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More than 20 police killed in Afghan battles
KABUL (AFP) - More than 20 police have been killed over the past two weeks during fierce clashes with insurgents in two areas of southern Afghanistan, the interior ministry said Thursday.
Blast kills 3 coalition soldiers in Afghanistan
August 14, 2008
KABUL (Reuters) - An explosion killed three U.S.-led coalition soldiers while they were on a foot patrol in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, the U.S. military said.
More than 20 police killed in Afghan battles
August 14, 2008
KABUL (AFP) - More than 20 police have been killed over the past two weeks during fierce clashes with insurgents in two areas of southern Afghanistan, the interior ministry said Thursday.
Worsening security squeezing Afghan aid work
by Bronwen Roberts August 14, 2008
KABUL (AFP) - An attack that killed three female Western aid workers near Kabul highlights deteriorating security in Afghanistan with relief groups saying threats of murders and kidnappings are limiting their work.
Aid group suspends Afghan work after slayings
Wed Aug 13, 11:16 PM ET
KABUL (AFP) - An international aid group which has worked in Afghanistan for 25 years said it was suspending relief work after three of its female aid workers and their Afghan driver were shot dead.
Rocket attack on Afghan capital airport, none hurt
14 Aug 2008 06:49:51 GMT
KABUL, Aug 14 (Reuters) - A rocket landed outside the international civilian airport in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Thursday, but there were no casualties, the NATO-led force said.
135,000 flee Pakistan tribal area clashes: officials
August 14, 2008
KHAR, Pakistan (AFP) - Around 135,000 residents have fled a Pakistani tribal area bordering Afghanistan to escape clashes between troops and Taliban militants that have left scores dead, officials said Thursday.
Top officer says Marines' future in Afghanistan unclear
by Kimberly Johnson Wed Aug 13, 4:10 PM ET
BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan (AFP) - The future role of the US Marine Corps in Afghanistan is unclear, according its top officer, who is advocating shifting attention to the country from Iraq.
Treaty of China-Afghanistan friendship, cooperation and good-neighborly relations takes effect
www.chinaview.cn 2008-08-14 17:57:33
BEIJING, Aug. 14 (Xinhua) -- The treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Good-neighborly Relations between China and Afghanistan came into force here Thursday, the date of exchange of instrument of ratification.
Insurgency’s Scars Line Afghanistan’s Main Road
By CARLOTTA GALL The New York Times August 14, 2008
SAYDEBAD, Afghanistan — Not far from here, just off the highway that was once the showpiece of the United States reconstruction effort in Afghanistan, three American soldiers and their
The Wrong Force for the ‘Right War’
New York Times, United States By BARTLE BREESE BULL August 13, 2008
London-BARACK OBAMA and John McCain have plenty of disagreements, but one thing they are united on is promising a troop surge in Afghanistan. Senator McCain wants to move troops to Afghanistan
Afghan clashes leave 30 police dead or injured
People's Daily August 14, 2008
Taliban militants have killed 15 policemen and injured 15 others in the past two weeks in their assaults in southern Afghan province of Helmand, said an official on Thursday.
Taliban win a fight - and settle scores
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Online August 14, 2008
KARACHI - When several hundred Pakistani troops backed by paramilitary forces on Friday launched an operation against militants in Bajaur Agency in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan
Attorney says Siddiqui was tortured
NEW YORK, Aug. 14 (UPI) -- The attorney for a Pakistani woman arrested and charged with trying to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan says the woman was mistreated while in custody.
Treaty of China-Afghanistan friendship, coop-eration and good-neighborly relations takes effect
BEIJING, Aug. 14 (Xinhua) -- The treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Good-neighborly Relations between China and Afghanistan came into force here Thursday, the date of exchange of instrument of ratification.
Asian Bank to Boost Rural GSM Service in Afghanistan
Cellular-News.com August 13, 2008
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is to provide a US$55 million loan to the Afghanistan based mobile operator, Roshan so it can extend its coverage to parts of the country that have little or no telecommunications
Returnees bemoan government’s “empty promises”
BARIKAB, 14 August 2008 (IRIN) - Gul Haider’s small family migrated to Pakistan from Afghanistan’s Parwan Province in the 1980s but returned to their homeland in 2006 as almost two dozen people. Now in Afghanistan, shelter is their main problem.
Venue of Independence Day function changed
Bakhtar News Agency / August 14, 2008
A function marking Afghanistan Independence Day would be held next week at a venue other than the traditional Ghazi Stadium, officials said here on Tuesday.
Foreigner convicted on drug smuggling charges
Bakhtar News Agency / August 14, 2008
A Turkish citizen has been convicted by the Primary Court of the Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) of trafficking more than 22 kilograms of heroin on a truck.
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More than 20 police killed in Afghan battles
KABUL (AFP) - More than 20 police have been killed over the past two weeks during fierce clashes with insurgents in two areas of southern Afghanistan, the interior ministry said Thursday.
Police on Thursday pulled back from two posts in Helmand province's Nad Ali district under pressure from Taliban attacks launched two weeks ago, ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP.
"In the past two weeks we've lost 15 policemen in fighting with Taliban in Nad Ali. This morning we had to withdraw from two posts," he said.
Fifteen other officers were wounded during the battles, he said.
The Taliban claimed to have driven police out of the district centre and said they had torched government buildings in the area.
Six other policemen were killed and about 10 others were wounded in Ghorak district in neighbouring Kandahar province, also under attack by Taliban rebels, Bashary said.
"The fighting in both places continues," Bashary said.
Another police officer was meanwhile killed and three others were wounded when a roadside bomb -- similar to those used by Taliban militants -- struck the motorcade of a top police official in Logar province, just south of Kabul.
Provincial police chief Ghulam Mustafa escaped unharmed from the attack, which came one day after Taliban militants killed three Western female aid workers in an ambush in the province.
The three employees of the International Rescue Committee were killed along with their driver when rebels opened fire on their vehicle on a road near the provincial capital Pul-i-Alam.
The Taliban said its men had carried out the attack, but said those killed were female soldiers.
The extremists launched an insurgency soon after being ousted from government in late 2001 by a US-led coalition.
The violence has mounted year by year, with about 50 percent more unrest in some areas this year as compared with 2007, according to military and civilian officials.
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Blast kills 3 coalition soldiers in Afghanistan
August 14, 2008
KABUL (Reuters) - An explosion killed three U.S.-led coalition soldiers while they were on a foot patrol in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, the U.S. military said.
Violence has surged in Afghanistan this year as Taliban insurgents step up their effort to oust the pro-Western Afghan government and drive out foreign troops through a campaign of guerrilla warfare backed by suicide and roadside bomb attacks.
The U.S. military did not say exactly where in southern Afghanistan the incident took place and did not release the nationality of the soldiers, but the vast majority of coalition troops are American.
Elsewhere, a rocket landed outside the international civilian airport in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Thursday, but there were no casualties, the NATO-led force said.
Rocket attacks in Kabul are relatively rare and cause few, if any, casualties, but are a reminder that Taliban insurgents are able to threaten security even in the heavily guarded capital.
The rocket landed in front of the civilian terminal, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said. Another rocket was also fired, but it was not clear where it landed.
Kabul airport is the main hub for international flights to and from Afghanistan as well as for internal flights. ISAF, the Afghan National Army Air Corps and the United Nations also operate separate terminals around the same airfield.
(Reporting by Jonathon Burch; Editing by David Fox)
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More than 20 police killed in Afghan battles
August 14, 2008
KABUL (AFP) - More than 20 police have been killed over the past two weeks during fierce clashes with insurgents in two areas of southern Afghanistan, the interior ministry said Thursday.
Police on Thursday pulled back from two posts in Helmand province's Nad Ali district under pressure from Taliban attacks launched two weeks ago, ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP.
"In the past two weeks we've lost 15 policemen in fighting with Taliban in Nad Ali. This morning we had to withdraw from two posts," he said.
Fifteen other officers were wounded during the battles, he said.
The Taliban claimed to have driven police out of the district centre and said they had torched government buildings in the area.
Six other policemen were killed and about 10 others were wounded in Ghorak district in neighbouring Kandahar province, also under attack by Taliban rebels, Bashary said.
"The fighting in both places continues," Bashary said.
Another police officer was meanwhile killed and three others were wounded when a roadside bomb -- similar to those used by Taliban militants -- struck the motorcade of a top police official in Logar province, just south of Kabul.
Provincial police chief Ghulam Mustafa escaped unharmed from the attack, which came one day after Taliban militants killed three Western female aid workers in an ambush in the province.
The three employees of the International Rescue Committee were killed along with their driver when rebels opened fire on their vehicle on a road near the provincial capital Pul-i-Alam.
The Taliban said its men had carried out the attack, but said those killed were female soldiers.
The extremists launched an insurgency soon after being ousted from government in late 2001 by a US-led coalition.
The violence has mounted year by year, with about 50 percent more unrest in some areas this year as compared with 2007, according to military and civilian officials.
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Worsening security squeezing Afghan aid work
by Bronwen Roberts August 14, 2008
KABUL (AFP) - An attack that killed three female Western aid workers near Kabul highlights deteriorating security in Afghanistan with relief groups saying threats of murders and kidnappings are limiting their work.
Gunmen on Wednesday pumped bullets into a marked vehicle of the International Rescue Committee, killing the women -- a British-Canadian, a Canadian and a Trinidadian-American -- and their Afghan driver.
It was the deadliest attack on aid workers in years and comes after non-government groups raised the alarm about security, with 19 workers killed in the first seven months of the year -- more than for the whole of 2007.
"For anti-government elements we are soft targets," said Anja de Beer, director of the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, the umbrella group of NGOs, referring to Taliban and other extremists.
Soaring crime presents another threat, contributing to what an ACBAR report said this month was a 50 percent spike in violent incidents this year over last with rough estimates of 1,000 civilians killed so far.
"The criminals know there is something to gain, for example, kidnapping for ransom," de Beer told AFP.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for Wednesday's murders about 50 kilometres (30 miles) south of Kabul, in Logar province, claiming it had attacked international soldiers who included women.
The extremist threat is greatest in the insurgency-hit south and southeast, where most groups had pulled out their expatriate staff or only sent them down for short missions, said de Beer.
"There is a shrinking area of intervention," de Beer said.
No-go areas are spreading -- including some areas just outside the capital -- with the main road between Kabul and the southern city of Kandahar off-limits to most expatriates.
It was on this road that a French businessman was kidnapped on May 29, to be released three weeks later.
Several Afghans have also been pulled off the road by Taliban, who have accused them of "spying" for Western interests, and shot or beheaded them.
Afghans working with non-government groups try to hide their links with internationals when they move outside of urban centres, shunning four-wheel drive vehicles and Western clothing.
"Local staff travel in ordinary cars," de Beer said. "They try not to carry papers and pens -- if you are literate, you must work with an NGO."
Local employees of the Afghan Health and Development Services keep a low profile in volatile areas, Kandahar provincial manager Mohammad Kabir told AFP.
"For example, they don't take our own cars. They travel in ordinary cars, looking like ordinary people," he said.
But still the group has had 25 staffers kidnapped this year and last, although they were freed with the help of tribal elders, and seven vehicles taken, most often after abductions.
Several Afghan staff members had been killed in various incidents, he said.
"Security problems means that we can't expand our activities," Kabir said.
In the west, the Spanish-funded Association for Cooperation with Afghanistan, said it did not move beyond 10 kilometres (six miles) outside of the city of Herat.
"There have not been any attacks on our staff but we feel that if we go outside the city, we might be attacked by Taliban, kidnappers or other armed groups," said the group's regional head Mohammad Asghar Yawar.
Wednesday's killings led the International Rescue Committee, which works with refugees, children and education, to suspend its activities.
Insecurity has also hampered UN-sponsored polio vaccination programmes and de Beer said it could affect efforts to put food supplies in place ahead of winter with drought and price hikes already hurting the poorest.
"Ultimately violence against those who are trying to help Afghans rebuild their lives will only caused greater suffering for the Afghan people," a senior foreign aid worker said of the International Rescue Committee murders.
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Aid group suspends Afghan work after slayings
Wed Aug 13, 11:16 PM ET
KABUL (AFP) - An international aid group which has worked in Afghanistan for 25 years said it was suspending relief work after three of its female aid workers and their Afghan driver were shot dead.
The killings, claimed by the insurgent Taliban, were the deadliest here in years involving international aid staff, and came amid warnings about deteriorating security.
The women -- a British-Canadian, a Canadian and a Trinidadian-American -- were members of the International Rescue Committee, which works with refugees in Afghanistan.
One Afghan driver was killed and another critically wounded in Wednesday's ambush by gunmen who shot repeatedly at their vehicle near the capital Kabul, police and their organisation said.
The IRC, headquartered in New York, said in a statement it was "stunned and profoundly saddened by this tragic loss."
"These extraordinary individuals were deeply committed to aiding the people of Afghanistan, especially the children who have seen so much strife."
It added that the group had "suspended its humanitarian aid programmes in Afghanistan indefinitely" following the slayings.
The women were being driven to Kabul in two vehicles when they came under attack near the town of Pul-i-Alam, some 50 kilometres (30 miles) south of the capital, Logar province police chief Ghulam Mustafa said.
A car cut in front of their vehicles and then opened fire, he told AFP.
"Three females, foreign nationals, and an Afghan male have been killed," he told AFP.
Logar deputy police chief Abdul Majid Latifi told AFP their vehicle had a clear IRC logo on it.
He said it appeared the attackers had broken the windows and shot them at close range.
"There were signs of about 10 bullets on the vehicle but more bullets on the body of the victims. They were hit by dozens of bullets," he said.
A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahed, said men from his militia had ambushed a two-vehicle convoy in Logar carrying "military personnel, most of them female."
"We killed several of them... they were all military," he said.
Michael Kocher, the IRC vice president for international programmes, said there had been no signs of imminent danger in the area in the days leading up to the attack.
"We work very closely with local authorities. We don't work anywhere where we are not wanted," he told AFP.
The women, aged 31, 32 and 40, had worked around the world and had been in Gardez town "to provide technical support for children's programmes there," he added.
They were helping recently established schools, making sure their teachers were correctly trained, that they had enough supplies and that the curriculum was appropriate.
The IRC employs about 540 people in Afghanistan, comprised almost entirely of Afghan staff, and concentrates on education, water and sanitation, as well as community development and social programmes for children.
President Hamid Karzai condemned Wednesday's killing as "unforgivable" and blamed "enemies of Afghan people who do not want the international community to help the poverty-hit Afghan people."
Afghanistan's international aid community was also shocked.
"This is a senseless act of murder which is morally indefensible," said a senior foreign aid worker who asked not to be identified.
"This highlights the deterioration in security conditions, which are worse than at any point since 2001," when the hardline Taliban milita was ousted from power, the worker said.
The umbrella Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief said threats were limiting relief work in Afghanistan, which is facing drought and soaring food prices.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the latest "cowardly attack... yet again shows the depravity of the Taliban, and the bleak alternative that they represent."
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Rocket attack on Afghan capital airport, none hurt
14 Aug 2008 06:49:51 GMT
KABUL, Aug 14 (Reuters) - A rocket landed outside the international civilian airport in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Thursday, but there were no casualties, the NATO-led force said.
Rocket attacks in Kabul are relatively rare and cause few, if any, casualties, but are a reminder that Taliban insurgents are able to threaten security even in the heavily guarded capital.
The rocket landed in front of the civilian terminal, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said. Another rocket was also fired, but it was not clear where it landed.
Kabul airport is the main hub for international flights to and from Afghanistan as well as for internal flights. ISAF, the Afghan National Army Air Corps and the United Nations also operate separate terminals around the same airfield.
Violence has surged in Afghanistan this year as Taliban insurgents step up their effort to oust the pro-Western Afghan government and drive out foreign troops through a campaign of guerrilla warfare backed by suicide and roadside bomb attacks. (Reporting by Jonathon Burch; editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
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135,000 flee Pakistan tribal area clashes: officials
August 14, 2008
KHAR, Pakistan (AFP) - Around 135,000 residents have fled a Pakistani tribal area bordering Afghanistan to escape clashes between troops and Taliban militants that have left scores dead, officials said Thursday.
The officials said that up to half of the population of some villages in the troubled Bajaur tribal district had moved, although militants were stopping people from leaving some areas.
"We have around 135,000 people who have left their homes there," the additional chief secretary for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, Habibullah Khan, told AFP.
"We have directed officials in adjoining districts to provide shelter, food and health care to the migrating families. We are setting up more camps to help these people just like refugees," he said.
Witnesses said that thousands of families had arrived in Shabqadar, a small town adjoining the tribal belt. Local residents and welfare groups were raising funds and cooking food for them, they said.
In the Mammoond area of Bajaur, Taliban militants had banned people from migrating, saying that if they left the area it would be a sign of defeat, residents said.
The militant groups are urging men to join jihad (holy war) and keep their women and children at home, they said.
More than 180 people, mostly militants, have died since Pakistani forces backed by helicopter gunships and jets started military operations in Bajaur a week ago.
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Top officer says Marines' future in Afghanistan unclear
by Kimberly Johnson Wed Aug 13, 4:10 PM ET
BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan (AFP) - The future role of the US Marine Corps in Afghanistan is unclear, according its top officer, who is advocating shifting attention to the country from Iraq.
"There's not much enemy left in Iraq but there's plenty of enemy here to be dealt with," Marine Commandant General James Conway told more than 100 Marines at Bagram Air Base Tuesday.
Conway, in Afghanistan for a few days to meet troops in the field, has often said in the past year that the service could not fight a protracted war on two fronts and has made overtures to war planners to shift the bulk of his Marines from Iraq's Anbar province to Afghanistan.
Despite his calls mostly falling of deaf ears, the Pentagon is looking into a surge of troops to pound out Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters -- a plan that could include Marines.
However, Conway points out that such a move would stretch his service.
With 24,000 Marines currently in Iraq, and 3,400 in Afghanistan, the Corps would be hard pressed to send any more to either battlefield.
Although its Afghanistan troops are set to return home in October, the Pentagon this month extended the deployment of 1,250 Marines who are training Afghan police in the southern and western parts of the country, for 30 days until November.
It had previously extended to November the deployment of a 2,200-member Marine expeditionary unit fighting in the south.
Unless Marines start to drawdown in Iraq soon, there will not be any more to replace them in Afghanistan's volatile south once they leave, Conway told AFP. "There is no plan," said Conway, who was adamant his current trip to Afghanistan would not directly play into any future strategy. However, his trip comes as Washington increasingly turns its attention to the Taliban.
"There's a discussion underway only. If the decision is made to replace them, what we will insist on is that it be a full-up capacity," he said.
If Marines are tapped for a larger role in Afghanistan, they will most likely deploy as a Marine Air Ground Task Force, Conway said.
Such a unit is self-sustaining in that it would be in charge of its own air, artillery and logistics, and can range anywhere from 2,300 troops to upwards of 40,000 depending upon its combat role.
"We don't want another force in there that isn't fully adaptive for what we think we're going to face," Conway said.
Pentagon planners need also to take into account the time needed to prepare troops for deployment, Conway said.
"Say this draw-down [in Iraq] works and Marines are made free, then we've got to train Marines for Afghanistan as opposed to going to Iraq. That takes time. That takes four or five months," he said, adding it would also take time to get equipment in place.
A decision on the Marines' role in Afghanistan will likely be made after Multi-National Force-Iraq Commander, General David Petraeus returns to the US in September to brief President George W. Bush and military leaders, Conway said.
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Treaty of China-Afghanistan friendship, cooperation and good-neighborly relations takes effect
www.chinaview.cn 2008-08-14 17:57:33
BEIJING, Aug. 14 (Xinhua) -- The treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Good-neighborly Relations between China and Afghanistan came into force here Thursday, the date of exchange of instrument of ratification.
Hu Zhengyue, assistant minister of foreign affairs of China, and Afghan Ambassador to China Eklil Ahmad Hakimi signed the certificate for the exchange of the instrument of ratification as representatives of their respective governments.
The treaty was jointly signed by Chinese President Hu Jintao and Afghan President Hamid Karzai on June 19, 2006.
The Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress, the top legislature, and Afghan National Assembly finished the discussions and ratified the treaty in succession. The exchange of instrument symbolized that the two countries have finished their domestic legislative process.
Editor: Bi Mingxin
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Insurgency’s Scars Line Afghanistan’s Main Road
By CARLOTTA GALL The New York Times August 14, 2008
SAYDEBAD, Afghanistan — Not far from here, just off the highway that was once the showpiece of the United States reconstruction effort in Afghanistan, three American soldiers and their Afghan interpreter were ambushed and killed seven weeks ago.
The soldiers — two of them members of the National Guard from New York — died as their vehicles were hit by mines and rocket-propelled grenades. At least one was dragged off and chopped to pieces, according to Afghan and Western officials. The body was so badly mutilated that at first the military announced that it had found the remains of two men, not one, in a nearby field.
The attack, on June 26, was notable not only for its brutality, but also because it came amid a series of spectacular insurgent attacks along the road that have highlighted the precariousness of the international effort to secure Afghanistan six years after the United States intervened to drive off the Taliban government.
Security in the provinces ringing the capital, Kabul, has deteriorated rapidly in recent months. Today it is as bad as at any time since the beginning of the war, as militants have surged into new areas and taken advantage of an increasingly paralyzed local government and police force and the thinly stretched international military presence here.
This district is just 50 miles or so south of Kabul. Farther south, beyond the town of Salar, the road — also known as Highway 1 — is even more dangerous, and to drive beyond that point is to risk ambush, explosions and possible slaughter.
When it was refurbished several years ago, the Kabul-Kandahar highway was a demonstration of America’s commitment to building a new, democratic Afghanistan. A critical artery, the highway quite literally holds this country together.
A Precarious Thread
For the shaky Afghan state, it binds the country’s center to the insurgent-ridden south, and provides a tenuous thread to unite Afghanistan’s increasingly divided ethnic halves: the insurgent-ridden, Pashtun dominated south with the more stable, mainly Tajik, Hazara and Turkic populated north.
For the United States and the NATO-led force in Afghanistan, it is an important supply route for the war effort, linking the two largest foreign military bases in the country, at Bagram and Kandahar, and a number of smaller bases along the way.
But today the highway is a dangerous gantlet of mines and attacks from insurgents and criminals, pocked with bomb craters and blown-up bridges. The governor of Ghazni Province came under fire driving through Salar on Tuesday and two of his guards were wounded, officials said.
The insurgents have made the route a main target, with the apparent aim of undercutting Afghanistan’s economy and infrastructure, said Gen. Zaher Azimi, the Afghan military spokesman.
The road has become the site of extreme carnage in the last six weeks, disrupting supply lines for American and NATO forces and tying down Afghan Army forces. One of the worst attacks occurred in Salar on June 24 when some 50 fuel tankers and food trucks carrying supplies for the United States military were ambushed.
The convoy was set on fire. Seven of its drivers were dragged out and beheaded, said Abdul Ghayur, the commander of the private security force that supplied the drivers. “Those ones who were driving the refrigerated trucks,” which presumably looked more foreign, were singled out, he said.
That attack was followed two days later by the ambush that killed the three Americans and their Afghan interpreter, farther north, near a village called Tangi.
Calling In the Army
The ferocity of their killing, coming amid a sudden spiral of insurgent violence along the road and in the surrounding provinces, forced the Afghan government to send several battalions of the Afghan National Army in July here to Wardak Province, which lies just south of Kabul, to try to secure the road.
Soldiers of Afghanistan’s 201st Corps are now posted in old hilltop positions that the Soviet army used in the 1980s, surveying the road and the green side valleys that provide easy cover for the insurgents.
Since their arrival three weeks ago, the Afghan soldiers say they have been engaged in repeated firefights with insurgents and have surprised several groups trying to lay roadside bombs.
Soldiers from one Afghan unit, which had recently set up camp in a school building in Salar, said they were called out Aug. 1 to reinforce the local police, who were besieged in their own station less than three miles down the road.
The Afghan soldiers ran into an ambush almost immediately and had to battle for three hours before they could relieve the police station, said the commander, Capt. Gul Jan, 42.
Their adversaries include a mix of criminals, insurgents from the mujahedeen group Hesb-e-Islami, and members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and their main aim was to attack government forces and convoys, and kidnap officials and others for ransom, said Maj. Muhammad Gul, a battalion commander charged with guarding the road as far as Salar.
“The Taliban are trying to bring more people in from other provinces because Wardak is closer to Kabul, and definitely, what happens here will affect Kabul, too,” he said.
The deployment of the Afghan Army, which is now equipped with artillery and heavy machine guns, came just in time, residents said.
Haji Muhammad Musa Hotak, a legislator from Wardak Province, says that public confidence in the government has virtually collapsed along with the security situation.
Insurgents and other armed groups in the province have swelled from barely 100 last year to an estimated 500, as villagers have joined the insurgents, either for money or their own protection, he said.
“Dissatisfaction of the people is growing, anger is growing, people are joining the opposition groups,” he said in an interview in his Kabul office.
He has not been able to visit his home district for a month since the kidnapping of a Chinese road construction worker there by the Taliban, not even for the funeral of his grandson, he said. “How can we say the situation will gradually get better?”
In one of the most brazen attacks, on July 6, at Durrani, a large verdant village flanked by craggy mountains, the Taliban seized positions just above the road and fired on a convoy of seven tankers. The explosion set fire to the roadside shops and civilian cars, killing 22 civilians, Mr. Hotak said.
Army Capt. Muhammad Zaman, 41, was sent in with his platoon to set up base in Durrani just after the attack, as other units pursued the insurgents into villages behind the mountains.
The local police were woefully outmanned and outgunned, he said. “If there was no Afghan Army here, it would be too difficult to secure the road for one hour,” he said.
Tense Relations
But camping in the open, he had minimal defenses, and no protection against mortar fire, he said. His battalion has served alongside American troops all over Afghanistan, but on this operation the Afghan soldiers are on their own, save for some French troops who were mentoring them. Only one small French team appeared to be present among several hundred Afghan troops.
Coordination with American forces in the area was so poor that a passing American military convoy had fired on his positions just five days before and wounded one of his soldiers, Muhammad Baqer, in both legs.
“I could easily have fired back at them,” he said angrily. Villagers, too, complained that the American troops were firing recklessly.
“The Americans are not looking at us like human beings, but we are also human beings,” said a 20-year-old mechanic, Homayun, who uses one name and works in the bazaar down the road at the town of Saydebad.
“We don’t like either of them,” Homayun said of the Taliban and United States forces. “If they are fighting each other, innocent people get hurt.”
Nevertheless the Afghan Army units here seemed confident they could handle the insurgent threat in Wardak, and said the people were on their side.
“We can beat the Taliban conclusively when we build up our manpower,” said First Lt. Rahmatullah Minallah, who commands a post overlooking the Tangi valley, where the Americans died.
“I have 50 men here now. When I have 100 men, I can leave 50 here and go and clear out the village,” he said.
Some men from the unit were sent in to assist the ambushed Americans soldiers at Tangi, and gave their account of what had happened.
A Deadly Attack
The American soldiers had been traveling in three Humvees, heading east toward the neighboring province of Logar, they said. The United States military later said they were on a combat patrol and died from their wounds when their convoy was attacked by improvised explosive devices, small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades.
The three were identified as Sgt. First Class Matthew L. Hilton, 37, of Livonia, Mich., of the Michigan Army National Guard; and Sgt. First Class Joseph A. McKay, 51, of Brooklyn; and Specialist Mark C. Palmateer, 38, of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., both of them part of a reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition unit of the New York Army National Guard, according to a Pentagon news release.
Their Afghan interpreter was 21-year-old Muhammad Fahim from Kabul, who had been working with the Americans for the last three years. His body was burned beyond recognition, his family said.
One vehicle struck a mine, but the convoy of three Humvees apparently kept moving, until a second vehicle hit a mine, said Capt. Haji Rahim, who visited the scene afterward. The Humvee caught fire, and the blaze was so strong the trees around it burned too, he said.
Captain Rahim did not see the bodies but learned from an American officer that one or more had been butchered. “Their bodies had no heads, legs or arms,” he said. A Western official in Kabul confirmed that at least one of the bodies had been cut up. “Organs were removed,” the official said.
Those behind the attack were swiftly identified as a group led by a local man, a former Hesb-e-Islami commander named Mullah Najibullah. Two weeks later United States and Afghan forces tracked him down at his home and killed him and his followers in a siege of the compound, Afghan officials said.
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The Wrong Force for the ‘Right War’
New York Times, United States By BARTLE BREESE BULL August 13, 2008
London-BARACK OBAMA and John McCain have plenty of disagreements, but one thing they are united on is promising a troop surge in Afghanistan. Senator McCain wants to move troops to Afghanistan from the Middle East, conditional on continued progress in Iraq. Senator Obama goes much further, arguing that we should have sent last year’s surge to Afghanistan, not Iraq, that Afghanistan is the “central front” and that we must rebuild Afghanistan from the bottom up along the lines of the Marshall Plan.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates is on board, too. He has endorsed a $20 billion plan to increase substantially the size of Afghanistan’s army, as well as the role and numbers of Western troops there to aid it. Polls show that nearly 60 percent of Americans agree with the idea of an Afghan surge. A recent Time magazine cover anointed the fighting there as “The Right War.”
But what are the real prospects for turning fractious, impoverished Afghanistan into an orderly and prosperous nation and a potential ally of the United States? What true American interests are being insufficiently advanced or defended in its remote deserts and mountains? And even if these interests are really so broad, are they deliverable at an acceptable price? The answers to these questions put the wisdom of an Afghan surge into great question.
Destroying the Taliban regime after 9/11 was just and rational. And it was done in an effective and proportionate manner: over just six weeks in late 2001, with several hundred American special operatives on the ground, American air support and our allies in the Northern Alliance.
Since then, however, the mission has grown. Today there are 71,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan, yet things are getting ever worse. There were 10 times as many armed attacks on international troops and civilian contractors in 2007 as there were in 2004. Every other measure of violence, from roadside bombs to suicide bombers, is also up dramatically. Our principal ally at the beginning of the war, the Northern Alliance, controlled more of the country at the end of 2001 than President Hamid Karzai, our current principal ally, effectively controls today.
The United States must certainly punish those who attack it and those who give sanctuary to such people. This is why the Afghan war has always had popular support. But our initial goals — dethroning the Taliban and disrupting Al Qaeda — have been as thoroughly accomplished as is possible given the porous frontier that Afghanistan shares with Pakistan.
Thus the creeping mission in Afghanistan has fed on a perception of four further American interests: the denial of sanctuary to global terrorists; the projection of American power in a sensitive part of the world; support for modernity in the global struggle for the Muslim mind; and cutting heroin exports. Each needs careful reconsideration.
Denying sanctuary to terrorists — in Afghanistan and everywhere else — is undoubtedly an American interest of the first order. Accomplishing it, however, requires neither the conquest of large swathes of Afghan territory nor a troop surge there — nor even maintaining the number of troops NATO has in Afghanistan today. Counterterrorism is not about occupation. It centers on combining intelligence with specialized military capabilities.
While the Taliban is certainly regaining strength, it could provide Al Qaeda with a true safe harbor only if its troops retake Kabul. But they have little hope of returning to power as long as we train the Afghan Army, support an Afghan state generously in other ways and maintain our intelligence and surgical strike capacities.
Besides, even if the Taliban were to return to power and give Al Qaeda the sorts of safe havens it enjoyed in Afghanistan in 2001, this would probably make little difference in America’s security. Rory Stewart, a former British foreign ministry official in Afghanistan and Iraq who now manages a nongovernmental group in Kabul, argues that the existence there of “Quantico-style” terrorist facilities teaching primitive insurgency infantry tactics had little to do with 9/11. “You don’t need to go to Afghanistan to learn how to use a box cutter,” Stewart has told me. “And Afghanistan is not a good place for flight school.”
One could argue that the key Al Qaeda training for 9/11 occurred not in the Taliban’s Afghanistan but in Jeb Bush’s Florida. And in terms of terrorist planning, 9/11 would have been better avoided with an occupation of Hamburg, where most of the essential plotting for the attack occurred.
In any case, American counterterrorism interests in Afghanistan appear to argue for something far more restrained than our current commitment there, maybe 20,000 Western troops maximum. In the long run, it needs to be seen as the remote, poor and ungovernable country it is, albeit one with a history of ties to Al Qaeda and located next door to Osama bin Laden’s current base of operations, Pakistan. Still, a very light American presence operating through embassies and aid organizations should be able to collect the intelligence needed to allow special forces to eliminate terrorist threats as they appear.
So much for counterterrorism. What about the second reason given for expanding our presence: projecting American power in an unstable area? Yes, maintaining a substantial armed presence in a corner of the world that borders Pakistan and Iran (and, barely, China) is undoubtedly valuable. But all that is needed to achieve this is an airfield at our disposal, enough special forces troops nearby to achieve limited military goals and a complaisant government in Kabul. Besides, it is unclear why Afghanistan is the necessary partner in this; the United States already has safer, less expensive and strategically more important basing arrangements elsewhere in inner Asia, as in Uzbekistan and Mongolia.
As for the broader struggle toward a modern and healthy Islam, Afghanistan’s global importance is negligible. It is a backwater of the Muslim faith. The Prophet Muhammad and his successors did not conquer or proclaim there. No great Islamic civilization, such as the Baghdad caliphate, was based there. Unlike Iraq, no great saints of Shiism were martyred or buried there. Defeating Wahhabist Sunnism in its Taliban variant is of very little symbolic value.
The last argument for expanding this Afghan war — stopping the poppy growing — is equally weak. Neither presidential candidate has mentioned heroin use as a pressing domestic issue, and there is even less reason it should be a major international one. In any case, our demand for heroin is not the fault of the Afghan peasants who would take the financial hit for our interdiction efforts. Liberal democracies cannot win counterinsurgencies against the wills of local populations, and denying a livelihood to the poor farmers of southern and eastern Afghanistan is no way to persuade Afghans to our side.
For those who remain unconvinced that anything short of ambitiously remaking Afghanistan would imperil America’s basic interests, here’s the big question: What sort of commitment are you willing to make? Dan McNeil, the American general who was NATO’s top commander in Afghanistan until he left in June, said shortly before concluding his tour that according to current American counterinsurgency doctrine, a successful occupation of Afghanistan, which is larger, more complex, more populous and very much less governable than Iraq, would require 400,000 troops.
How many of them would be killed? Except for the initial invasion and the isolated flare-ups in places like Falluja in 2005, Iraq has not been a “hot” war, but a slow-running insurgency. Were we to attempt to pacify all of Afghanistan, on the other hand, however, it would be nothing but heat, as Russia and Britain before us have discovered to their great cost. We’re already seeing higher death rates for our troops in Afghanistan than in Iraq. Episodes like the successful escape by more than 1,000 prisoners from a jail in Kandahar in June, or the overrunning of an American outpost by militants near Wanat in July, in which nine Americans were killed and 15 were wounded, have never occurred in Iraq.
The invasion of Afghanistan was a great tactical success and the correct strategic move. Yet since then it seems as if the United States has been trying to turn the conflict into the Vietnam War of the early 21st century. Escalating in Afghanistan to “must-win” status means, according to General McNeil’s estimate, deploying three times as many troops as were sent to Iraq at the height of the surge. If Americans really believe — as Senator Obama in particular argues — that Afghanistan is the right war and a place appropriate for Iraq-style nation-building, then they must understand both the cost involved and the remote likelihood of success.
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Afghan clashes leave 30 police dead or injured
People's Daily August 14, 2008
Taliban militants have killed 15 policemen and injured 15 others in the past two weeks in their assaults in southern Afghan province of Helmand, said an official on Thursday.
Mohammad Hussein Andiwal, the provincial police chief told Xinhua Taliban rebels in recent two weeks carried out several attacks and mounted pressure on Afghan police forces elsewhere in the unrest Helmand provinces.
"Clashes have left 15 police dead and 15 more wounded," Andiwal said. "Police forces have retreated from Marja district after fierce battle with the militants."
Meanwhile, Qari Yusuf Ahmadi, the purported Taliban spokesman told Xinhua via phone from an unknown hideout that the outfits ambushed Marja district center Thursday morning and took control of the district government compound after four hours of fighting.
"Taliban fighters killed 15 policemen in the compound and seized 12 police weapons," Ahmadi said.
Taliban insurgents who staged a violent comeback three years ago have intensified their activities across Afghanistan over the past weeks to mount pressure on the government despite around 70,000 foreign troops stationed in the war-torn country vowing to keep peace and help reconstruction here.
Conflicts and spiraling insurgency have claimed the lives of more than 2,500 people including militants, troops and civilians so far this year in Afghanistan.
Source:Xinhua
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Taliban win a fight - and settle scores
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Online August 14, 2008
KARACHI - When several hundred Pakistani troops backed by paramilitary forces on Friday launched an operation against militants in Bajaur Agency in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan, they received a most unwelcome surprise.
News of the offensive, which proved to be the most bloody this year in Pakistan, had been leaked to the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaeda militants by sympathizers in the security forces, and the army walked into a literal hail of bullets.
Contacts familiar with the militants told Asia Times Online that every hill had observers as the first military convoys entered Bajaur - the main corridor leading to the Afghan provinces of Kunar, Nooristan, Kapisa and the capital Kabul - and they were quickly under attack.
In just a few hours, 65 soldiers were killed, 25 were taken prisoner and scores more were wounded. Under air cover, the soldiers retreated, leaving behind five vehicles and a tank, which are now part of the arsenal of the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
On Tuesday, the Pakistan Air Force, whose air power played a central role in the Bajaur operation, was on the receiving end. Once again on the basis of precise information, eight airmen were killed in a suicide attack near Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP).
Limited fighting continued on Wednesday. The government said that 200 militants had been killed, but a Taliban spokesman confirmed only seven dead. The remainder, he said, were civilians killed during aerial bombardments.
Unconfirmed reports said leading al-Qaeda military commander Abu Saeed al-Masri had been killed. He is said to be number three in the group behind Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden, and if indeed he is dead it would be a major setback for al-Qaeda.
The fierce militant response against the army, which is under heavy pressure from the United States to be more proactive, was under the unified command of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, whose base is in the South Waziristan tribal area. The hardline Baitullah does not believe in "limited war" - his goal is full-scale war across the country. Bajaur could be the beginning of this.
Pakistani Taliban spokesman Moulvi Omar issued a statement claiming responsibility for the Peshawar attack and warned of more across the country in reaction to the Bajaur offensive.
However, the militants' current tactics are different from those of previous years when they reacted within a few hours or days. Now, the militants spend more time waiting for information on their "daunting foe", the Pakistani security forces and the government, so they can decide on their targets and cause maximum damage. Much of this information comes from informants in the security forces.
In the broader picture, al-Qaeda decides when to switch on the attacks or switch them off in their own version of war and peace. This is the new face of the neo-Taliban - more radical and more strategic - raised on al-Qaeda ideology.
These neo-Taliban don't forget, either.
On Wednesday morning, Haji Namdar, the chief of the "Vice and Virtue" organization in Khyber Agency, a tribal region on the Afghan border, was gunned down in his office by Baitullah's men.
Although Namdar supported the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan, he was a strategic asset for the Pakistani security agencies trying to wipe out al-Qaeda-influenced radicals and the neo-Taliban.
In April, he sold out the Taliban after initially agreeing to help them target the North Atlantic Treaty Organization supply lines passing through Khyber Agency. (See Taliban bitten by a snake in the grass Asia Times Online, April 26, 2008.) Namdar had survived an earlier suicide attack in which about 30 people died.
Namdar's death leaves the Pakistani security agencies and the government with only one "precious asset" - Haji Nazeer in South Waziristan. Other than him, they have no choice but to deal with Baitullah's radical face.
Economic and political chaos
Apart from the Peshawar Valley, the whole Pashtun-dominated region of NWFP is effectively under the control of the Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies. The chaotic state of the economy plays into their hands as people become increasing disgruntled.
Inflation is running at 25% a year, the Karachi stock exchange has lost 35% of its value since April, there are frequent electricity shutdowns and foreign exchange reserves have fallen from US$17 billion last year to $9 billion, barely enough to cover imports for three months.
These economic woes are compounded by an ongoing political crisis which al-Qaeda is already exploiting.
Zawahiri has issued an audio message critical of President Pervez Musharraf, who is under pressure to resign or else face impeachment. A leading militant from the Swat area, Muslim Khan, has issued a statement that anyone who supports Musharraf during an impeachment process would become the Taliban's enemy. Musharraf is the United States' point man in the South Asian theater of the "war on terror".
In a similar manner, when a military junta recently ousted Mauritania's president Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, al-Qaeda immediately called for a jihad in the North African country to establish Islamic rule. As with Pakistan, this is a bid by al-Qaeda to pitch itself as the only viable choice in Muslim countries.
The Bajaur showdown plays into this scenario. The Pakistani military, as it has every time in other operations in the tribal areas over the past few years, will pull back. Prisoners will be swapped and a hollow ceasefire will be agreed on, backed by cash inducements for the militants and more military aid for Pakistan from the United States.
Battle will break out again. In the meanwhile, the Taliban will increase their strength and boundaries, and al-Qaeda's ideology will draw in new recruits.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief.
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Attorney says Siddiqui was tortured
NEW YORK, Aug. 14 (UPI) -- The attorney for a Pakistani woman arrested and charged with trying to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan says the woman was mistreated while in custody.
Attorney Elizabeth Fink said Aafia Siddiqui, 36, arrested in July in Afghanistan, underwent what Fink described as "torture" while being held by Southwest Asian and U.S. officials, Newsday reported Thursday.
Fink said Siddiqui was strip-searched, which she said was tantamount to "torture" for a Muslim woman, because of her religious beliefs.
Fink also criticized information that documents found in Siddiqui's possession when she was arrested contained a list of landmarks that reportedly were terrorist targets, the New York publication said.
"I haven't seen it yet," Fink said of the list. "This stuff was planted on her."
Siddiqui was arrested after she allegedly tried to shoot U.S. soldiers with a rifle she seized while being held at an Afghan police facility, a federal criminal complaint filed in Manhattan alleged. No soldiers were injured but Siddiqui was shot twice.
A search of Siddiqui before the shooting found documents describing how to create explosives and chemical, biological and radiological weapons, court papers said. Siddiqui also allegedly had a list of landmarks and chemical substances in sealed containers.
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Treaty of China-Afghanistan friendship, coop-eration and good-neighborly relations takes effect
BEIJING, Aug. 14 (Xinhua) -- The treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Good-neighborly Relations between China and Afghanistan came into force here Thursday, the date of exchange of instrument of ratification.
Hu Zhengyue, assistant minister of foreign affairs of China, and Afghan Ambassador to China Eklil Ahmad Hakimi signed the certificate for the exchange of the instrument of ratification as representatives of their respective governments.
The treaty was jointly signed by Chinese President Hu Jintao and Afghan President Hamid Karzai on June 19, 2006.
The Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress, the top legislature, and Afghan National Assembly finished the discussions and ratified the treaty in succession. The exchange of instrument symbolized that the two countries have finished their domestic legislative process.
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Asian Bank to Boost Rural GSM Service in Afghanistan
Cellular-News.com August 13, 2008
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is to provide a US$55 million loan to the Afghanistan based mobile operator, Roshan so it can extend its coverage to parts of the country that have little or no telecommunications infrastructure in place. The loan to Telecom Development Company Afghanistan, which trades under the name Roshan, will also support the rollout of a mobile banking system called M-Paisa.
“This expansion will introduce mobile phone services to remote and war-torn areas, which lag far behind in the nation’s reconstruction efforts and for which telecom services are vital,” said Mr. Michael Barrow, a Director of ADB’s Private Sector Department.
“It will give people in remote areas better access to markets, access to information and will support families and communities that are often fragmented. It will also be a great boost for the private sector by helping businesses access new parts of the country.”
The total cost of the expansion will be $175 million, which includes capital expenditure into new districts, upgrading equipment, and transforming sites to use solar power. The balance of the funding will come from other investors.
Roshan, the Government of Afghanistan’s largest taxpayer, intends for the expansion to reach almost all semi-urban and major rural areas – furthering pro-poor and inclusive economic growth.
ADB has supported Roshan since it was established in 2003. After over 20 years of war, in 2003 only 80 thousand people had access to a phone, making Afghanistan one of the markets with the lowest phone penetration in the world.
ADB has approved nearly $1.3 billion in loans, grants and other support for Afghanistan since resuming operations in the country in 2002. The focus has been on rebuilding roads, power infrastructure and irrigation networks. At a donors’ conference in Paris in June, ADB pledged up to $1.3 billion in further assistance for the next five years.
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Returnees bemoan government’s “empty promises”
BARIKAB, 14 August 2008 (IRIN) - Gul Haider’s small family migrated to Pakistan from Afghanistan’s Parwan Province in the 1980s but returned to their homeland in 2006 as almost two dozen people. Now in Afghanistan, shelter is their main problem.
Gul Haider was nine when the war against the Soviets forced his father, mother and two brothers to seek refuge in neighbouring Pakistan. “Now I have five children,” Haider told IRIN near his mud-hut in the Barikab returnees’ township, about 60km north of Kabul.
Their old house in the Gorband District of Parwan was seized by local militias after they emigrated and is now owned by a powerful commander who says he bought it “legitimately”.
“We were encouraged to repatriate and were told that the [Afghan] government would give us a house, work and other facilities,” Haider said mournfully. “But those were only empty promises,” he said.
The Ministry of Refugees and Returnees (MoRR) has allotted land plots to up to 7,000 landless returnees in the Barikab settlement, but so far less than 600 families have agreed to move there.
The Barikab community is in the middle of a vast arid desert and lacks markets, schools, hospitals, transport and electricity.
Families leaving
Dozens of families that had moved to the Barikab township have already left due to poor living conditions and lack of job opportunities, locals said.
“We don’t have a school here… there is no hospital, no electricity, no transport, no work,” said Humayon Khan, a delegate of the Barikab residents. “It’s just a desert.”
“Our children were going to school in Pakistan but there is no school here,” said Abdul Manan, a father of five.
“I don’t think people will continue to live here because of all the problems we are facing,” said Humayon Khan.
The MoRR and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) acknowledged the difficulties returnees are facing in the Barikab community, but said they alone could not reverse the situation.
“The UNHCR alone cannot provide for the site,” said Ahmad Nadir Farhad, a UNHCR spokesman in Kabul.
“It’s not a job only for the MoRR… various other government and non-government bodies must take part in the efforts to help returnees reintegrate effectively,” Abdul Qader Zazi, a senior adviser to the MoRR, said.
“False dream”
Over five million Afghan refugees have repatriated mostly from neighbouring Pakistan and Iran over the past six years, according to the UNHCR, but some do not have land or housing.
To support the reintegration of landless and vulnerable returnees the Afghan government launched a land distribution scheme in 2003, which has given land to some 100,000 families, the MoRR said.
However, only 6,000 households have moved into the designated areas due to lack of basic services and poor livelihood opportunities.
The outgoing UNHCR representative in Kabul, Salvatore Lombardo, said: "The dream that you are going to give a piece of land to everyone who comes back was false and… should not have been shared because that dream does not exist".
“Often returnees are allotted land 50km from urban areas in flood plains where returnees have no means of livelihood,” the UNHCR’s Farhad said.
His concerns were echoed by Zazi of the MoRR: “Many people are waiting to see hospitals, roads, schools, electricity and other facilities in those areas and then move there”.
The government’s refugee reintegration programme has increasingly come in for criticism recently. Zazi of the MoRR conceded that the reintegration programme had been mired in operational confusion; there was only notional commitment to it, and it lacked resources.
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Venue of Independence Day function changed
Bakhtar News Agency / August 14, 2008
A function marking Afghanistan Independence Day would be held next week at a venue other than the traditional Ghazi Stadium, officials said here on Tuesday.
Defense Ministry spokesman Zahir Azimi told a press conference the glorious celebration would be organized at the Presidential Palace, Istiqlal or Amani High School next Monday.
Azimi said the reason for changing the venue was in no way linked to security. The Ghazi Stadium, where President Hamid Karzai escaped hurt in an assassination attempt in late April - was being rebuilt.
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Foreigner convicted on drug smuggling charges
Bakhtar News Agency / August 14, 2008
A Turkish citizen has been convicted by the Primary Court of the Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) of trafficking more than 22 kilograms of heroin on a truck.
The man was sentenced to 18 years imprisonment and fined one million and five hundred thousand Afghanis, the CJTF said here on Tuesday. The foreigner was arrested by border police at a vehicle checkpoint in Islam Qala in the western Herat province on March 9 2008.
A statement from CJTF said the suspect was trying to smuggle the drugs to Iran. This arrest reflects the performance and ability of the police to disrupt the international production and trade of narcotics in Afghanistan.
From January 2007 to June 2008, the CJTF has convicted 432 and 156 acquitted suspects. The Supreme Court has confirmed 263 cases from the Central Narcotics Tribunal.
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