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Afghan president urges military action in Pakistan
By RAHIM FAIEZ, Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan - President Hamid Karzai said Sunday that airstrikes carried out in Afghan villages by U.S. and NATO troops are only killing civilians and that the international community should instead go after terror centers in Pakistan.
Afghans check reports foreign forces killed civilians
Sun Aug 10, 1:09 AM ET
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan authorities were checking on Sunday reports more than a dozen civilians were killed by a foreign forces air strike in an area to the northeast of the capital, an official said.
Afghan officials: civilians may be among 11 killed
By AMIR SHAH, Associated Press Writer Sun Aug 10, 3:13 AM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - Airstrikes and clashes north of Kabul have killed 11 people, some of whom might be civilians, Afghan officials said Sunday. In the south, five civilians died when their vehicle hit a mine, police said.
Australian military says key Taliban commander captured
Sun Aug 10, 6:31 AM ET
SYDNEY (AFP) - Australian soldiers have captured a key Taliban commander in southern Afghanistan, the military said Sunday.
Bomb kills five Afghan labourers: police
Sun Aug 10, 4:34 AM ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) - A roadside bomb apparently intended for Afghan soldiers blew up a vehicle of labourers headed to grape fields in southern Afghanistan Sunday, killing five of the men, police said.
Afghanistan expects road link with China
KABUL, Aug. 10 (Xinhua) -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Sunday that Afghanistan is interested in building a road in Wakhanto connect with China.
Work on WB-funded road launched
Bakhtar News Agency / August 10, 2008
Construction work on a 172-kilometre road - linking a number of districts with the provincial capital - has been launched in the northern Takhar province, officials said on Saturday.
Bomb kills five Afghan labourers: police
Sun Aug 10, 4:34 AM ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) - A roadside bomb apparently intended for Afghan soldiers blew up a vehicle of labourers headed to grape fields in southern Afghanistan Sunday, killing five of the men, police said.
Would-be Pakistani Bomber Held
Bakhtar News Agency / August 10, 2008
A would-be suicide attacker from Pakistan and two of his Afghan accomplices were arrested in the eastern Nangarhar province police said on Saturday.
Taliban attack radio transmitter in Badakhshan
Bakhtar News Agency / August 10, 2008
A transmitter of the ISAF-run radio was attacked in the northeastern Badakhshan province, wounding a guard and damaging a guard room.
Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan
Sun Aug 10, 1:10 AM ET
OTTAWA (AFP) - A Canadian soldier was killed in southern Afghanistan on Saturday in an attack on NATO forces by insurgents, the Canadian defense ministry said in a statement.
Afghanistan seeks Iran’s trade expertise
Mehr News Agency
TEHRAN, Aug. 9 (MNA) – The director of Afghanistan’s Trade Agency here on Saturday called for Iran’s more active presence in Afghan markets.
Against all odds, Afghans try their luck in Beijing
By John Chalmers
BEIJING, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Sprinter Robina Muqimyar does not have a qualified trainer, she has no sponsor, she comes from a country ruined by war and she grew up under hardline Islamist rulers
Heavy fighting on Pakistan-Afghan border
Aug. 10, 2008
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Aug. 10 (UPI) -- Pakistani forces say they killed more than 100 Taliban fighters even while acknowledging they withdrew from one Afghan border town after a three-day battle.
100 insurgents die in Pakistan attack near Afghan border
By HABIB KHAN Associated Press Aug. 10, 2008, 8:45AM
KHAR, Pakistan — Pakistani forces bombed dozens of houses in a tribal region near the Afghan border Sunday, officials and witnesses said, amid reports that days of clashes have killed at least 100
Bomber who 'planned to kill governor' arrested
Written by www.quqnoos.com Sunday, 10 August 2008
Governor says bomber is the fourth sent to kill him this year
(PAN) Security officials say they have arrested one of two suicide bombers who planned to kill the governor of Nangarhar province at an Independence Day parade.
Al-Qaida said to lose key WMD operative
The Associated Press By KATHY GANNON 09/08/2008
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan-The killing of an al-Qaida chemical weapons expert in a missile strike two weeks ago on a Pakistani border village has dealt a heavy blow to the terrorist group's ambitions to build weapons
Al Qaeda loses chemical weapons expert
Expert's death a heavy blow to al Qaeda ambitions for weapons of mass destruction, former CIA officer says.
Austin American-Statesman, TX ASSOCIATED PRESS Sunday, August 10, 2008
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan-The killing of an al Qaeda chemical weapons expert in a missile strike two weeks ago in a Pakistani border village has dealt a blow to the terrorist group's ambitions to build weapons
Archaeologists uncover ancient city in Afghanistan
August 10, 2008 By MATTHEW PENNINGTON, the associated press
CHESHM-E-SHAFA, Afghanistan - Centuries-old shards of pottery mingle with spent ammunition rounds on a wind-swept mountainside in northern Afghanistan where French archaeologists believe they have found a vast ancient city.
British cash to buy off Taliban 'goes to farmers'
A scheme to pay Taliban fighters to defect to the West has descended into chaos with money missing and payouts going to shepherds instead of soldiers, Foreign Office documents have shown.
UK denies money to wounded Afghans
MoD condemned over its 'scandalous' failure to compensate innocent casualties of air strikes
Guardian Unlimited - UK News Mark Townsend The Observer Sunday August 10 2008
Defence officials are refusing to compensate the families of hundreds of Afghans killed, wounded or left homeless in fighting involving British troops.
Opium grips Afghanistan
Drug addiction rampant; women, children abuse as production increases
The Washington Times - World Sara A. Carter (Contact) Sunday, August 10, 2008
KABUL -Shereen placed a ball of pure opium on a small piece of foil she pulled from a cigarette pack. Balancing the foil with shaky hands, she heated the bottom until the paste turned to crystal
Inmates vow to continue hunger strike
Written by www.quqnoos.com Saturday, 09 August 2008
Prisoners claim guards humiliate them and demand chief's suspension
(PAN) Prisoners in Takhar province’s main jail have continued their hunger strike for the second consecutive day in protest at the behaviour of the jail’s superintendent.
Three brothers die in gas-filled well
www.quqnoos.com Written by M Reza Sher Mohammadi Saturday, 09 August 2008
Brothers die climbing down well shaft to fix water pump
Musharraf’s exit will affect US strategy in Afghanistan
Gulf Times - Opinion By Eric S Margolis Sunday, 10 August, 2008
WASHINGTON-The move to remove Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf has set off alarm bells in official Washington.
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Afghan president urges military action in Pakistan
By RAHIM FAIEZ, Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan - President Hamid Karzai said Sunday that airstrikes carried out in Afghan villages by U.S. and NATO troops are only killing civilians and that the international community should instead go after terror centers in Pakistan.
International forces serving under NATO and the separate U.S.-led coalition insist that the vast majority of those killed in air raids are militants. However, they also acknowledge that civilians are sometimes killed in bombing runs, though they accuse militants of firing on international troops from civilian homes they have commandeered.
Speaking under a tree on the grounds of the presidential palace, Karzai said the international community should take its fight across the border into Pakistan, where militants find safe havens in Pakistan's tribal region.
"The struggle against terrorism is not in the villages of Afghanistan," Karzai said. "The only result of the use of airstrikes is the killing of civilians. This is not the way to wage the fight against terrorism."
Afghan officials say U.S. or NATO airstrikes killed dozens of civilians in two incidents last month, including 47 people who were killed while walking to a wedding in the eastern province of Nangarhar on July 6.
Karzai's comments come the same day as Afghan officials announced that airstrikes and clashes in Kapisa province, north of the capital, killed more than 10 people Saturday. A defence ministry spokesman, Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, said those killed were militants.
However, provincial deputy governor, Rahimullah Safi, said 11 people were killed and all were civilians.
The NATO spokesman, Mark Laity, said there was no record of airstrikes in the Kapisa clash but that helicopters fired cannons at militants. Laity said NATO was still investigating but that "at present we do not believe" civilians were killed.
Karzai's criticism of U.S. and NATO airstrikes comes at a time when he appears to be making an increasing number of nationalistic appeals ahead of next year's presidential election. Karzai has indicated he plans to run.
However, Karzai's call for military action in Pakistan echoes the views of top NATO military leaders, who say that militants train, recruit and rearm in Pakistan's tribal areas.
Senior U.S. military officials say it will be extremely difficult to defeat the resurgent Taliban as long as militant sanctuaries exist on Pakistan's side of the border. U.S. and NATO troops have limited latitude to fight or pursue militants into Pakistan.
Karzai and his government have stepped up criticism in recent months of Pakistan's military-run intelligence service accusing it of directly supporting militants and of being behind the deadly July bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul.
Karzai said the Inter-Services Intelligence agency should "abandon the idea that the Afghan government will be under its control."
"We do not want to be the slaves or puppets of other countries," he said.
Top Bush administration officials are pressing the president to direct U.S. troops in Afghanistan to be more aggressive in pursuing militants into Pakistan on foot as part of a proposed radical shift in regional counterterrorism strategy.
Senior intelligence and military aides want President Bush to give American soldiers greater flexibility to operate against al-Qaida and Taliban fighters who cross the border from Pakistan to conduct attacks inside Afghanistan.
But any such move would be controversial, in part because of Pakistani opposition to U.S. incursions into its territory, and the proposal is not universally supported in Washington. It comes amid growing political instability in Pakistan.
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Associated Press writers Amir Shah in Kabul and Noor Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.
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Afghans check reports foreign forces killed civilians
Sun Aug 10, 1:09 AM ET
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan authorities were checking on Sunday reports more than a dozen civilians were killed by a foreign forces air strike in an area to the northeast of the capital, an official said.
Civilian deaths caused by foreign troops while hunting Taliban insurgents are highly sensitive for the Western-backed Afghan government and its allies as the incidents feed popular resentment.
The latest reported incident occurred on Saturday after a group of foreign soldiers came under attack by suspected Taliban insurgents in Tagab district of Kapisa province, an official in Kabul said, quoting provincial authorities.
"We do not have a lot of details now and are checking the reports saying more than 12 civilians were killed and 18 more wounded," the official said on condition of anonymity.
Other officials could not be reached immediately for comment about the reports of deaths.
Some 400 non-combatants have been killed so far this year during operations of NATO and U.S.-led forces as well as Afghan troops, according to Afghan officials and aid agencies.
Tagab lies some 90 kms to the northeast of Kabul and is located to the east of Bagram air base, the hub of operation of U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.
Troops from NATO and the U.S.-led military have clashed with suspected militants on several occasions in Kapisa in recent months and provincial officials in the past have complained of some civilian deaths.
(Reporting by Sayed Salahuddin; Editing Jerry Norton)
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Afghan officials: civilians may be among 11 killed
By AMIR SHAH, Associated Press Writer Sun Aug 10, 3:13 AM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - Airstrikes and clashes north of Kabul have killed 11 people, some of whom might be civilians, Afghan officials said Sunday. In the south, five civilians died when their vehicle hit a mine, police said.
More than 10 people were killed Saturday in the clash near Kapisa, about 40 miles north of Kabul, the Defense Ministry said in a statement. The ministry did not say if those killed were militants or civilians.
The provincial deputy governor Rahimullah Safi, said that 11 people were killed and they were all civilians. Three others were wounded after an airstrike in the village of Juibar in the restless Tagab valley of Kapisa province, Safi said.
But the provincial police chief, Matiullah Safi, says it was not yet clear if the dead were militants or civilians.
The U.S.-led coalition says there were airstrikes in the region, but there are no reports of civilian casualties.
The airstrikes followed a clash between NATO-led troops and militants, said Rahimullah Safi.
"There was a report that the insurgents were meeting in the village, and foreign soldiers surrounded the area," Safi said. "There was fighting in the village and then helicopters and fighter jets came," he said.
The airstrikes and clashes damaged three or four homes, Safi said.
"The village elders called me to say they were going to bury their dead, and ask NATO not to bomb," Safi, the deputy governor said.
Civilian deaths are a sore point between the Afghan government and foreign troops here. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has pleaded with the U.S. and NATO to avoid killing innocents and undermining already tenuous popular support for his government. Military officials have pointed out that insurgents often hide in civilian areas.
Meanwhile, five Afghan civilians died Sunday when their vehicle struck a freshly planted mine close to an Afghan military base in Zhari district of southern Kandahar province, said district Police Chief Bismillah Khan. Three other civilians were wounded.
Khan blamed the Taliban for planting the mine. He said the victims were farmers on their way to the orchards to collect grapes.
__
Associated Press reporter Noor Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.
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Australian military says key Taliban commander captured
Sun Aug 10, 6:31 AM ET
SYDNEY (AFP) - Australian soldiers have captured a key Taliban commander in southern Afghanistan, the military said Sunday.
The Defence Department said that elite Australian troops in Uruzgan had last week taken in Mullah Bari Ghul -- a man they believe is a central figure in extremist attacks in the restive province.
Defence chiefs said Bari Ghul organised money, equipment and foreign fighters for extremist operations in Uruzgan and acted as "shadow governor" authorising attacks across the region.
"Mullah Bari Ghul was directly responsible for the importation of componentry, the provision of specialists in the construction of IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and authorising their emplacement across the province," spokesman Brigadier Brian Dawson said.
"He was also ultimately responsible for the July 13 suicide bomber attack in the Deh Rawood bazaar that killed 21 Afghans and injured a further 12."
Dawson said the capture of Bari Ghul, who was also involved in coordinating the actions of individual insurgency cells, would likely have an immediate impact on militant activity in the region.
"The loss of the one person who knew what was currently underway, what was planned for the future and had the contacts to gain further support is a significant blow to the Taliban extremists' command and control in the province," he said in a statement.
"Extremist cells in Afghanistan operate in small isolated groups and only a few key individuals have any sense of the overall provincial insurgency plan."
No details about the capture were revealed. Bari Ghul is being held in a Dutch detention facility in Tarin Kwot, Uruzgan.
Australia has about 1,000 troops based in Uruzgan province, most of whom are assisting a Dutch-led reconstruction operation in Uruzgan, a former Taliban stronghold.
Australia has deployed troops to Afghanistan for much of the time since the Taliban government was ousted in a US-led invasion for harbouring Al-Qaeda leaders after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
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Bomb kills five Afghan labourers: police
Sun Aug 10, 4:34 AM ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) - A roadside bomb apparently intended for Afghan soldiers blew up a vehicle of labourers headed to grape fields in southern Afghanistan Sunday, killing five of the men, police said.
The blast was in Zhari, in Kandahar province, the same area as where a Canadian soldier was killed in an attack announced Saturday.
"This morning some people were going to the grape fields when the bomb exploded on their vehicle. Five people died and three were wounded," Zhari district police chief Bismullah Khan told AFP.
The bomb had been planted about 200 metres (650 feet) from a small Afghan army base, he said, accusing Taliban insurgents of laying the device.
The extremist Taliban, who were in government between 1996 and 2001, use bombs in near-daily attacks that are targeted mainly at Afghan and international security forces but kill more civilians.
The Canadian soldier killed in Zhari became the 154th international troop to die in Afghanistan this year, most of them losing their lives in militant attacks.
Other soldiers in the nearly 40-nation International Security Assistance Force were wounded in ambushes Saturday in the province of Kapisa, ISAF told AFP without giving details.
Two insurgents were killed in return fire, an ISAF press officer told AFP. The Afghan interior ministry said four insurgents were killed while the defence ministry said 10 were dead or wounded.
Neither ISAF nor the government could confirm Afghan media reports that civilians also died. A team had gone to the area, about 50 kilometres (30 miles) from Kabul, to investigate, interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said.
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Afghanistan expects road link with China
KABUL, Aug. 10 (Xinhua) -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Sunday that Afghanistan is interested in building a road in Wakhanto connect with China.
Karzai said this after returning home from Beijing.
Karzai, who attended the inaugural ceremony of Olympic Games on Aug. 8 in Beijing, added that he exchanged views with his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao during his visit and briefed him about the willingness of Afghans on constructing the road.
Wakhan corridor in the mountainous Pamir area connects Afghanistan's northeastern Badakhshan province to China's Xingjian Uygur Autonomous Region.
Linking Afghanistan with China through road in Wakhan would enhance trade and economic activities in the region, the President said.
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Work on WB-funded road launched
Bakhtar News Agency / August 10, 2008
Construction work on a 172-kilometre road - linking a number of districts with the provincial capital - has been launched in the northern Takhar province, officials said on Saturday.A senior official said the seven meters wide road would connect Taloqan with Baharak, Qala-i-Dasht, Qala-i-Yangi, Khwaja Ghar, Khwaja Bahauddin and Rastaq districts. Administrative Officer Qutbuddin Kamal said the World Bank-funded project, costing about 24 million US dollars, would be completed in a year. He added the road scheme has generated job opportunities for dozens of people. With the construction of the road, provincial council Chief Latifullah Azizi hoped, Takhar residents would see a positive change. Latifullah Azizi said people would be able to easily transport their agriculture products to other parts of the country.
In particular, businessmen would benefit from the project that would provide easy access to the Aai Khanam Port near the border with neighboring Tajikistan, said Takhar Chamber of Commerce and Industry head Abdul Rashid Rasuli.Meanwhile, Herat Airport has been closed for flights for three days due to reconstruction work. The task would be completed in two months, Acting Director Ghulam Raza Khawari said.
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Bomb kills five Afghan labourers: police
Sun Aug 10, 4:34 AM ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) - A roadside bomb apparently intended for Afghan soldiers blew up a vehicle of labourers headed to grape fields in southern Afghanistan Sunday, killing five of the men, police said.
The blast was in Zhari, in Kandahar province, the same area as where a Canadian soldier was killed in an attack announced Saturday.
"This morning some people were going to the grape fields when the bomb exploded on their vehicle. Five people died and three were wounded," Zhari district police chief Bismullah Khan told AFP.
The bomb had been planted about 200 metres (650 feet) from a small Afghan army base, he said, accusing Taliban insurgents of laying the device.
The extremist Taliban, who were in government between 1996 and 2001, use bombs in near-daily attacks that are targeted mainly at Afghan and international security forces but kill more civilians.
The Canadian soldier killed in Zhari became the 154th international troop to die in Afghanistan this year, most of them losing their lives in militant attacks.
Other soldiers in the nearly 40-nation International Security Assistance Force were wounded in ambushes Saturday in the province of Kapisa, ISAF told AFP without giving details.
Two insurgents were killed in return fire, an ISAF press officer told AFP. The Afghan interior ministry said four insurgents were killed while the defence ministry said 10 were dead or wounded.
Neither ISAF nor the government could confirm Afghan media reports that civilians also died. A team had gone to the area, about 50 kilometres (30 miles) from Kabul, to investigate, interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said.
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Would-be Pakistani Bomber Held
Bakhtar News Agency / August 10, 2008
A would-be suicide attacker from Pakistan and two of his Afghan accomplices were arrested in the eastern Nangarhar province police said on Saturday.
On the basis of an intelligence report, security personnel raided a house in Karkana area of the Achin district and detained the Pakistani national named Saifullah along with his two Afghan allies.
The Nangarhar police spokesman, said intelligence and border police officials held the terror suspect and his backers after a brief encounter.
Col. Abdul Ghafoor claimed that a suicide vest, two assault rifles, a machine-gun and ammunitions were seized from the house. The detainee was under investigation, the police spokesman added.
Meanwhile, a Taliban commander was captured during a joint counter-insurgency operation by Afghan National Army (ANA) and NATO forces.
A statement from the Kandahar Airfield said commander Mullah Bari Gul was involved in planting roadside bombs and carrying out suicide attacks on Afghan and foreign forces in the Uruzgan province.
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Taliban attack radio transmitter in Badakhshan
Bakhtar News Agency / August 10, 2008
A transmitter of the ISAF-run radio was attacked in the northeastern Badakhshan province, wounding a guard and damaging a guard room.
Syed Abrar, a police official of the counter-terrorism department in the province, said that the five rockets were fired at the Radio Saday-e-Azadi of NATO forces in outskirts of the provincial capital Faizabad last midnight.Only one rocket hit the target, wounding a local guard of the transmitter and damaging the guardroom, said Abrar. Other rockets missed the target and did not cause any damages.Abrar said the attack was the act of the Taliban who sporadically launch rocket attacks at nighttime mostly targeting local military bases of foreign forces.
A Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) radio based in Kabul with local offices in Northern provinces was stopped after the rocket attack destroyed its transmitter in Badakhshan.Radio Saday-e-Azadi mainly airing music and news with publicity against militants has local transmissions in Northern provinces in addition.
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Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan
Sun Aug 10, 1:10 AM ET
OTTAWA (AFP) - A Canadian soldier was killed in southern Afghanistan on Saturday in an attack on NATO forces by insurgents, the Canadian defense ministry said in a statement.
The soldier was the 89th Canadian to be killed in Afghanistan since the start of the Canadian mission in 2002.
He died from his injuries after being transported to a military hospital in southern Kandahar after the attack in the Zharey region.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force had earlier announced that a soldier had been killed in southern Afghanistan, without giving the nationality of the trooper.
"An ISAF soldier died in southern Afghanistan August 9 after an attack from insurgents," it said in a statement that gave no other details.
The death takes to 154 the number of international soldiers to lose their lives in Afghanistan this year, most of them in attacks.
In July, for the third consecutive month, more soldiers with international forces were killed in Afghanistan than in Iraq, even though there are fewer forces on the ground there.
Canada maintains a contingent of 2,500 soldiers in the Kandahar region as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said.
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Afghanistan seeks Iran’s trade expertise
Mehr News Agency
TEHRAN, Aug. 9 (MNA) – The director of Afghanistan’s Trade Agency here on Saturday called for Iran’s more active presence in Afghan markets.
According to IRNA, in his meet with the deputy director of the Trade Promotion Organization of Iran, Seyyed Suleiman Fatmiba urged Iran to offer Afghan tradesmen trainings in different fields especially in marketing.
“The Embassy of Afghanistan in Tehran has set up its first permanent exhibition abroad in Iran. This fact indicates Afghanistan’s eagerness for promotion of mutual trade and commercial ties with our neighboring country, Iran,” he added.
The Iranian side, Mohammad-Ali Zeighami, for his part, stressed on the expansion of bilateral trade relations, saying economic delegations from the two sides should be dispatched to evaluate market conditions.
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Against all odds, Afghans try their luck in Beijing
By John Chalmers
BEIJING, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Sprinter Robina Muqimyar does not have a qualified trainer, she has no sponsor, she comes from a country ruined by war and she grew up under hardline Islamist rulers who would not brook girls playing sport.
Little wonder that she stands little chance of a medal at the Beijing Olympics.
But Muqimyar, the only woman among four athletes representing Afghanistan at the Games, told Reuters she would just be happy if she could improve the 100 metres time she clocked up at Athens four years ago, 14.14 seconds.
"I'm the luckiest girl in the world to participate in two Olympic Games, and I hope to get to London," she said after a ceremony to raise the black-green-gold tricolour of Afghanistan among a sea of flags at the athletes' village.
Although Afghan society remains deeply conservative, some things have improved for women since 2001, when U.S.-led and Afghan forces ousted the Taliban rulers.
Muqimyar, dressed in a headscarf, said that most people in her country would be very proud that a female athlete was representing them in a world sports event.
Her Olympic teammates include two taekwondo competitors and a men's 100 metres runner, Masoud Azizi, a 23-year-old.
There is not a single proper running track in the whole country and athletes in Kabul, the capital, train at a sports stadium where the Taliban used to hold public executions.
"We have to run on concrete," said Azizi, another Athens Olympian who went to Malaysia for five months before the Beijing Games to train. His best time in the 100 metres is 10.87 seconds.
"Under the Taliban regime it was very difficult to be an athlete but now with (President Hamid) Karzai things are better," he said.
"Afghanistan faces a huge funding crisis. At international donor meetings funds go to schools, health and construction but no one considers sports," he said. (editing by Alison Williams)
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Heavy fighting on Pakistan-Afghan border
Aug. 10, 2008
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Aug. 10 (UPI) -- Pakistani forces say they killed more than 100 Taliban fighters even while acknowledging they withdrew from one Afghan border town after a three-day battle.
Nine Pakistani soldiers were killed in battles in the Bajaur tribal region that included fighter jet, helicopter and artillery attacks attempting to drive militants from the strategic area, reported the BBC Sunday.
But Pakistani forces withdrew from the Lowi Sam border area and were reportedly followed by the Taliban to their home base in Khaar. The Taliban claimed that 80 to 100 soldiers had been killed and about 35 held hostage, reported the Pakistani news service Dawn Sunday.
One soldier told the BBC Urdu service by telephone that a number of Pakistani soldiers had been taken hostage by the Taliban.
"One of my men was killed on the spot when the Taliban attacked us, while four went missing. The rest of us laid down our arms and were captured," said the man, who identified himself as Subedar Ghausuddin.
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100 insurgents die in Pakistan attack near Afghan border
By HABIB KHAN Associated Press Aug. 10, 2008, 8:45AM
KHAR, Pakistan — Pakistani forces bombed dozens of houses in a tribal region near the Afghan border Sunday, officials and witnesses said, amid reports that days of clashes have killed at least 100 insurgents and nine paramilitary troops.
Details have been scarce about the military offensive in Bajur, an insurgent stronghold considered a possible hiding place for al-Qaida leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri.
Sardar Khan, a local police official, said two spells of aerial bombing destroyed about 40 houses in several villages. He said bombs also struck a school occupied by Taliban fighters in Loi Sam, a village that has been a key focus of the fighting.
Two area residents, Sher Zamin and Attaullah Khan, said army planes and helicopters dropped bombs and shells, apparently on suspected Taliban positions.
Meanwhile, an Associated Press reporter in Khar, the main town in Bajur, saw Taliban militants patrolling and staking out positions on roads with rocket launchers, heavy machine guns and, in some places, anti-aircraft guns.
Pakistan is under U.S. pressure to crack down on militants in its tribal areas, from where they launch attacks on government and NATO forces in Afghanistan. The Bajur offensive came in the wake of a militant assault Wednesday on an outpost manned by security forces. Officials said those initial clashes killed 25 militants and two troops.
Conflicting casualty figures were reported Sunday.
A paramilitary Frontier Corps statement said nine troops and at least 100 militants were killed in the last four days. But a military intelligence official placed the number of troops killed at 13. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Maulvi Umar, a Pakistani Taliban spokesman, claimed the militants had handed over 22 bodies belonging to security forces in the past three days after pleas from tribal elders.
Associated Press writer Riaz Khan in Peshawar contributed to this report.
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Bomber who 'planned to kill governor' arrested
Written by www.quqnoos.com Sunday, 10 August 2008
Governor says bomber is the fourth sent to kill him this year
(PAN) Security officials say they have arrested one of two suicide bombers who planned to kill the governor of Nangarhar province at an Independence Day parade.
Police are currently trying to track down the other bomber.
The police chief of the eastern province said on Saturday that border police had arrested a Pakistani suicide bomber in the Achin district.
Qadir Gul said the bomber was arrested on Saturday with two Afghan friends, who were both carrying weapons.
All three men were paraded in front of journalists.
Qadir Gul said the suicide bomber, who was caught with a vest packed with 8.5kg of explosives, lived in Malakand, in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province.
He said the bomber planned to blow himself up during celebrations to mark the country’s independence from the British on August 18 1919.
Saif Ullah, the arrested suicide bomber, urged the province’s governor, Gul Agha Shirzai, to forgive him.
Gul Agha Shirzai said Ullah was the fourth suicide bomber sent to kill him in the last year.
Mr Shirzai said to the attacker: "I forgive you. As a Muslim, I cannot bear to kill a Muslim. But President Karzai will make the final decision."
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Al-Qaida said to lose key WMD operative
The Associated Press By KATHY GANNON 09/08/2008
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan-The killing of an al-Qaida chemical weapons expert in a missile strike two weeks ago on a Pakistani border village has dealt a heavy blow to the terrorist group's ambitions to build weapons of mass destruction, a former CIA case officer says.
Abu Khabab al-Masri was dubbed by terrorism analysts as al-Qaida's "mad scientist." His most notorious work, recorded on videotape, showed dogs being killed in poison gas experiments in Afghanistan when the Taliban ruled.
"If he is out of the picture, al-Qaida's weapons of mass destruction capability has been set back, which would make this one of the more effective strikes in recent years," Arthur Keller, an ex-CIA case officer in Pakistan, told The Associated Press. Keller led the hunt for al-Masri in 2006.
The U.S offered a $5 million bounty for the 55-year old Egyptian, and the CIA had been hunting him for years. Al-Qaida confirmed his death days after the July 28 attack by unmanned drones on a tribesman's compound in the village of Azam Warsak in South Waziristan.
Al-Masri, whose real name is Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar, got his chemical weapons training in the Egyptian army before defecting to the militant Islamic Jihad group, founded by al-Qaida's no. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahri.
The U.S. government says that since 1999, al-Masri had been distributing manuals for making chemical and biological weapons.
"I believe that al-Qaida has no shortage of people adept with explosives, and I know that al-Masri promulgated training manuals for poisons," Keller said, "but I'm not sure how skilled any of Al-Masri's proteges may be at synthesizing chemical weapons or toxins."
It's not easy, he said.
"You need both education and hands-on experience to produce decent-quality chemical weapons or toxins."
Chlorine has been used in bombings by militants in Iraq, but these were locally inspired, a U.S. counterterrorism official said on condition of anonymity, not being authorized to comment publicly on the sensitive issue.
Also, no evidence has surfaced that al-Masri continued the chemicals research after moving to Pakistan, although the U.S. government said he was likely carrying out training.
U.S. intelligence agencies tracking al-Masri viewed him as "frightening," said Brian Glyn Williams, an associate professor of Islamic history at the University of Massachusetts, who has just completed research for the U.S. government on weapons of mass destruction.
"From the U.S. government perspective, he was seen as a major threat. His potential to develop primitive weapons of mass destruction was not taken lightly by U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies," said Williams.
Al-Masri was also suspected of helping to train the suicide bombers who attacked the destroyer USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, killing 17 American sailors. More recently, he trained militants fighting Western troops in Afghanistan.
His death had already been wrongly reported in a 2006 strike. This time it was confirmed in an al-Qaida statement that said he and three other senior al-Qaida figures were killed, along with some of their children.
Al-Masri is the second senior al-Qaida leader to die in missile strikes in Pakistan this year. In January, Abu Laith al-Libi, a top strategist for the group in Afghanistan, was killed in North Waziristan.
A senior Taliban militant from Afghanistan, Qari Mohammed Yusuf, said al-Masri had returned to South Waziristan from fighting in Afghanistan's eastern Paktika province just hours before he was killed.
Al-Masri had spent 40 days in Paktika, which borders South Waziristan, leading a company of non-Afghans in assaults against Afghan and coalition forces, and had lost several fighters, Yusuf said.
He said the Egyptian took his instructions directly from al-Zawahri, his countryman, by e-mail or handwritten letters delivered by messenger.
Yusuf has family ties to al-Qaida and says his two eldest brothers died fighting with al-Zawahri against Northern Alliance soldiers during Taliban rule. Afghan authorities confirm Yusuf is a senior Taliban from northern Afghanistan — not the Taliban spokesman who goes by the same name.
A report by counterterrorism consultant Dan Darling said al-Masri was a scientist in the Egyptian military chemical weapons program, but turned against his government for making peace with Israel in 1979.
He joined al-Zawahri's Islamic Jihad group, and when it merged with al-Qaida, became head of Project al-Zabadi, its WMD program, Darling wrote in a report posted in the Long War Journal, a Web site on terrorism.
Only after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan did evidence of al-Masri's chemical experiments emerge, at al-Qaida's Darunta complex 70 miles east of Kabul.
A videotape obtained by CNN in 2002 showed dogs being killed in gas experiments. Intelligence sources said a voice heard on the tape was al-Masri's, the cable network said at the time.
Experts believe the gas was hydrogen cyanide, used in gas-chamber executions. But NATO chemical weapons specialists said the compound has long been viewed as an unsatisfactory mass-casualty chemical weapon because of its instability and low density.
Still, Western officials worry that terrorists are using the regions that border Pakistan and Afghanistan as a base not just for insurgency but for planning another 9/11-scale attack.
"The death of Abu Khabab al-Masri has a short-term impact on al-Qaida's operations by eliminating a competent senior leader," said Seth Jones, analyst for the U.S.-based RAND Corporation. "Over the long run, however, al-Qaida has demonstrated an ability to replace most of its leaders that have been captured or killed."
Associated Press Writer Pamela Hess in Washington contributed to this report.
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Al Qaeda loses chemical weapons expert
Expert's death a heavy blow to al Qaeda ambitions for weapons of mass destruction, former CIA officer says.
Austin American-Statesman, TX ASSOCIATED PRESS Sunday, August 10, 2008
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan-The killing of an al Qaeda chemical weapons expert in a missile strike two weeks ago in a Pakistani border village has dealt a blow to the terrorist group's ambitions to build weapons of mass destruction, a former CIA case officer says.
Abu Khabab al-Masri was dubbed by terrorism analysts as al Qaeda's "mad scientist." His most notorious work, recorded on videotape, showed dogs being killed in poison gas experiments in Afghanistan when the Taliban ruled.
"If he is out of the picture, al Qaeda's weapons of mass destruction capability has been set back, which would make this one of the more effective strikes in recent years," said Arthur Keller, an ex-CIA case officer in Pakistan. Keller led the hunt for Masri in 2006.
The U.S. offered a $5 million bounty for the 55-year-old Egyptian, and the CIA had been hunting him for years. Al Qaeda confirmed his death days after the July 28 attack by unmanned drones on a tribesman's compound in the village of Azam Warsak in South Waziristan.
Masri, whose real name is Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar, got his chemical weapons training in the Egyptian army before joining al Qaeda.
The U.S. government says that Masri had been distributing manuals for making chemical and biological weapons since 1999.
"I believe that al Qaeda has no shortage of people adept with explosives, and I know that al-Masri promulgated training manuals for poisons," Keller said, "but I'm not sure how skilled any of al-Masri's proteges may be at synthesizing chemical weapons or toxins."
It's not easy, he said: "You need both education and hands-on experience to produce decent-quality chemical weapons or toxins."
No evidence has surfaced that Masri continued the chemicals research after moving to Pakistan.
U.S. intelligence agencies tracking Masri viewed him as frightening, said Brian Glyn Williams, a University of Massachusetts associate professor of Islamic history, who has just completed research for the U.S. government on weapons of mass destruction.
"From the U.S. government perspective, he was seen as a major threat," Williams said.
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Archaeologists uncover ancient city in Afghanistan
August 10, 2008 By MATTHEW PENNINGTON, the associated press
CHESHM-E-SHAFA, Afghanistan - Centuries-old shards of pottery mingle with spent ammunition rounds on a wind-swept mountainside in northern Afghanistan where French archaeologists believe they have found a vast ancient city.
For years, villagers have dug the baked earth on the heights of Cheshm-e-Shafa for pottery and coins to sell to antique smugglers. Tracts of the site that locals call the "City of Infidels" look like a battleground, scarred by craters.
But now tribesmen dig angular trenches and preserve fragile walls, working as laborers on an excavation atop a promontory. To the north and east lies an undulating landscape of barren red-tinted rock that was once the ancient kingdom of Bactria; to the south a still-verdant valley that leads to the famed Buddhist ruins at Bamiyan.
Roland Besenval, director of the French Archaeological Delegation in Afghanistan and leading the excavation, is sanguine about his helpers' previous harvesting of the site. "Generally the old looters make the best diggers," he said with a shrug.
A trip around the northern province of Balkh is like an odyssey through the centuries, spanning the ancient Persian empire, the conquests of Alexander the Great and the arrival of Islam. The French mission has mapped some 135 sites of archaeological interest in the region, best known for the ancient trove found by a Soviet archaeologist in the 1970s.
The Bactrian Hoard consisted of exquisite gold jewelry and ornaments from graves of wealthy nomads, dated to the 1st century A.D. It was concealed by its keepers in the vaults of the presidential palace in Kabul from the Taliban regime and finally unlocked after the militia's ouster.
The treasure, currently on exhibition in the United States, demonstrates the rich culture that once thrived here, blending influences from the web of trails and trading routes known as the Silk Road, that spread from Rome and Greece to the Far East and India.
But deeper historical understanding of ancient Bactria has been stymied by the recent decades of war and isolation that severely restricted visits by archaeologists.
"It's a huge task because we are still facing the problem of looting," said Besenval, who first excavated in Afghanistan 36 years ago and speaks the local language of Dari fluently. "We know that objects are going to Pakistan and on to the international market. It's very urgent work. If we don't do something now, it will be too late."
Looting was rife during the civil war of the early 1990s when Afghanistan lurched into lawlessness. Locals say it subsided under the Taliban's hardline rule, but the Islamists' fundamentalism took its own toll on Afghanistan's cultural history. They destroyed the towering Buddha statues of Bamiyan chiseled more than 1,500 years ago, and smashed hundreds of statues in the national museum simply because they portrayed the human form.
The opening up of Afghanistan did little to curb the treasure hunters. British author Rory Stewart, who made an extraordinary solo hike across the country in 2002, wrote how poor tribesmen were systematically pillaging the remains of a lost ancient city dating back to 12th century around the towering minaret of Jam in western Afghanistan.
State control is a little more pervasive in Balkh but still patchy. The provincial culture authority says it has just 50 guards to protect historical sites across an area nearly the size of New Jersey.
Saleh Mohammad Khaleeq, a local poet and historian serving as the chief of the province's cultural department, said the guards ward off looters, but concedes the only way to safeguard Afghanistan's rich heritage is through public education.
"People are so poor. They are just looking for ways to buy bread. We need to open their minds as they don't know the value of their history. We have to give them that knowledge and then they will protect it," he said.
Villagers hired as laborers at Cheshm-e-Shafa recall how they too used to be among hundreds of locals who would scavenge the site they are now paid 230 afghanis ($4.60) a day to excavate.
"During the civil war, everyone was involved," said Nisarmuddin, 42, who covered his face with his turban to block the dust that a stiff breeze whipped across the mountainside.
Nisarmuddin, a farmer who like many Afghans goes by one name, said people used to keep their finds secret so the local militia commander would not claim them.
They could sell items of ancient pottery and glass for a few dollars to antique dealers in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif, which lies an hour's drive down a bumpy track through the desert.
One of the Afghan culture officials working at the Cheshm-e-Shafa excavation was clearly anxious that media coverage could bring unwanted attention to the site, where archaeologists have uncovered a 6-foot-tall anvil-like stone believed to have been an altar at a fire temple originating from the Persian Empire period around the 6th century B.C.
"Hezb-e-Islami and Taliban and other extremists might use explosives and blow up this stone," said archaeology department official Mohammed Rahim Andarab.
Many archaeologists remain wary of working in Balkh as Islamic militancy seeps into new regions of the country. Yet the sheer breadth of history to be unearthed is enough to lure Besenval and his colleagues.
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British cash to buy off Taliban 'goes to farmers'
A scheme to pay Taliban fighters to defect to the West has descended into chaos with money missing and payouts going to shepherds instead of soldiers, Foreign Office documents have shown.
Telegraph.co.uk - International News By Nick Meo 10 Aug 2008
At one stage British taxpayers were pouring £2 million a year into the Programme Tahkim-e-Solh (PTS), which offers cash rewards to hard-core Taliban insurgents in key areas of Afghanistan who agree to lay down their arms or switch sides.
Yet internal memos released under the Freedom of Information Act point to widespread concerns among British officials that money is going to the wrong people.
The documents record suspicions that guerrilla commanders, paid a bounty for every hired gun they bring with them when they change sides, are presenting men who have done nothing more dangerous than farm sheep. Officials speculate in the memos that as few as one in 10 of those who accept the "reconciliation" deals have ever been at the heart of the Taliban's war.
According to the memos, a United Nations study in Kunar province, north-east Afghanistan, found that as many as half of those "reconciled" might not have been real fighters.
Concerns are also raised in the memos that there is no proper tracking system to monitor whether "reconciled" fighters keep their promises. An unnamed official is quoted as saying: "There is no tracking. We have no idea of where they go or what they do, unless they turn up again on the field of battle."
At one stage last year, money from the PTS was thought to have gone missing from its office in Helmand province, southern Afghanistan, where British troops are fighting the Taliban. The sum lost is unknown, but a memo states that "the potential amount of funds available for pilfering totals $23,320" (£12,140).
Britain and America have been the major funders of the PTS, which was founded in 2005 and is overseen by a commission headed by an Afghan politician. The scheme's name translates as the Programme for Strengthening Peace. The UK agreed £2 million of funding through the British embassy in Kabul in 2007. However, the Foreign Office said last night that funding had since been discontinued. A spokesman said: "We are not funding it this year because we don't feel it is efficient." She would not say whether the payments to shepherds were part of the reason for stopping funding.
Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, said: "With difficult circumstances on the ground in Afghanistan it is very important that programmes for reconstruction do not become a cash cow for local Taliban commanders. It is essential that what is British taxpayers' money is used effectively, and that means having sufficient people on the ground to manage these programmes. At the moment it is too easy to squander both money and goodwill."
Paying guerrillas to side with the Kabul government has become a key policy in Helmand. British commanders are enthusiastic advocates of "reconciliation", arguing that dealing with Taliban guerrillas makes more sense than fighting them; some senior officers feel it could lead to peace.
But it can be difficult in southern Afghanistan to tell who is a guerrilla. In one of the released memos, an unnamed official wrote to a colleague: "If a commander reconciles bringing with him 10 or 20 fighters it is difficult to know if all are legitimate or if some are just brought along with the crowd to make the numbers look better." The same memo cites an estimate made by another official "that perhaps between 40 and 60 per cent of those reconciled were what he termed 'shepherds' and maybe as few as 10 per cent represented hard-core Taliban".
The documents show that officials believe thousands of dollars may have been stolen from the PTS Commission. Small-scale theft from Western aid programmes is commonplace in Afghanistan.
Yet the PTS claims to have won over about 5,000 Taliban fighters, and has been praised by Western diplomats in Kabul. Those in charge have complained they are handicapped by a lack of funds.
The documents reveal that even when the British were paying, the money was not enough to fund the ambitious programme. One says: "Very senior ex-Taliban were ready to give themselves up, but the main constraint was lack of money."
Some important Taliban fighters have complained about the poor accommodation they were provided with in Kabul, blunting their propaganda value in trying to win over fighters still in the field.
Ascertaining who is an important figure in Afghanistan's complex tribal society, and thus worth backing, has been a problem for coalition forces since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
Several other "reconciliation" programmes are thought to be operational in the murky counter-insurgency in southern Afghanistan.
Last December, claims that British Intelligence was directly dealing with Taliban commanders behind the back of Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai caused a rift between the British and Afghan governments.
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UK denies money to wounded Afghans
MoD condemned over its 'scandalous' failure to compensate innocent casualties of air strikes
Guardian Unlimited - UK News Mark Townsend The Observer Sunday August 10 2008
Defence officials are refusing to compensate the families of hundreds of Afghans killed, wounded or left homeless in fighting involving British troops.
Despite pledges to reduce collateral damage in Afghanistan, the number of legal claims lodged by Afghan civilians against the British government has grown more than five-fold during the past 12 months to almost 1,300, suggesting a dramatic increase in the number of innocent victims.
Yet of the 1,289 claims filed, just 397 have been settled, new government figures reveal. In addition, less than £150,000 in compensation has been paid to civilians injured or killed during fighting involving British soldiers in Helmand province. The UK government is currently spending almost £400,000 a day on military operations in the country.
Last night, human rights groups condemned the stance of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) on compensating innocent victims as 'scandalous', claiming the majority of alleged victims are being denied payments.
The Observer has also learnt that Britain is refusing to support an international compensation scheme set up to help Afghan civilians caught up in the conflict.
Sarah Holewinski, of the international monitoring group Human Rights Watch (HRW), said: 'The UK has no systematic way of compensating civilians when they're harmed. This means some Afghans get help while others don't. The calculus behind who gets paid and who doesn't is known only to the MoD and the commanders on the ground.
'For all the money being put into military operations, it's scandalous they are not offering some of those affected even a modicum of support.'
The death toll of Afghan civilians remains one of the most contentious aspects of the conflict. The Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, on whose mandate 8,000 British troops are currently fighting the Taliban, has said that no civilian casualty is acceptable. Yet a new report compiled by a former senior Pentagon official will this week reveal a sharp upsurge in Afghan civilian casualties over the past two months.
The HRW report reveals new casualty data based on military records, hospital admissions and on-the-ground testimonies. It says that civilian deaths from US- or Nato-led operations almost doubled during last year to at least 434, with another 200 killed in the crossfire during fighting between Taliban fighters and international forces.
So far this year, at least 173 innocent Afghans have been killed in Nato and US operations. Of these, 119 died during US air strikes, a number involving British troops, and 54 from fighting on the ground. Civilian casualties for the whole of 2006 were 230.
'We have huge concerns, especially over the number of casualties from air strikes,' said Marc Garlasco, a former air strike commander for the Pentagon who left after becoming disillusioned with the number of innocent victims in Afghanistan and who is the author of this week's HRW report. He said the casualty figures must be viewed as extremely conservative with the total representing the 'bare minimum'.
The figures will be of deep concern to the MoD because British troops in Helmand routinely call in US air strikes when they come under fire. They will also pose fresh questions for Nato, under whose banner the British are fighting in southern Afghanistan. Last year, the international security body promised to review military tactics in the country following warnings from Afghan politicians that the number of civilian deaths risked provoking a major backlash.
Contained in the report are internal US Air Force figures that reveal that 300 tons of bombs were dropped on Afghanistan during June and July alone - the same as the amount dropped on the country during the whole of 2006.
The growing frequency of US air strikes coincides with a spate of recent reports detailing civilian casualties, including a US air strike in Nangarhar province last month that killed 47 guests attending a wedding party.
Meanwhile, human rights groups have condemned support for Nato's humanitarian relief fund, created in 2006 to help civilians affected by the fighting.
So far, just nine countries out of 26, including Estonia, Iceland and the US, have voluntarily contributed funds.
In addition, The Observer has learnt that Britain is refusing to donate funds to a separate US humanitarian aid programme that provides long-term assistance for civilians caught up in the fighting. 'We've tried to get the UK to donate to this program; again, a no-go,' said Holewinski.
According to the HRW report, 837 innocent Afghans have been killed by Nato- or US-led operations since 2006. Of these, 556 were killed by US air strikes, many during American counter-terrorism operations, which have a less rigid set of rules of engagement compared to Nato operations.
However, analysts point to the difficulties in distinguishing civilians from combatants, the use of human shields by the Taliban and also the fact that the insurgency has killed more than twice as many civilians as the international forces have.
An MoD spokesman said: 'The UK provides compensation to individuals for events in which UK troops are involved. The UK military carry out detailed planning and use precision weapons when targeting enemy strongholds. Sadly, even with all these measures, there is still a risk of civilian casualties: particularly given Taliban preference for basing themselves in public buildings.'
Concern also surrounds the size of payments given by the British to Afghan civilian victims, with relatively modest payments calculated on the local cost of living. Last month, the MoD paid almost £3m to an Iraqi family for the death of a civilian in custody in Basra five years ago.
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Opium grips Afghanistan
Drug addiction rampant; women, children abuse as production increases
The Washington Times - World Sara A. Carter (Contact) Sunday, August 10, 2008
KABUL -Shereen placed a ball of pure opium on a small piece of foil she pulled from a cigarette pack. Balancing the foil with shaky hands, she heated the bottom until the paste turned to crystal, sending sweet smelling smoke through a dangling cigarette deep into her lungs.
After a second hit, a whimper escaped her parched lips.
"I can't tell how long I've been using," said the woman, her hands now steady as a calm spread outward from her glazed eyes, warming her entire body from head to toe.
Dr. Hakim Shaesta looked on, helpless, throughout the entire episode that took place in Shereen's tiny home in a run-down neighborhood of Kabul known for the crime that often accompanies opiate addiction.
Shereen accepted some vitamins from Dr. Shaesta, a female physician who runs the Sanga Amaj drug treatment facility for women.
If only she could get Shereen to the center, she could do so much more. She could help Shereen through the terror of opium withdrawal, the paranoid delusions, cold chills and hot sweats, the ribs aching from dry heaves that continue long after convulsing spasms of vomit leave the stomach empty.
As the pain of withdrawal eased, Dr. Shaesta would be there to help Shereen resist the call of opium, which sells for pennies, cheaper than the tobacco needed for a single cigarette.
"My husband won't let me go to the clinic, and if he knew anyone was here he would kill me," said Shereen, who like many Afghans, uses one name.
Nearly seven years after the Bush administration ousted Afghanistan's fanatic Taliban rulers, a growing curse of opium addiction reflects an unintended consequence of America's attempt to prevent another Sept. 11 attack.
It grips men, women, children and even tiny babies, who are fed opium to ease hunger when no food is available.
First lady Laura Bush has made the liberation of Afghan women a personal cause, especially opening schools for girls who were forbidden by the Taliban from learning to read and write.
"More than 5 million children are in school, almost 2 million of them girls," the first lady told the U.S.-Afghan Women's council roundtable at Georgetown University earlier this year.
With the future of Afghan women and girls close to her heart, Mrs. Bush delivered a similar message during a brief visit to Afghanistan in June. Yet it is difficult to imagine Mrs. Bush or any U.S. official protected by layers of security ever seeing women and children addicts imprisoned in sun-baked mud homes by overbearing male relatives.
Hidden plague
Nevertheless, Afghan and U.S. narcotics officials, human rights activists and Afghan intelligence personnel interviewed by The Washington Times are beginning to take notice.
Men smoke opium near a graveyard on the outer edges of Kabul. Dirty clothing, human feces and trash cover the enclave where they go to get their fix.
"It's got to be a concern," said Richard Boucher, undersecretary of state for South Asia.
A slight drop in Afghan opium production is expected this year from 2007 levels, but "it's still horribly high," Mr. Boucher said during a recent visit to The Washington Times.
Afghanistan produced last year an "extraordinary 8,200 tons of opium, 34 percent more than in 2006, becoming practically the exclusive supplier of the world's deadliest drug, 93 percent of the global opiates market," says a 2008 report by Afghan and U.N. drug officials.
While most of the drugs are for export, a reporter and photographer for The Times, both women, witnessed and recorded dozens of scenes of women and even children ingesting opium.
"When I hear the U.S. and my government claim they have liberated Afghanistan my heart drops; it's simply not the truth," said Wazma Frogh, an Afghan citizen and country director for Global Rights, a nonprofit advocacy group for women.
Thomas Schweich, a former Bush administration ambassador for counternarcotics who now works with the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, is even blunter.
"People just don't want to know the truth," Mr. Schweich said.
There are nearly 1 million known addicts in a nation of roughly 30 million, according to a survey conducted in 2007 by the Ministry of Counter Narcotics and the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime in Kabul.
According to the report, 120,000 of the addicts are women and more than 60,000 are children. Even more alarming, the report warns that addiction rates for women are probably much higher in a nation where women rarely show their faces in public.
A paucity of treatment facilities and cultural barriers make it difficult, if not impossible, for women to seek professional help.
Dr. Shaesta's Sanga Amaj clinic receives funding from the U.S. State Department's International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Division and the Colombo Plan, a consortium of 25 nations that promotes economic and social development in Asia and the Pacific.
The facility has the capacity to treat only 20 adults and offers no services or beds for children, who frequently accompany their mothers and, in many cases, also are addicts.
"The majority of women are treated at home," said Mohammad Nasib, managing director of the Welfare Association for the Development of Afghanistan, which works with the clinic in Kabul but has its own treatment facilities in Paktia, Helmand, Ghazni and Nimruz provinces. "This makes treating them very difficult. The situation in Afghanistan is difficult and the drug crisis grave."
The suicide option
Nasima, 23, tried to kill herself with rodent poison when her opium addiction became too overwhelming. When interviewed by The Times, she held her 9-month-old nursing child, Hatifa. Hatifa and daughter Fatima, 5, shared her bed at the Sanga Amaj clinic.
All three suffer from opium addiction and have been at the clinic for 20 days, after 30 days of home treatment. Thousands of addicts are on waiting lists for treatment.
Dr. Shaesta said that many times women are forbidden to seek treatment by their immediate families in a culture where honor and shame readily become life and death issues.
"This only makes it worse. In reality, we have a difficult time knowing how many addicts there really are. The situation grows worse by the day and in the last few years has become more unbearable."
Many of the more than 40 women interviewed by The Times for this report said they were forced or pressured by their husbands or employers to start using opium as a pseudo-medicine for an unrelated malady.
Others said they turned to drugs because they could no longer bear the misery of daily life, which too often is filled with abuse and hunger.
Shereen, for example, describes her own life as "struggle upon struggle." Sitting on a worn outbed thatnearly filled her one-room apartment, she said her husband would probably return home "any minute" and "beat me again."
Seconds after inhaling the opium, however, the fear dissipated as waves of drug-induced relaxation took control.
Dr. Shaesta returned to the clinic, conscious that there was nothing more she could do.
Farida (right) is a health worker and medical nurse from the Sanga Amaj Treatment Center. She visits a home to deliver vitamins and check on the family of recovering addicts. Since entering the clinic three months ago, the mother and children claim to be drug-free. The father is also opium-free, but he did not go to the clinic. Shukria (in doorway), 13, the eldest of the four children, says she is getting better.
Along a main road in Northern Afghanistan, an anti-drug billboard is prominently featured. It shows a young girl who is addicted to drugs. Her eyes peer through the traditional cover. She has given up on school and is without hope. It also shows some smiling schoolboys who do not use drugs. The signs, which are hard to find, are part of a government drug-awareness program.
Beyond Kabul, a large billboard looming over the desolate highway leading to the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif provides a tiny hint of recognition that Afghanistan has a drug problem.
In the days of Taliban rule, signs in local script and English warned of execution for anyone caught using illegal drugs.
The anti-drug message on display here simply featured a young girl, her eyes peering through the screenlike fabric of the burqa covering her face. The sign explained that she was an addict who had dropped out of school and given up hope for a better life.
Next to the ghostly looking girl, three smiling boys stood beaming with joy because they had chosen to remain drug-free.
The billboards looked as if they had been designed by an advertising agency in the U.S. that had snagged a multimillion dollar contract from a federal anti-drug earmark for a powerful congressman's home district.
Similar billboards are part of the Afghan government's drug-awareness program, which presumably benefit advertising agencies with good political connections far more than potential drug users.
Saleh Mohammad, an author and representative in parliament from Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley rolled his eyes, bewildered by the absurdity of the display, as he translated the script.
The conversation quickly turned to corruption in his country, where government officials, local warlords, Taliban sympathizers and criminal organizations are ready to dip into government coffers even as they make enormous profits at the expense of the Afghan people and well-intentioned international donors.
Ms. Frogh, of the Global Rights organization, said that in many ways, women are worse off now than during the 1980s, when the Soviets attempted to rule, and the 1990s, when a period of warlord rule was followed by the Taliban takeover.
"It's worse than the communist regime; it's in many ways worse than the Taliban regime," she said. "I'm angry at the hypocrisy of the governments - they give millions and millions of dollars and it doesn't go anywhere and the women never see any of it."
Addicted toddler
Two-year-old Muksal held on tightly to her mother's dress. She sleeps alongside her mother, Bibi Hana, in the Sanga clinic, where both were admitted for a month of rehabilitation in June.
Unlike the other children in the clinic, Muksal has never learned to walk. The little girl with large blue eyes also has a difficult time forming words.
Photograph by Mary F. Calvert/The Washington Times A woman in a burqa begs for money on one of Kabul's main streets as she carries her listless baby. The child is high on opium.
Bibi Hana said she gave opium to her daughter so she wouldn't feel hunger pains.
"It feeds the belly," said Bibi Hana, who admitted using opium when she was pregnant with her daughter. "You don't feel hungry when you smoke. It helps the babies sleep and not cry when there is no food to feed them. But really, I didn't know it was dangerous at all. I want to quit. I want Muksal to learn to walk."
Dr. Toorpaikay Zazi, the head physician at the clinic, said that since the center opened in June 2007, it's been "very difficult and impossible to attend to the number of patients coming to the clinic for help."
Sobra, 40, dances in the ward at the Sanga Amaj Treatment Center. The woman from Herat has smoked opium and heroin for four years.
The center is required by donors, including the U.S. State Department and the India-based Colombo Plan, to monitor its patients. According to the center's latest progress report, which covers June 2007 to the end of February 2008, 103 out of 156 admitted patients completed treatment. There were 149 on a waiting list for admission.
"Laboratory checkup problems and lack of medications for the treatment of other diseases" are among the problems the clinic faces, the documents state. There are also serious security issues. "It is necessary to inform sometimes our social workers are threatened by the husbands of women addicts not to enter homes for the treatment," the documents said.
In Afghanistan, however, "not everything is what it seems," said Abdul, an Afghan security adviser who works closely with the government and asked that only his first name be used because he feared retribution.
"The intentions for these programs are good, but there are more criminals and addicts now than before and it's not getting better," he said. "There is no accountability in our government for the money, and we truly don't have accountability in our social sector." Despite numerous requests by The Times to witness patients going through withdrawal treatment at the clinic, medical personnel refused.
Clinic personnel said they were unable to do so, often saying that the withdrawals were over in less than 24 hours and that the patients had already passed the withdrawal stage - a somewhat dubious claim.
In general, withdrawal from opium addiction begins within hours after taking the last dose. During the first three days, the majority of addicts face the most severe symptoms, such as stomach pains, vomiting, diarrhea, insomnia and often delusional irritability.
Despite numerous visits to the clinic, The Times never once witnessed any of the women or children going through withdrawal.
Were these "Potemkin" patients, brought there for show? The timing alone was enough to make any outsider suspicious.
"They were admitted the other night," said Dr. Shaesta, regarding a new group of 20 patients at the clinic. They had arrived just in time for a visit by the head of Afghanistan's Ministry for Women, Dr. Husn Banu Ghazanfar, and personnel from the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Forces.
When asked if patients had been given methadone, which blocks withdrawal symptoms, or if a different drug was being used to help patients through withdrawal, officials at the clinic said "only painkillers" were prescribed. They declined to name the drugs being used.
Sobra, a 40-year-old woman from the Western city of Herat, was among a "new" crop of patients who had been to the clinic before. She sang and danced as the other women played and clapped to the beat of Afghan drums for visiting VIPs and the two visiting Times journalists. A Google search on the Internet, however, showed an image of Sobra and her three children smoking opium in March at an undisclosed location.
Was this simply a show for guests? Clinic staff said "no," that Sobra had suffered a relapse.
The official visitors crowded around the women. Dr. Banu Ghazanfar promised not to forget them as her entourage passed out gifts and posed for pictures, touting the success of the program. They gave each woman a frying pan, flashlight and other knickknacks.
One patient turned away from the visitors, shrugging. "What will I do with these?" she asked. Several children took the pans and began using them as toy drums.
Such nonprofit rehabilitation programs are considered by the U.S. government and international community as a significant part of the reconstruction and rehabilitation of Afghanistan.
Suspicions aside, clinic head Dr. Zazi lamented the fact that she has no special facilities for children.
"I don't have a facility for the children, no beds for the children - so they sleep with their mothers in the same bed," she said. "Everyone, including the husband and sons are addicted, but we only treat the women. So when they leave here, the chances for relapse are great. We need to be able to treat the whole family and the situation is only getting worse."
A cheap fix
For about 40 cents, Kokojan Azi, a Pashtun grandmother of five, can satisfy her daily opium cravings. That's the average cost for a pill-size fix of opium in the city, she said.
But some members of her family have been more fortunate.
Since treatment in the Sanga clinic more than three months ago, her daughter and several of her grandchildren say they have managed to remain drug free.
The father, who refused to speak or give his name, is also opium-free, Mrs. Azi said, despite never having gone to the clinic.
Shukria, 13, the eldest of Mrs. Azi's grandchildren, moved to Kabul with her family from Wardak Province in the east after fighting escalated between local militia and her father lost his job.
Shukria's father stood just outside the curtain watching and listening as his daughter spoke. The curtain divided the family's small two-room apartment from a dusty dark hall. There were no doors, running water or bathroom facilities.
"It doesn't hurt anymore," said Shukria, referring to withdrawal from opium. "I was very sick when they took me off it. I was throwing up all the time, but now things are better." Shukria said she used to smoke or ingest opium with her grandmother and mother, Farie, 35, who would give her daughter opium when she was sick.
The family is under the minimal care of Dr. Shaesta who sends Farida, a nurse, to Mrs. Azi's home to deliver vitamins and check on the family.
"The children were in the clinic with us," Farida said. "The family is fortunate because they did this together." Azi began smoking opium after members of the Taliban kidnapped her 7-year-old son a decade ago, she said.
"The fighting then was so bad between the Hazara tribe and the Taliban," she said. "The Taliban kidnapped my son, Habib, took him to the mountains and killed him there - even though we were not involved." The opium "took away my tears," she said.
In downtown Kabul, women in burqas, high on opium, carried listless babies in their arms as they begged for money on one of the capital's main thoroughfares.
"Please," said a man in Dari, as he held onto a child he had slung over his shoulder. "Some money for my child." The child's eyes were dilated. Thin, malnourished and visibly high on opium, the child was too weak to move on his own.
"You're dealing with a traumatized population," said Jeane Kissell of Westminister, Vt., the deputy director for the Welfare Association for the Development of Afghanistan. "The whole population is suffering and unfortunately few are listening. The majority of Afghan people haven't even been outside the region to see a functional society. Many don't even know what it is."
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Inmates vow to continue hunger strike
Written by www.quqnoos.com Saturday, 09 August 2008
Prisoners claim guards humiliate them and demand chief's suspension
(PAN) Prisoners in Takhar province’s main jail have continued their hunger strike for the second consecutive day in protest at the behaviour of the jail’s superintendent.
Asim, an inmate, told the Pajhwok news agency that the strike would continue until the prisoner’s demands were met.
He said the behaviour of jail authorities towards prisoners was humiliating and unbearable.
Inmates are demanding the suspension of the superintendent, Abdul Wakil.
But Wakil denied the allegations, saying he was only performing his official duty and was working to maintain security in the jail.
Takhar governor Abdul Latif Ibrahimi supported the prisoners, who he said were often treated inhumanly by prison gaurds.
The jail houses 250 prisoners, including 25 women arrested for various crimes.
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Three brothers die in gas-filled well
www.quqnoos.com Written by M Reza Sher Mohammadi Saturday, 09 August 2008
Brothers die climbing down well shaft to fix water pump
THREE brothers have died from asphyxiation after they climbed down a well to fix a water pump, police said.
The three brothers entered the disused well on Friday and were soon knocked unconscious by gas that had built up in the shaft, a spokesman for the western police zone said.
The men died from inhaling a lethal dose of the gas, Abdul Raoud Ahmadi said.
Police were called to the scene and lifted the bodies out of the well.
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Musharraf’s exit will affect US strategy in Afghanistan
Gulf Times - Opinion By Eric S Margolis Sunday, 10 August, 2008
WASHINGTON-The move to remove Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf has set off alarm bells in official Washington.
At this point, impeachment of Pakistan’s self-appointed president and former military dictator is far from certain. Ousting a president through parliamentary impeachment is unprecedented in Pakistan’s history, and fraught with legal and political uncertainties.
Impeachment requires a two-thirds vote of the joint houses of parliament. Claims by the democratic coalition that it has the required 295 votes seem overly optimistic.
The beleaguered Musharraf still has a few weeks to continue trying to undermine the shaky anti-Musharraf coalition of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s Muslim League-N and Asif Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party.
Zardari resisted for months Sharif’s demands that Musharraf be impeached. The PPP leader feared that reinstatement of Pakistan’s chief justices purged by Musharraf might reopen corruption charges against him. Washington offered Zardari numerous benefits if he thwarted proceedings against Musharraf. But public pressure finally forced the PPP to give in.
If impeachment does go ahead, Musharraf has the legal power to dissolve parliament. But he is unlikely to do so without the full backing of Pakistan’s military. So far, chief of staff, Gen Ashfaq Kiyani, has kept the military out of politics. Dissolving parliament could plunge Pakistan into chaos when violence is growing in the tribal areas, Northwest Frontier and Baluchistan.
If Musharraf falls, the entire US strategy in Afghanistan, to which the US is about to send 10,000 more troops, is in grave jeopardy. Both Sharif and Zardari have expressed varying degrees of opposition to Pakistan’s continued role in supporting the US-led occupation of Afghanistan and US attacks into Pakistan’s tribal belt, Nawaz strongly, Zardari fitfully. Public opinion in Pakistan is almost totally against the Afghan war.
Without the use of Pakistani ports, supply depots and air bases, the US could not continue its occupation of Afghanistan. All heavy supplies, including fuel and ammunition, are trucked into Afghanistan from Pakistan. US aircraft flying round-the-clock air cover for Western occupation forces rely on Pakistani air bases.
So Washington is desperate to keep faithful Musharraf in power at all costs. Its Plan A is by increasing the overt and secret payments being funneled from the CIA to Musharraf and his supporters. Officially, the US has provided the Musharraf regime $11bn since 2001. But secret CIA payments may be double that amount, or even more.
If Plan A fails, then Washington’s Plan B is to throw its weight behind Pakistan’s military and push the so-far reluctant Kiyani into politics. There is nothing new about this plan. Washington was close to Kiyani when he was Musharraf’s number two, and has seen him as a replacement for Musharraf for over 18 months. Whether the highly professional Kiyani would go along with Washington’s plans for him remains unknown. But proximity to power is a tremendous temptation, one to which previous Pakistani chiefs of staff have given in to.
Washington would be very pleased to see the respected Kiyani replace the by now totally discredited Musharraf. America has a long tradition of disposing of dictators once they are no longer useful. Musharraf, increasingly isolated and besieged, must be keenly aware of this.
Washington could also live with Zardari, who is considered amenable to US influence and financial rewards. Nawaz, by contrast, is deeply distrusted by the US for being “too Islamic” and insufficiently responsive to American interests. Having been humiliated by the Clinton administration in 1999 over the Kargil fighting with India, and then kept from power by the Bush White House, Nawaz is understandably cool on the US.
The best thing Musharraf could do right now for Pakistan is to pack his bags and go into exile. That would at least partially make up for his disastrous rule and reaffirm Pakistan’s democracy.
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