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October 27, 2007 

Afghan Ex-Militia Leaders Hoard Illegal Arms
By KIRK SEMPLE October 28, 2007 The New York Times
KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 27 — Many former militia commanders and residents in northern Afghanistan have been hoarding illegal weapons in violation of the country’s disarmament laws, giving the excuse that they face a spreading Taliban insurgency from the south that government forces alone are too frail to stop, Afghan and Western officials say.

After years of moderate success for government disarmament programs, rumors of widespread defiance in the north have arisen recently among government officials and intelligence agencies in Kabul and elsewhere. Although there is little hard evidence that commanders are greatly enlarging their arsenals, officials say, some have been thwarting government programs, refusing to disarm and possibly even remobilizing militias.

The talk of rearming underscores a deepening north-south ethnic divide that some diplomats and Afghan officials privately worry could lead the way toward a shift of power back to warlords — and toward a countrywide armed conflict — if left unchecked. And the situation poses a major challenge for President Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun from the south, whose administration has failed to win the confidence of many non-Pashtun leaders and northerners.

Prices on the weapons black market in the north have skyrocketed as residents, governed by suspicion and foreboding, have kept their firearms, driving down the supply.

“There is an environment of mistrust” in the government, Brig. Gen. Abdulmanan Abed, a Defense Ministry official who works with the government’s demilitarization program, said in an interview this month in Mazar-i-Sharif, the capital of Balkh Province. “There is a fear of the return of the Taliban.”

A prominent political leader from the north, speaking on condition of anonymity, put it this way: “The Taliban are coming toward us. What should we do? Who will defend us? Who will protect us? This is in the minds of the people in the north.”

Col. Mats Danielsson, the Swedish commander of a 450-man military unit helping to provide security in four northern provinces, said the Karzai administration and its international allies must find a way to roll back the Taliban threat and reassure northerners.

“We have to keep the window of opportunity open, but I feel that the window is closing,” he said.

The Taliban insurgency is strongest in southern and eastern Afghanistan. And while it has been able to bedevil Afghan and international troops in some other regions of the country, before this year its reach rarely stretched into the northern provinces.

But government officials report an increase in Taliban activity in the north this year, particularly in the northwest. The number of Taliban attacks on Afghan and international security forces in Balkh and the other relatively peaceful provinces of north-central Afghanistan has risen from last year, the authorities say.

Residents here in Balkh Province and elsewhere in north-central Afghanistan say they are beginning to feel encircled.

“The Taliban is trying to start up its old networks here,” Colonel Danielsson said in an interview in early October at his headquarters in Mazar-i-Sharif. “We have to figure out how to stop this influence.”

Afghan and Western officials also say that in addition to an increase in Taliban activity, there has been an escalation in crime and, in some areas, tensions among rival northern political factions. These officials say it is often difficult to determine who is to blame for specific violent acts.

The most apparent signs of rearming, officials say, are in Faryab Province, in the northwest, where commanders have organized an armed militia to fend off a growing Taliban presence in neighboring Badghis Province that has gone largely unchecked by Afghan and international security forces.

Gen. Dan K. McNeill, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, said in a recent interview in Kabul that he had received unconfirmed intelligence reports that small shipments of weapons had been smuggled across the border “from one or two countries to the north” and delivered “to receivers in some of the northern provinces.” But he declined to provide further details.

Afghan government officials also say that in certain northern districts, militia commanders have evaded government weapons inspectors by breaking down their stockpiles of illegal firearms and redistributing them throughout their communities, making them harder to find.

Afghan and Western officials say that weapons are hidden everywhere: in grain silos and closets, in mountain caves and in holes in the ground.

And though the government’s demobilization programs have gone some way toward dismantling many of the hundreds of illegal militias, and have removed nearly all the heavy weapons from those factions, former warlords still hold considerable sway.

“They have the power of a phone call to put hundreds, or thousands, in arms,” Colonel Danielsson said. “There are a lot of weapons up here.”

All the weapons in Afghanistan were supposed to be in the government’s hands by now, all the private militias were to be a thing of the past.

After the Taliban fell in 2001 and fighting erupted among rival warlords, the Afghan government began the first of two disarmament and demobilization programs that were principally intended to dismantle warlords’ militias and other illegal armed groups. In three decades of war, weapons had poured across the borders and authority was often established by the rule of the gun.

The programs, which are voluntary, have dismantled at least 274 paramilitary organizations, reintegrated about 62,000 militia members into civilian life and recovered more than 84,000 weapons, including thousands of heavy arms that had fallen under the control of regional warlords. Afghan and NATO forces have confiscated and destroyed many other weapons, officials said. But Afghan and international officials acknowledge that hundreds of illegal armed groups still operate in Afghanistan. And hundreds of thousands — maybe millions — of weapons remain in private hands, although they are mostly small arms rather than heavy weapons, the officials say.

Of the weapons that have been collected, they say, at least 40 percent were not functional.

“There is at least one weapon in each house,” said General Abed, who was an officer in the anti-Taliban mujahedeen. Government officials note that the demilitarization programs were not intended to collect arms and were instead focused on disbanding armed groups.

“I think it will take many, many years” to disarm the population, said Hameed Quraishi, manager of the government’s demilitarization program in the north. “It doesn’t matter how hard you try. It’s the level of confidence the people have in the government.”

But the talk about rearming is not entirely military. It also appears to be a means of pressing the Karzai government, which many northern leaders have accused of favoring the south, a region mostly populated by members of his Pashtun ethnicity.

“We selected Karzai to unify the country,” said a prominent politician from the north and former member of the Northern Alliance, which fought the Taliban. “But people who joined him have pushed him to being a Pashtun leader, not a national leader.”

Disproportionate amounts of aid money and weapons have flowed to the south to prop up the regional leadership and battle the Taliban. As part of this effort, the government has been trying to build an auxiliary police force among southern Pashtun tribes to confront the insurgency.

Many northern leaders say that they have been shortchanged in the distribution of development aid and worry about the militarization of the south as they are being asked to disarm.

“Northern commanders are saying: ‘We can’t disarm. This guy is trying to unite all Pashtuns. We have to defend ourselves!’ ” a European diplomat said in Kabul.

General McNeill doubts some of the northern claims. “There’s no question that there’s a hell of a lot of political posturing in the northern sectors,” he said. “Where they think they’re ignored in the reconstruction process, there often is a report: ‘They’re here! The Taliban! They got us surrounded!’ ”

In interviews, northern Afghan leaders said that in spite of their concerns about the central government, they were standing by Mr. Karzai. And most of them denied that any stockpiling of weapons was occurring.

“If we take up arms, it means the democratic process is defeated,” said Sayed Mustafa Kazemi, spokesman for the National Front, a political coalition mainly composed of non-Pashtun leaders from the north. “We want this government to survive its entire term because we don’t want the process to be defeated.”
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Afghan suicide bomber attacks US base
By JASON STRAZIUSO, Associated Press Writer Sat Oct 27, 11:04 AM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - A suicide bomber wearing an Afghan security uniform detonated his explosives at the entrance to a combined U.S.-Afghan base on Saturday, killing four Afghan soldiers and a civilian, officials said.

The bomber walked up to a security gate for Afghan soldiers outside Forward Operating Base Bermel in the eastern province of Paktika, near the border with Pakistan, NATO's International Security Assistance Force said.

Four Afghan soldiers and a civilian were killed and six Afghans were wounded, NATO's International Security Assistance Force said. No Americans were hurt.

It was not immediately clear if the bomber had been trying to gain entry to the base.

Taliban insurgents have set off more than 100 suicide blasts this year, a record pace, and violence in 2007 has been the deadliest since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

More than 5,200 people have died this year due to the insurgency, according to an Associated Press count based on figures from Afghan and Western officials.

Elsewhere, Taliban militants killed three Afghan police who had been trying to prevent them from carrying out a kidnapping, said Helmand provincial police chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal. The militants successfully kidnapped an Afghan man during the gunbattle, he said.

Separately, U.S.-led coalition forces and Afghan soldiers killed "several" Taliban fighters near the Musa Qala region in Helmand province, the coalition said. Fighting has intensified in recent weeks around Musa Qala — a Taliban-controlled town in the heart of Afghanistan's poppy growing region.

Australia's prime minister, meanwhile, said more NATO powers must directly engage the Taliban to help ease the burden on Australia, the United States, Britain, Canada and the Netherlands, which all have troops in the dangerous southern and central parts of Afghanistan.

Germany, Italy, France and Spain have troops in the relatively safer northern sections, a fact that is causing a rift within NATO, and Australian Prime Minister John Howard said those countries need to help ease the burden on countries operating in the south.

"Some of the other countries have lots of troops in Afghanistan, but they're not in some of the areas that are experiencing the heaviest fighting," he said.

The governments of the Netherlands and Canada, in particular, are coming under domestic pressure to pull out troops because of heavy casualties.

"I think the Dutch government has been very courageous to date," Howard said. "It's not for me to comment on Dutch politics, but I do observe that the Dutch are making a great contribution and as are of course the Canadians."
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NATO Afghan force is insufficient, US general says
Interview By Jon Hemming
KABUL, Oct 27 (Reuters) - NATO is taking a risk by not sending enough troops to Afghanistan and restrictions on deployment of some countries' soldiers hampers operations, NATO's commander in Afghanistan said on Saturday.

Afghanistan has seen an increase in violence this year, with more clashes with Taliban insurgents and more suicide bombings, killing as many as 5,000 people since January.

While the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) claims significant battlefield successes against the Taliban, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has led calls for NATO nations to send more soldiers and allow them to do more.

ISAF commander General Dan McNeill said NATO countries had not even sent troops already promised.

"NATO agreed last year to a force level here ... it prescribed a minimum force ... that force has not been filled yet. On that basis alone, I think, no, I don't have enough force here," he told Reuters in an interview.

"We are taking a certain amount of risk by having an unfilled force," he said.

Many of the 37 nations contributing troops impose tight restrictions, known as caveats, barring them from offensive operations or from deployment in the more dangerous south.

German troops in the relatively safe north, for example, are not allowed to patrol at night, officials say.

"The caveats impinge on my ability to use all those principles of war in both planning and prosecuting operations," McNeill said.

"When countries say their forces can only operate in certain ways and in a certain geographic space that certainly impinges on my ability to mass forces."

NO PURELY MILITARY SOLUTION
But the four-star U.S. general said there was no purely military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan and ISAF was simply buying time for Afghan forces to take on the Taliban.

"A military dimension is part of the solution, it is not the whole solution. We have to build robust and fully capable Afghan national security forces," he said.

While the Afghan army is becoming more capable of independently engaging Taliban rebels in the field, McNeill said there was still a long way to go to build up the Afghan police which is key to combating the threat of suicide attacks.

More than 200 people have been killed in around 130 suicide attacks this year -- more than all of 2006 -- as Taliban insurgents switch to what the military calls asymmetrical warfare after suffering heavy defeats in pitched battles.

Security has improved since a year ago though, McNeill said, when many feared the rebels would seize their former stronghold city of Kandahar and follow it with a large spring offensive.

"The rhetoric from last fall has been 'we're coming, we've got an offensive coming'. Well maybe they did, but none of us has seen it," he said.

Military success against the Taliban has been marred by a number of incidents in which civilians have been killed.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai demanded foreign forces use fewer air strikes as they kill too many civilians, he said in an interview to be broadcast on U.S. television on Sunday.

McNeill said he had issued a directive in June slightly modifying the rules of engagement for launching air strikes.

"I think President Karzai's statement to me about seven or eight days ago was that, yes, he thought that that had had the desired effect," he said. "We take every precaution to minimise risk to non-combatants as well as to the property of Afghans."

The general said the Taliban used civilians as human shields and attacked from houses, inviting civilian casualties, and had harmed their own cause with indiscriminate suicide attacks.

Similarly, the accidental killing of civilians hurt ISAF's efforts in Afghanistan.

"If you inflict harm ... on the people you will begin to lose their support. We are very conscience of that and we will always be taking the measures not to see that happen," he said.
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Blair urges Canada not to back down in Afghanistan
Paula Beauchamp and Jason Fekete , CanWest News Service; Calgary Herald Saturday, October 27, 2007
CALGARY -- Former British prime minister Tony Blair urged Canada to "stay the course" in Afghanistan as he addressed a crowd of more than 1,500 in Calgary on Friday.

Blair, who increasingly came under attack during his final term in office over his support for the war in Iraq, said the efforts to defeat the global forces of extremism and terrorism could take a generation.

"The worst thing you can ever do is back away in the face of opposition just because the thing is too tough to do even though you know it is the right thing to do," he said to applause from the crowd.

we're going to fight this terrorism effectively, we have to show that we are as determined as they are, believe in what we're doing as much as they do - and do not give up, but stay the course."

Blair was brought in for the special speaking engagement by TD Bank.

Blair paid tribute to the "marvellous job" the Canadian Forces are doing in Afghanistan, saying the fight in that country is essential to stability in the region.

"If we give up in Iraq, then we will be under increasing pressure in Afghanistan," he said.

"If we give up in Afghanistan, then we will be under increasing pressure right around that region."

Highlighting the murder of an Afghan teacher who was shot by Taliban fighters in front of his class because he was teaching girls, Blair said negotiation was not an option.

"We have to beat and defeat it," he said. "It's a battle of ideas, not just a battle of arms."

The $400-a-head luncheon drew a crowd from Calgary's oil and financial sectors.

Blair said he wished he had been more prepared for the long-haul fight against terrorism, following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"The roots of terrorism are very deep," he said.

"It's going to take a generation to defeat this."

pbeauchamp@theherald.canwest.com

Calgary Herald
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Recipe for disaster in Afghanistan
Oct 27, 2007 04:30 AM James Travers Toronto Star
OTTAWA - Let's stop fooling around and end the suspense now: Canada has no intention of leaving Afghanistan any time soon. Staying is the prohibitive preference of a Prime Minister firmly in command here and it will be a seismic shock if his handpicked panel, headed by once and perhaps future Liberal leadership contender John Manley, recommends anything else.

But it's entirely another matter if Canadian troops will be fighting there after 2009 or NATO will be training the Afghanistan army in 2016 as Gen. Rick Hillier gloomily predicts. As this country should now know from deadly experience, the mission's fate and longevity is ultimately controlled by others.

Pakistan is the best example of what's worst in the relationship. President Pervez Musharraf's inability or unwillingness to stop the Taliban and its Al Qaeda parasites from oozing across a porous frontier costs Canadian lives.

That's not the behaviour expected from an ally. But it's one of many variables Ottawa either discounted, ignored or didn't understand as a first, deceptively safe post-9/11 stabilization operation in Kabul morphed from reconstruction to war in Kandahar.

As Janice Gross Stein, the University of Toronto's justifiably revered international affairs analyst, and smart former defence insider Eugene Lang chillingly expose in their hot-selling new book, The Unexpected War, official Ottawa knew nothing and cared little about Afghanistan. Canada's focus was a traumatized U.S. where the trumping of security over trade threatened the free flow of prosperity across a suddenly infamously open border.

What Washington wanted from Canada was political cover for the looming Iraq invasion and a new commitment to Afghanistan that would help free U.S. troops for the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Liberals balked at the first appeal, but in bowing to the second set in motion events that now make this country as vulnerable to its friends' decisions as its enemies' assaults.

That dynamic resurfaced in the Netherlands this week where Defence Minister Peter MacKay again begged NATO members to share more of the combat burden. The small change rattling in his tin cup today is hopeful but won't buy Canada out of the box the Bush administration built when it lost interest in Afghanistan to pursue its fatal Iraq obsession.

Since then there have never been enough boots on the Afghanistan ground or dollars in the development pipeline to stabilize a country that's a loose affiliation of clans, warlords and opium traffickers or reconstruct one devastated by decades of civil war. So even if many Canadians don't yet grasp how we unwittingly drifted into a war or why the government is determined to keep fighting it, there should be no surprise that the mission is so problematic. With scattered strategies and varying degrees of enthusiasm, coalition partners are trying to do at minimum cost a job that demands maximum effort.

That would be dangerous anywhere; it's a recipe for disaster in a fragmented neighbourhood where the jagged pieces constantly shift. Nuclear power Pakistan hangs by a thread; India, Russia as well as a slew of smaller regional states advance conflicting interests. Then, and most ominously, there is the fear that Afghanistan will become impossibly hostile to foreigners if the current U.S. economic push at Iran becomes a military shove.

Those unknowns radically rephrase Canada's question. It's not how long Ottawa plans to keep troops in Afghanistan; it's how long NATO is willing or able to stay.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
James Travers' national affairs column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
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Bulgaria's President Arrives at Surprising Visit to Afghanistan
27 October 2007, Saturday Novinite.com
President Georgi Parvanov arrived at a surprising visit to Afghanistan for the first time since Bulgarian troops have joined the International Security Assistance Forces mission there.

He has met the commanders of Bulgaria's military officials in Kabul and Kandahar to thank them for their professionalism and excellent performance of their duties.

Bulgaria's head of state presented the two battalions with icons of Saint George and Saint Ivan Rilski.

President Parvanov has also conferred with his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai.

The leaders have discussed matters, concerning Afghanistan's development and stabilizing as well as the relations between their two countries.

Defence Minister Vesselin Bliznakov and Bulgaria's commander-in-chief General Zlatan Stoykov were among the officials, who joined the delegation.

Bulgaria already has 405 troops in Afghanistan since it increased the military strength in July 1, with some soldiers serving in Kabul and the others responsible for the security of the inner zone of Kandahar airport. There are also several medical crews.
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Pakistan arrests 257 Uzbek, Afghan nationals
27 Oct 2007, 1439 hrs IST,PTI The Times of India
ISLAMABAD: Pakistani security forces have arrested 257 Uzbek and Afghan nationals during a major operation against foreigners illegally living in the Chaman area near the border with Afghanistan.

Police initially arrested 20 Uzbek nationals during a raid on a house near the frontier on Friday. They then cordoned off the area and mounted a major operation along with other security forces to detect foreigners and arrested 237 more.

Extensive searches were carried out in the region and scores of Uzbeks and Afghans were detained from several houses, police officer Naseebullah Khilji told Geo News channel.

Most of the arrested people belonged to the northern areas of Afghanistan. Three agents involved in human trafficking were also arrested, Khilji said.

The arrested people were taken the Sadar police station in Chaman, which is located about 100 km from the Afghan city of Kandahar.

Police in the area are on high alert and more raids are being conducted.
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Afghan Glastonbury brings music to minefield
The Independent (UK) By Jerome Starkey in Kabul 27 October 2007
More than 170,000 Afghans packed into the country's first pop festival this week, the biggest recreational gathering since the fall of the Taliban almost six years ago and a gig that could have been dubbed Glastonbury Afghanistan. It was a far cry from the misery of suicide bombs and house-to-house fighting and like Glastonbury, it shared an agricultural theme.

While the first ever Glasto rockers were treated to free milk, revellers at the Kabul festival were offered a free introduction to modern farming techniques and the opportunity to meet agri-traders from all over the country. The three-day event, on a reclaimed minefield, was ostensibly an agricultural fair, laid on at a cost of at least $1.5m (£750,000) by USAid, the US government agency which is a leading donor in the country.

But while plenty of people were doing business, most of the men, women and children at the landmark event were simply there to have a good time.

"I came to the fair because I love pop music," said Said Ahmed Rahik, a 17-year-old student from Kabul. "My father told me not to come because he wants me to study all the time. But I came without permission, because there is nowhere else to see music like this in Kabul." Headline acts included the winners of Afghan Star, the country's fledgling Pop Idol show, circus performers, stand-up comedians and traditional Afghan folk singers.

Marianne Walimi, 27, a photographer from Kabul, said: "Always Afghanistan has been at war. It is good to have something like this for a change. It is really fun."

The festival was housed on a farm. But Badam Bagh, in the northern suburbs of Kabul, has not been turned over entirely to music. Originally a government site, the 57-hectare farm fell into disrepair during three decades of war. It was mined, fought over, and eventually claimed by Kabul's dog fighters. The government reclaimed the land last year and invested $1m clearing more than 50 unspent munitions.

"It took a week to clear each mine," said Mohammad Haroon Zareef , the site manager. "There were more than 50 small bombs, rockets and mines. We had to clear rocks, build a reservoir, and level the ground. Now it is the biggest party in Afghanistan ... The farmers are coming and learning about new crops and new techniques, but they can have a fun time as well."

While tens of thousands of people danced and sang as the event was broadcast across the country, security was a major concern for the organisers. But the hundreds of soldiers, secret police and private contractors guarding Badam Bagh were not looking for people sneaking in without tickets. The whole event was free. And the festival, which ended last night, passed off without incident, despite the threat from insurgents, even in Kabul, remaining very real.

Organisers claimed that the secret of a peaceful festival was giving more than 300 policemen lunch.
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THE ROVING EYE:  'War on terror' is now war on Iran
By Pepe Escobar Asia Times Online / October 27, 2007
Scores of middle-aged, mild-mannered, bearded gentlemen - the technocrats of the Iranian military bourgeoisie - are now officially enjoying the status of "terrorists", at least from a Washington point of view.

The demonization of Iran drags on relentlessly as the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has been officially branded a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and its elite Quds Force a supporter of terrorism. The latter has for months been accused of supplying Shi'ite militias in Iraq with weapons that are killing US soldiers.

The new round of US sanctions also targets Iran's Defense Ministry, as well as three major Iranian banks accused of financing "the usual suspects"; Shi'ite militias in Iraq, Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon and - absurd as it may sound - the Taliban in Afghanistan. The banks are the state-owned Bank Melli, Bank Mellat and Bank Saderat.

The US State and Treasury departments jointly announced the new sanctions, citing the Islamic Republic's defiance over its continued nuclear program and its alleged involvement with terrorist organizations. The new restrictions are unilateral and aim to prevent businesses and other groups both within and outside the US - but that do work within the US - from dealing with individuals who are part of any of the banks, military forces and other organizations in Iran that were named, including the IRGC.

The move follows President George W Bush's comments last week that implied that Iran obtaining nuclear weapons could lead to "World War III", and Vice President Dick Cheney's speech on Sunday in which he said that "the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences" if Iran does not comply with demands.

Sanctions do bite - as some Iranian conservatives have started to publicly admit. But Tehran won't be in a hurry to mount a hug-and-kiss expedition to Washington. Cuba has been fighting a US blockade and sanctions for almost five decades - and has managed to survive with dignity.

The more than 20 companies and individuals affiliated with the IRGC that are now excluded from the American financial system - and nodes of the international banking system - will still have plenty of opportunities of doing business with Russia, China or Arab monarchies. They may barter. They may exchange goods with services. And they may resort to the black market.

As far as Moscow and Beijing are concerned, they are hardly shivering with fear in the face of renewed State Department "warnings" to China not to invest and Russia not to sell weapons to Iran.

This new round of sanctions is just one side of the demonization of Iran campaign - as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was once again spinning the other side of the same old scratched vinyl, that of preventing "one of the world's worst regimes from acquiring the world's most dangerous weapons". The International Atomic Energy Agency still has not found any evidence Iran is developing a nuclear program for military use, and has called for the further engagement of Iran, rather than its isolation.

Meet the terrorists

The IRGC was founded by a decree of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic Revolution, in May 1979. In the beginning, in pure revolutionary fashion, it was the "eyes and ears" of the revolution, its trusted popular army fighting the enemy within - which could be, according to revolutionary whim, the deposed Shah's supporters, communist militants, ethnic minorities like the Kurds in the northwest or Arabs in oil-rich Khuzestan province, or Western-educated, influential intellectuals.

The early revolutionaries in 1979 had two fears: a military coup orchestrated by remaining Shah supporters, or an attack by the US. What happened was the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), started by Saddam Hussein with the hardly silent support of the US and the West. So the popular army immediately had to be converted into a parallel - and soon very powerful - fighting army.

Almost 1 million IRGC people - pasdaran (soldiers) and bassijis (young militiamen under their control) - died in that horrendous war, and are today revered as martyrs.

The IRGC today numbers, according to their bureau in Tehran, about 130,000. Ground forces have 105,000 soldiers - four divisions, six mechanized divisions and one marine brigade. The air force has 5,000 men and the navy 20,000, with an undisclosed number of vessels equipped with anti-ship missiles. Three separate units man the Shahab-3 missiles, with a 1,500-kilometer range; the new Shahab-4 has a range of 2,000 kilometers.

The Quds Force of the IRGC - the key target of US ire - may have as many as 15,000 men. They are specialists in surveillance and

special operations. It is the Quds Force that trained Iraq's Badr Brigades, the paramilitary arm of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, the party of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim allied with the US. The Badr are firmly ensconced at the Iraqi Ministry of Interior - and it is they who have spawned death squads and accelerated ethnic cleansing in Baghdad. Instead of accusing Iran without any evidence, Washington should take a good look at what its Iraqi allies are up to.

The Quds Force has four main bases in Tehran, aside from bases in Mashhad, Qom and Tabriz and a semi-secret base in eastern Lebanon. These bases would in all certainty be hit in the event of an American - or Israeli - strike. It is the IRGC that supplied Hezbollah with the rockets and anti-tank missiles that caused havoc during the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon in the summer of 2006.

In bed with business

After the Iran-Iraq war, the IRGC quickly diversified from the battlefield into real estate development. The man who actually gave the go-ahead was then-president Hashemi Rafsanjani, the wily, indestructible pragmatist who is today the actual number two of the regime, behind only Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The business-minded IRGC thrived during the 1990s. Today it controls more than 100 large companies involved in telecoms, road and dam construction, luxury hotels, the auto industry (the Mazda assembly line in Iran) and, crucially, oil and gas exploitation at the giant South Pars field.

The IRGC power play is visible in upscale north Tehran in a cluster of high-security buildings occupied by the revolutionary bonyads (foundations). That's also where the IRGC elite enjoys itself in restaurants like the Talaie, with its water fountains and tearoom. The foundations - many directed by IRGC people - don't pay taxes and their budget is under direct supervision of the Supreme Leader. So the IRGC in fact controls an array of both public and private companies, financed by their own network linked to the Iranian Central Bank. They also have extensive connections in the black market - one reason why US sanctions may not bite as much as the Americans believe.

President Mahmud Ahmadinejad is an ex-pasdaran himself - thus also a "terrorist" according to Bush administration logic. The same applies to no fewer than two-thirds of the members of the Majlis (parliament). Most of the leadership at the Ministry of Interior is also ex-pasdaran. Five IRGC generals are already under United Nations sanctions, as they are responsible for Iran's nuclear and missile program.

The bassijis - essentially a gigantic militia - are the IRGC at street level. They number about 100,000, but in theory could instantly draw on as many as 20 million people - hence they are known in Iran as "the army of 20 million". The bete noire of the bassijis include students (especially those attracted by the West) and Western-minded women and girls bent on showing off their stylish hairdos, fancy makeup and curves under their chadors. The bassijis' main bases virtually surround Tehran; they are capable of blockading the whole city in less than half an hour.

We'll bomb you to bits

During the years of reformist president Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), the Supreme Leader cleverly manipulated the IRGC for political ends, thus preparing for the arrival to power of Ahmadinejad and his IRGC buddies. Dejected reformists in Tehran swear the IRGC now controls everything: power, wealth and weapons.

The IRGC is accused of being involved in all sorts of rackets, from oil smuggling with Iraq to opium trafficking with Afghanistan. Hard evidence is extremely difficult to come by. Investigative reporting in Iran inevitably lands practitioners in jail. What is certain is that the IRGC is flush: US$12 billion in contracts in 2006 alone, including a mega-pipeline and the Tehran metro. A few Iranian ministerial officials, when pressed, admit strictly off the record that the IRGC is in fact a huge industrial-military complex - not exactly like that of the US but rather similar to that of the former Soviet Union - ghostly and as Kafkaesque.

Even well-positioned Iranians cannot clearly distinguish who is manipulating whom in the wide net involving the Supreme Leader, the IRGC, the fervent bassiji masses and business and national security interests. By branding the IRGC as terrorist, Washington has in fact declared war on the Iranian power elite.

One can imagine what would happen if any developing country branded the US industrial-military complex as "terrorists" - and any number of countries would have plenty of reasons to do so. By stretching its "war on terror" logic to actually naming names, the Bush administration has boxed itself into no other option than regime change in Iran.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007).
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US admits to mistakes in Afghanistan after Soviet pullout
Lalit K. Jha 
NEW YORK, Oct 25, 2007 (Pajhwok Afghan News): US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Wednesday Washington was paying the price of neglecting Pakistan after the Soviets left Afghanistan.

We paid for it in not having the contacts, we paid for it in the rise of extremism, Rice told a Congressional hearing in Washington.

The secretary of state added the US effectively had no relationship with Pakistan after the Russian troops left Afghanistan. As a result, she pointed out, Afghanistan and Pakistan became a hotbed of terrorism.

I think everybody can see this is a country that was really at the brink of extremism, had close relations with Taliban and one of two countries in the world that actually recognised the Taliban government in Afghanistan during that period of time, Rice observed.

We effectively had no relationship with Pakistan. And we're paying -- we paid for that, the secretary observed in her testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on the US policy in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, in an interview to the PBS news channel, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists were using the tribal region between Afghanistan and Pakistan as their base.

The most important is its ability to use that mostly lawless border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan as a safe haven to regenerate, Hayden remarked.

Our national intelligence estimate about three months ago said they had leadership, a safe haven and what we call operational lieutenants, kind of the operational leadership, that were present in the FATA, in the federally administered tribal area. So that has allowed them in some measure to regenerate, he concluded.
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Germany to donate X-ray machine to Kabul Airport Customs
KABUL, Oct 25 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Germany would donate to Afghanistan modern X-ray equipment for use at the Kabul International Airport, the German embassy said here on Thursday.

The machines - donated by the German Federal Customs Authority - will be handed over to the Afghan Customs Authority at a ceremony here on Saturday, according to a press release issued by the embassy.

The donation package, worth some 100,000 euros, includes a branded X-ray machine 'Rapiscan 528 HR' as well as special equipment for effective car searching. An expert introduction and maintenance are also cared for by the German partner.

The contribution is part of the efforts of the German government to assist the rehabilitation and modernisation of infrastructure in Afghanistan, the press release added.

It said the German X-ray and specialised equipment was to expand the capabilities to detect drugs, weapons, explosives and other illegal goods to the benefit of the security of travellers arriving at and leaving the Kabul airport.

The ceremonial hand-over will take place on October 27 at 10am at the passenger exit at Kabul airport and includes a ribbon-cutting and demonstration of the appliance. Present at the event will be German Federal Customs Authority representative Wolfgang Maierhofer as well as Deputy Minister of Finance Sharifulah Ibrahim, Director-General for Customs of the Ministry of Finance Jalil Jemrani and head of the Kabul Airport Customs Authority.
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