and keeping their minds on their school work and away from drugs.".

Outside Abdul's office, three of his young students dressed in baggy shalwar kamiz tee off from a plastic golf mat and hit practice shots into parched bush.

One of them is 12-year-old Qadir Sarwari. His ambitions? "First I would like to play in a green place," he says.

For him and Abdul, who hopes that one of his students will one day beat him on the course, Tiger Woods is the man to look up to, his fame spreading to Afghanistan through magazines and DVDs brought over by expat players.

Abdul has a message for the star: "Please just once come to Afghanistan to play. Or invite us to your place," he says.
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Dutch MPs want info on Afghan fight
20, 2007 at 2:02 AM
THE HAGUE, Netherlands, Oct. 20 (UPI) -- The Dutch parliament wants to know whether artillery fire from its military was responsible for Afghan civilian deaths during a June fight with the Taliban.

The Battle of Chora was the biggest Dutch military engagement since the Korean War, Radio Netherlands said. The battle began June 16 when the Taliban advanced from several directions on the town of Chora.

Artillery fire from Camp Holland, a Dutch base at Tarin Kowt, played a key role in driving off the Taliban in four days of fighting.

Immediately after the battle, Afghan President Hamid Karzai criticized the Dutch troops for using a howitzer to fire on targets almost 20 miles away. But he later praised the Dutch forces for aiding in driving away the Taliban.

Four reports on the battle by the Afghan government, a human rights group working with the United Nations, the Dutch military and NATO have not yet been made public.
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John Turley-Ewart: Good news about Afghanistan is bad news for Dion
National Post, Canada
Stéphane Dion can't catch a break these days. He appears to have lost his grip on a large swath of the Liberal Party of Canada, he has certainly failed to win the affection of Quebecers, and has had to swallow his pride after Stephen Harper's Throne Speech stomped all over the Liberal Party's holy Kyoto grail.

Now, it's looking more and more like the Liberals flip-flop on supporting Canada 's mission in Afghanistan will come back to hurt Mr. Dion's political fortunes. Recall that it was Paul Martin's Liberal government that sent our troops into the south of Afghanistan in 2005 on a combat mission against the Taliban. The Liberal Party supported that mission until Mr. Harper became Prime Minister in 2006 and the Grits determined they could possibly make some political hay by cozying up to voters who opposed our presence in Afghanistan when Mr. Harper asked the House of Commons to extend the our mission there till 2009.

Presently, the news out of Afghanistan suggests that Mr. Harper's decision to hold fast to Canada's mission there is the right one. A new poll of Afghanis this week shows majority support for the UN sanctioned NATO mission against the Taliban. Much of that support can be tied directly to the successful reconstruction work NATO and NGOs are doing in that country -- most of it admittedly in the northern half of Afghanistan where the Taliban are weak.

One major obstacle to success in the souther parts of Afghanistan has frankly been the Afghan police, who as Michael Fumento pointed out on our pages sometime ago, are easily corrupted and almost wholly unreliable. That situation may change sooner rather than later.

Today the U.S. announced it will overhaul the entire Afghan police force, injecting  US $2.5 billion into retraining the 72,000 member Afghan police. This is exactly the kind of action needed to both weaken the Taliban further and generate a greater sense of security among the Afghan people, who fear more than anything that NATO troops will simply abandon the country and leave them at the mercy of a vengeful Taliban.

That is what Mr. Dion would do if he had his way. When he was running for the Liberal leadership he made clear that he would end Canada's mission in Khandahar at the first chance. Michael Ignatieff and others in the Liberal Party helped talk Mr. Dion out of that position. But his insistence that Canada leave in 2009 — punctuated by publicity stunts by Liberal defence critic Denis Coderre — leave the Liberal Party on the wrongside of Afghan opinion, UN opinion, NATO opinion and the party's own policy of the responsibility to protect, championed by Jean Chrétien and Mr. Martin when they were leading the country.

With continued progress in Afghanistan, and the news only getting better each month, it will not be long before Mr. Dion's position puts him clearly on the wrong side of Canadian opinion as well, which is sure to change in the face of growing evidence of majority support for our troops in Afghanistan.
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Azerbaijan parliament approves doubling size of Afghanistan contingent to about 45 troops
The Associated Press October 19, 2007
BAKU, Azerbaijan: Azerbaijan's parliament voted Friday to double the size of its contingent in the NATO force in Afghanistan to about 45 soldiers.

Lawmakers in the ex-Soviet republic voted 86-2 to approve the government's request for the increase, reflecting the former Soviet republic's eagerness to strengthen ties with the European Union and the United States.

The predominantly Muslim, secular state currently has 22 soldiers serving in Afghanistan as part of Turkey's contingent in NATO's 40,000-strong International Security Assistance Force.

Azerbaijan's contribution will increase to 45 or 46 soldiers, said Ziyafet Askerov, parliament first vice-speaker. He said the soldiers were deployed to guard civilian facilities.

Azerbaijani soldiers have served in Afghanistan since November 2002, a year after the ouster of its hard-line Taliban rulers in a U.S.-led invasion.
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Talking to the Taliban
By William Maley (Published in The World Today, vol.63, no.11, November 2007, pp.4-6)
The political pendulum in Afghanistan continues to swing wildly. On 12 August, at a long-anticipated ‘Peace Jirga’ held in Kabul, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf made two remarkably candid statements about his country’s role in fomenting instability in Afghanistan: ‘There is no doubt Afghan militants are supported from Pakistan soil. The problem that you have in your region is because support is provided from our side’. Yet somewhat surprisingly, neither then nor later did President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan make any real effort to capitalise on these startling admissions with fresh demands that Pakistan act decisively against such use of its territory.

Instead, at an emotional press conference on September 29, following a suicide bombing which killed a large number of army personnel on a bus in a Kabul suburb, Karzai did almost the last thing one would have expected, offering to leave his capital to meet with what he called the ‘Esteemed’ Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar and the ‘Esteemed’ Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, notorious chief of the radical and widely-feared Hezb-e Islami (Party of Islam). He even went on to float the idea that executive positions in his government could be found for Taliban and Hezb-e Islami notables.

This marks a very significant departure from the Karzai government’s previous position. A Program for Strengthening of Peace has long provided a channel through which former Taliban and Hezb-e Islami personnel can move to support the government with few questions to answer. Many have done just that, with some taking responsible positions in the Afghan state.

For the most part this has proved uncontroversial, since a range of Afghans who had sided with the Taliban before 2001 did so out of ethnic solidarity with an overwhelmingly Pushtun movement, rather than from any strong commitment to the extreme ideologies of the Taliban leadership and their Al Qaeda associates. However, an embrace of the top Hezb-e Islami leadership, or the radical and ideologised ‘neo-Taliban’ who now drive the insurgency, is a far more serious matter. What might have led to this development, and where is it likely to lead?

Impetus for engagement
The recent situation has not been especially comforting for either Karzai or his supporters. While Afghanistan is no Iraq, the euphoria of October 2004, when Karzai won the presidency with more than fifty-five percent of the vote in a free election, seems long gone. In an Asia Foundation opinion survey in 2004, 64 percent of respondents felt that the country was going in the right direction. Two years later, this figure had fallen to 44 percent.

Several factors account for this: a loss of momentum as Western powers have found themselves increasingly preoccupied with Iraq; misdirected aid projects that have underrated the importance of local capacity-building; poor governance in rural Afghanistan and dysfunctional policy processes in Kabul; increased ethnicisation of politics; and above all a resurgence of violence in the south at the hands of extremists, many exploiting sanctuaries in Pakistan.

As a result, international forces in southern Afghanistan – in particular the British in Helmand and the Canadians in Kandahar – have been suffering casualties on a much larger scale than they had anticipated, while in other NATO capitals, apprehension is growing about where the Afghanistan mission is going. Some of these concerns seem to have come to a head at a meeting held in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, which took place only days after the British Defence Secretary, Des Browne, publicly canvassed the need to enter into dealings with the Taliban.

With Western leaders reluctant to pressure Musharraf, the temptation to promote some kind of engagement with the enemy could be considerable, perhaps offering them the prospect of an exit option, the opportunity to ‘cut without appearing to run’.

For Afghans, the considerations at play are rather different. Karzai, a decent and honourable man, is most likely to be motivated by despair at the suffering of his people and a desire to project himself as an inclusive leader. But some of his more cynical supporters might back a deal with the neo-Taliban simply to muster more Pushtun votes for Karzai in the next presidential election in 2009, something that is anything but easy given the current security situation in the south.

Perils of negotiation
Yet the push to enter negotiations with the neo-Taliban and Hekmatyar is an extraordinarily high-risk strategy, that may do no more than further weaken Karzai’s position and heighten the dangers to which Western troops and aid workers are exposed.

In the 1990s, when the then Afghan President, Burhanuddin Rabbani, sought to deal with Hekmatyar, he inadvertently encouraged the Hezb to attack even more ferociously as a way of extracting extra concessions from an apparently-stumbling opponent. He then undermined his own legitimacy by granting the premiership to Hekmatyar, someone he had earlier described as a ‘dangerous terrorist’ and who even earlier, in 1989, had been named in The Times as the likely owner of the world’s largest heroin factory.

More broadly, negotiating with vicious spoilers creates a classic moral hazard, by sending the signal that one way to secure access to the commanding heights of the political system is to act as a vicious spoiler.
Of course, the gaps between Karzai and the neo-Taliban remain large, especially over the presence of international forces in Afghanistan. There may well be some key actors in Washington for whom any engagement with the Taliban or Hekmatyar would be profoundly distasteful. Furthermore, dealing with the Taliban has rightly been compared to grasping smoke, and realistically, there is little prospect that any meaningful deal could be struck.

But that said, even the public discussion of negotiation and engagement that has occurred so far is likely to complicate, potentially quite severely, the tasks of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force and the Provincial Reconstruction Teams deployed in different parts of the country. At worst, it could directly invite attacks on Western forces, but it may also affect their functioning in a more insidious fashion.

To perform effectively, these units depend heavily on securing cooperation from locals. But why would such locals, especially those sitting on the fence, want to be active partners for the international community if they feel that the abandonment of Afghanistan’s experiment with democracy is in the offing and could leave them even more exposed to Taliban retribution?

At a higher level, negotiations with the neo-Taliban are seen by many Afghans as opening the gates to a Trojan horse: those Afghan political and resistance leaders who opposed the Taliban before 2001, but then agreed to relinquish their weapons, would likely move to re-arm themselves as quickly as possible, fearing a back-door return of the hard-line core of the very forces that they for years stood almost alone in opposing. There is little doubt that they would find regional allies in Russia, Iran and Uzbekistan to assist their rearmament, and the scene would then be set for a truly-disastrous outcome: the possible reigniting of large-scale conflict in many parts of Afghanistan.

Stability in Afghanistan will not come from dealing with the Taliban, but rather from concerted pressure on Pakistan – perhaps targeting the business activities in which the Pakistan military is increasingly entangled – to shut down Taliban operations as required by UN Security Council Resolution 1333 of December 2000. Such pressure has not so far been forthcoming: Washington fears total regime collapse in Pakistan, and circles in London see an ongoing need for effective police cooperation to deal with threats from radicalised Islamists in the British Midlands.

Nonetheless, such pressure can work, as long as it is applied in a careful, consistent and systematic fashion. Without this pressure, the long-term outlook for the region is grim: the Pakistani state is at grave risk of progressive Talibanisation, all the more likely if Taliban are recklessly treated as fitting candidates to be welcomed to the corridors of power. Should this occur, we may all rue the day when the idea of dealing with the Taliban was first mooted.

*Professor William Maley is Director of the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy at the Australian National University, and author of Rescuing Afghanistan, C.Hurst & Co., 2006.
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After slaying, family begins to rebuild life in Afghanistan
Ex-Fremont man, whose wife was killed, says six kids are still grieving
By Matthew Artz STAFF WRITER Contra Costa Times 10/20/2007 03:01:27 AM PDT
FREMONT -- Ahmad Ansari has no regrets about moving his six children to Afghanistan and taking a new bride shortly after his wife, Alia Ansari, was slain last October.

"I took them to a different environment so they could heal," said Ansari, who is visiting family in Milpitas this week.

Speaking in slightly accented English, Ansari told reporters assembled at Centerville Presbyterian Church on Friday that he would return to the United States when his children were ready.

"They are American kids," he said.

The family is living in the home of Ansari's father in Mazar-e-Sharif, a city in Northern Afghanistan.

Ansari, 40, who worked at an auto repair shop when the family lived in a two-bedroom Fremont apartment, is now a stay-at-home dad. "I'm there (for my kids) 24 hours ... day and night."

He said he and his children, now ages 4 through 14, enjoy living in Afghanistan, but they are still grieving.

"I am in darkness still," Ansari said. "I can't be happy because my kids are not in a state of happiness."

Exactly a year ago Friday, 38-year-old Alia Ansari was fatally shot in the face as she walked with her 3-year-old daughter on Glenmoor Avenue in Fremont.

The unexplained killing of a woman wearing a Muslim headscarf shocked the Fremont community, which prides itself on its diversity and ethnic tolerance.

Donations totaling more than $70,000 poured into an account set up for the family, Ansari said.

"Everyone (in Fremont) has been beautiful," he said.

The family is living on a portion of the donations, but most of it, Ansari said, has gone to buy land in a central market district of their new home city.

At one point during the 90-minute news conference, video was shown of Ansari's wedding to his new 20-year-old wife Zarina, a distant relative.

Ansari, who did not see his new bride until after the union was arranged, said remarrying was in his family's best interests.

"We needed a home, and a home needs a homemaker and the backbone of that is a wife," he said.

His children, who were smiling in the wedding video, have taken to his new spouse, he added. "They are calling her every two seconds, 'mom, mom,'" he said. The couple, he added, plan to have children of their own.

Ansari, who expects to return to Afghanistan next week, said he has been updated on the prosecution of Manuel David Urango, who has been charged with murder and is scheduled to stand trial next year in connection with Alia Ansari's killing.

"I'll let the law of this land deal with this person," he said. "There is no justice that would bring my wife back."

Alia Ansari was buried amid tall grass about a six-minute walk from the family's home in Afghanistan.

"I go myself and pray," Ansari said.

Meanwhile his children, who in a different home video were wearing western clothes, are attending school, and, Ansari said, enjoying learning a different culture.

"Life is beginning to be normal," he said. "We take it one day at a time, but it is difficult."

Reach Matthew Artz of the Fremont Argus. He can be reached at 510-353-7002 or martz@bayareanewsgroup.com.

TO HELP
To honor Alia Ansari, the Rev. Bruce Green is starting a project to build a soccer field in Mazar-e-Sharif as well as a college fund for the Ansari children. For more information about either, contact Green at 510-793-3575, Ext. 40, or e-mail him at greenbbf@aol.com. Additional information about the soccer field project is available at http://www.aliapark@blogspot.com.
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Strength of border police to be increased: Minister
KABUL, Oct 18 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Interior Minister Zarar Ahmad Muqbil Thursday said that the government would increase the number of border police to strengthen the monitoring system on the frontiers.

Speaking to journalists, the minister said sophisticated equipment would also be installed at special location to keep vigil on elements illegally crossing into Afghanistan.

He said the number of border police would be enhanced from the existing 12,000 to 18,000 in the days ahead.

Without mentioning the time for installations of the equipment, the minister said that would help recognize people illegally entering the country. Afghanistan had asked its international partners to provide helicopters and ships to the security forces to keep a check on miscreants crossing into the country, he said.

Around 685 police personnel and officers had been killed during the last seven months, he informed. Most of the law-enforcers had fallen prey to roadside bombing and suicide attacks.

Muqbil admitted that the ratio of bombing had mounted as compared to the previous year. He also informed about recruitment of 1,800 new police officers and personnel in different provinces.

The minister once again accused the private security companies for the lawlessness in the country. Of the 62 local and international private security companies, he said, only 24 had obtained temporary licenses from the government.
Ahmad Khalid Moahid
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