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Pakistan vows to 'weed out' pro-Taliban agents
By STEPHEN GRAHAM, Associated Press Writer Fri Aug 1, 3:11 PM ET
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A Pakistani spokeswoman conceded Friday that the government needs to root out Taliban sympathizers from its main intelligence agency, but officials rejected allegations that
Karzai says terrorism gaining deep roots in Pakistan
By Krittivas Mukherjee Sat Aug 2, 3:50 AM ET
COLOMBO (Reuters) - Terrorists were gaining a deeper grip in Pakistan, and were receiving institutional nurturing and support, Afghanistan's president said on Saturday, calling on South Asian countries
US refuses to comment on ISI involvement in Kabul blast
Hindustan Times - Latest News Press Trust Of India Washington August 02, 2008
The senior US official has refused to comment over the reports of American intelligence having evidence of ISI's involvement in last month's blast at Indian Embassy in Kabul saying it an issue of intelligence matters.
Taliban denies al-Qaida No. 2 hit by missile
August 2, 2008
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — A Taliban spokesman in Pakistan denied on Saturday a U.S. media report that al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri may have been killed or critically injured in a missile strike.
2 French aid workers held in Afghanistan released
By JENNY BARCHFIELD, Associated Press Writer
PARIS - Two French humanitarian aid workers kidnapped at gunpoint last month have been released, aid group Action Against Hunger said Saturday.
Afghan bride, groom among 13 killed in bomb blast: police
Sat Aug 2, 10:17 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - A suspected rebel bomb struck a minibus carrying a newly married couple in Afghanistan Saturday, killing the bride and groom and 11 wedding guests, police said, in the latest in a wave of insurgent attacks.
Factbox - Security developments in Afghanistan, 02 Aug 2008
Aug 2 (Reuters) - Following are security developments in Afghanistan at 1300 GMT on Saturday:
Pakistan to probe embassy bombing
Saturday, 2 August 2008 BBC News
Pakistan has offered to investigate a bomb attack on India's embassy in Kabul last month that killed more than 50 people, India's foreign secretary says.
Terrorism gaining "deeper grip" in Pakistan: Karzai
Colombo, Aug 2 (PTI) Expressing outrage at the suicide bombing in the Indian embassy in Kabul, Afghan President Hamid Karzai today attacked Pakistan saying terrorism and its sanctuaries were gaining "a deeper grip" in that country.
'I fell in love with Afghanistan'
Financial Times, UK By Ann Marlowe August 2 2008
Belinda Bowling, 34, a lawyer born in South Africa, lives in Kabul and works on environmental issues for the United Nations. A stencil she bought in Paris and applied to a living room wall describes her philosophy:
Why Pakistan is unlikely to crack down on Islamic militants
By Jonathan S. Landay McClatchy Newspapers August 1, 2008
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration and its allies are pressing Pakistan to end its support for Afghan insurgents linked to al Qaida, but Pakistani generals are unlikely to be swayed because they increasingly
Taliban militants kidnap district chief in E Afghanistan
KABUL, Aug. 2 (Xinhua) -- Mohammed Ghias Haqmal, the district chief of Marawar district in eastern Afghanistan's Kunar province, was kidnapped by Taliban militants on Friday night, Shafiq Hamdam
Ulema ask US to accept failure in Afghanistan
Daily Times (Pakistan) August 2, 2008
PESHAWAR: Ittehad Ulema-e-Afghanistan, an organisation of Afghan refugee religious scholars, has urged the US to declare its failure in Afghanistan and immediately withdraw NATO forces from the country
British Muslims fighting UK forces in Afghanistan: report
August 2, 2008
London (PTI): British Muslims are part of the Taliban militia fighting against UK security forces in Afghanistan, a top British commander, who served in the restive country, has said. "There are British passport holders who live in the UK who are being found in places like Kandahar," said Brig. Ed Butler, who spent six months commanding British forces in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan: Poppy destruction aiding Taliban, says think-tank
London, 1 August (AKI) - The forced eradication of poppy crops in Afghanistan is fuelling support for the Taliban and the insurgency, according to an international policy think-tank.
Soldiers start Afghanistan tour
Saturday, 2 August 2008 13:32 UK BBC News
Soldiers based in the west Midlands have begun their tour of duty in Afghanistan.
Badghis government income up by 30%
Written by www.quqnoos.com Saturday, 02 August 2008
Provincial income to exceed Afg5.5 m in first quarter due in part to stronger management
"Dead or alive."
U.S. blunders on Bin Laden will have a heavy cost, author says
Canada.com, Canada Mike Blanchfield Canwest News Service Friday, August 01, 2008
WASHINGTON-U.S. President George W. Bush uttered that threat days following the 9-11 attacks vowing that his country's No. 1 enemy, Osama bin Laden, would be captured.
Where is electricity?
Anis 08/01/2008
You may not find a country in the world where residents of its capital city use lanterns at night. It is only Kabul that descends into the abyss of darkness at night despite the flow of billions of dollars.
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Pakistan vows to 'weed out' pro-Taliban agents
By STEPHEN GRAHAM, Associated Press Writer Fri Aug 1, 3:11 PM ET
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A Pakistani spokeswoman conceded Friday that the government needs to root out Taliban sympathizers from its main intelligence agency, but officials rejected allegations that the spies helped plan a bloody bombing at the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan.
Government spokeswoman Sherry Rehman said there are "probably" still individual agents whose ideological convictions were formed in the 1980s, when the ISI intelligence agency marshaled Islamic warriors to battle Soviet troops in Afghanistan with U.S. support.
Such agents "act on their own in ways that are not in convergence" with Pakistan's interests or policies, Rehman said. "We need to identify these people and weed them out."
The statement was the first acknowledgment by Pakistan's new government that there may be pro-Taliban operatives in the intelligence service. But in a reflection of the sensitivity of the issue, Rehman later changed her statement to maintain the problems at ISI were in the past.
The conflicting comments will do little to build confidence in the 4-month-old administration's efforts to tackle Islamic extremism — a huge challenge facing Pakistan's first civilian-led government after eight years of military rule under President Pervez Musharraf.
Rehman's initial statement came after mounting U.S. and Indian allegations that ISI operatives are helping militant groups involved in the growing insurgency in Afghanistan.
The New York Times reported Friday that American intelligence agencies concluded ISI agents were involved in the July 7 embassy attack in the Afghan capital, which killed about 60 people.
The Times, citing unidentified U.S. government officials, said the conclusion was based on intercepted communications between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants who carried out the attack.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammed Sadiq described the report as "total rubbish," insisting there was no evidence linking the ISI to the Kabul bombing.
"The foreign newspapers keep writing such things against ISI, and we reject these allegations," he said.
Afghan leaders have long maintained the ISI is backing the Taliban-led insurgency, and Afghanistan's spy agency accused its Pakistani counterpart in a recent attempt to assassinate Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Last week, India alleged that "elements of Pakistan" were behind the blast at its Kabul embassy, putting the two nations' four years of peace efforts "under stress." The nuclear-armed neighbors have fought three wars in the past 60 years.
The Pakistani army spokesman, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, described the Times report as a "most unkind" swipe at a partner in the U.S.-led war against extremist groups. He suggested it was designed to pressure Pakistan to act against militants.
Pakistan also objects to repeated airstrikes on suspected militant sites in the Pakistani tribal areas near Afghanistan, apparently carried out by CIA drones based across the border.
Pakistan notes that more than 1,000 personnel in its security forces have been killed in battles with Islamic militants since 2001. ISI staff and even their children were targeted by suicide attackers last year.
Musharraf, who allied Pakistan in Washington's fight with al-Qaida after the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S., has insisted the intelligence service has severed its ties with the Taliban.
That was reiterated by Abbas, who said it was impossible for ISI agents to become rogue elements without detection because all the agency's officers are rotated in from the army for tours of two to four years.
American officials acknowledge the sacrifice of Pakistani troops as well as the ISI's crucial role in rounding up al-Qaida suspects such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attack.
But suspicions remain.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani this week urged President Bush to share more intelligence so that Pakistani forces can target militant leaders.
However, a Bush administration official told The Associated Press on Wednesday that U.S. intelligence agencies suspect elements in the ISI of leaking information to militants that helps with attacks in Afghanistan.
The U.S. counterterrorism official, who agreed to discuss the issue only if not quoted by name, said there is particular concern about support for the network of Jalaluddin Haqqani, a jihadi commander wanted by the U.S. military.
The Times report cited American officials as saying the embassy attack was probably carried out by Haqqani's network.
Talat Masood, a military analyst and former Pakistani general, said he doubted the ISI had a hand in the embassy bombing because of the serious international repercussions of being caught.
However, he said it was possible there is a "tacit" policy of cooperating with militants like Haqqani, because his fighters are focused on Afghanistan and are not battling Pakistani troops.
Rahul Roy-Chaudhury of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London said individual ISI agents may be "making their own decisions" because the government hasn't formulated a clear strategy to counter militants.
He said the ISI views itself as the "final arbiter" of Pakistan's relations with Afghanistan and India and is reluctant to give up ties with militants that could be vital if NATO and the U.S. fail in Afghanistan.
"Do they want to give up the option that no one else has in terms of links to the extremists?" Roy-Chaudhury said. "It's these kind of views that make elements in the ISI different (from other spy agencies) — and more dangerous or more powerful, depending on how you see it."
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Associated Press writers Munir Ahmad in Islamabad and Matthew Lee and Pamela Hess in Washington contributed to this report.
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Karzai says terrorism gaining deep roots in Pakistan
By Krittivas Mukherjee Sat Aug 2, 3:50 AM ET
COLOMBO (Reuters) - Terrorists were gaining a deeper grip in Pakistan, and were receiving institutional nurturing and support, Afghanistan's president said on Saturday, calling on South Asian countries to stop playing geo-political games.
"In Pakistan, terrorism and its sanctuaries are gaining a deeper grip as demonstrated by the tragic assassination of shaheed (martyr) Benazir Bhutto," Karzai told a summit of South Asian leaders, also attended by Pakistan's prime minister.
"While existing on the absolute fringes of our tolerant and peace loving societies, terrorists in our region receive, institutional nurturing and support. "It is this imbedded nature of terrorists that make it a much more sinister threat."
Relations between Afghanistan and its neighbor Pakistan have sharply deteriorated in recent months with Afghan officials repeatedly accusing Pakistani agents of secretly backing Taliban insurgents fighting Afghan and foreign troops on Afghan soil.
Afghanistan has suffered scores of Taliban suicide and roadside bombs that have killed more than 200 civilians already this year, making it among the most violent places in the world.
The Afghan government has told the United States and NATO allies that the source of the terrorism in Afghanistan goes back to the sanctuaries inside Pakistan territory.
"Terrorism in our region feed on a residual tradition of narrow minded politics and of pursuing out-moded geo-political interest," Karzai said.
"In a region, prone to many challenges, terrorism may well prove to be the most destabilizing."
Pakistan denies the Afghan charges and says the Kabul government is trying to divert attention from its own failure to quell the Taliban insurgency.
Pakistan too is roiled by terrorist violence. Former prime minister Bhutto was killed in a gun and bomb attack in the city of Rawalpindi on December 27 as she emerged from an election rally.
Pakistan's new civilian government has turned to talks with militants in its tribal border region in order to defuse violence that has killed hundreds of Pakistanis in the last year.
But Afghan and NATO leaders say the talks have eased pressure on the militants allowing them to send more insurgents into Afghanistan where attacks along the eastern border are up by some 40 percent this year.
"While the people of Afghanistan today are bearing the brunt of international terrorism on a daily basis, it is with tremendous trepidation, that we are watching the wild fire of terrorism spreading across the region.
"It is time we all realize that the pursuit of narrow geo-political interest and the use of militant radicalism as instrument of policy cannot succeed or serve any long term purpose."
(Additional reporting by Shihar Aneez; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
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US refuses to comment on ISI involvement in Kabul blast
Hindustan Times - Latest News Press Trust Of India Washington August 02, 2008
The senior US official has refused to comment over the reports of American intelligence having evidence of ISI's involvement in last month's blast at Indian Embassy in Kabul saying it an issue of intelligence matters.
For past two days, there were reports that the US intelligence has seen evidence of ISI's involvement in bombing at Indian embassy in Kabul with a top CIA official even travelling to Pakistan to confront the matter of ISI-Taliban association.
"I saw that report. It would be inappropriate for me to talk about intelligence matters here, so I'd refer you to the intelligence community, if in fact they would like comment on it," White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said in Kennebunkport, Maine.
The senior White House official said during their meeting on Monday last, President George W Bush and Pakistan Premier Yousuf Raza Gilani had an extensive conversation about counter-terrorism efforts.
"They agreed that the war on terror was one that we needed to fight together because the enemy is going not just after Pakistanis, but the United States as well. And so our joint efforts need to be comprehensive," Perino said.
Soon after the bombing of the Indian mission in Kabul, in which two Indian Embassy officials were killed, Afghanistan blamed Pakistan for the attack and soon thereafter New Delhi also maintained that Islamabad may have been behind the incident.
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Taliban denies al-Qaida No. 2 hit by missile
August 2, 2008
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — A Taliban spokesman in Pakistan denied on Saturday a U.S. media report that al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri may have been killed or critically injured in a missile strike.
CBS News reported Friday that it had obtained a copy of an intercepted letter dated July 29 from unnamed sources in Pakistan, which urgently requested a doctor to treat Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant.
The letter was purportedly from Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud and said al-Zawahri is in "severe pain" and his "injuries are infected."
"We deny it categorically," Mehsud spokesman Maulvi Umar told The Associated Press by telephone from an undisclosed location inside Pakistan.
Pakistan army and intelligence officials said they had no information that al-Zawahri was hit in a missile strike Monday apparently launched by the U.S. in South Waziristan, a volatile tribal region near the Afghan border.
Both bin Laden and al-Zawahri are believed to be hiding in the rugged and lawless tribal regions along the Afghan-Pakistan border.
There is increasing pressure from the West on the four-month-old Pakistan government to act against Taliban and al-Qaida strongholds in the frontier region with Afghanistan amid concern that peace deals have given militants more freedom to operate.
The U.S. military did not confirm it was behind the missile strike. But similar strikes are periodically launched on militant targets in the tribal border region and previous such attacks inside Pakistan are believed to have been conducted by the CIA using Predator drones.
A missile strike by a CIA Predator drone in Bajur tribal region, north of Waziristan, in January 2006 apparently targeted but missed al-Zawahri.
Pakistani intelligence say they think al-Qaida explosives expert Abu Khabab al-Masri was among six people killed in Monday's missile strike but apparently they do not have the body.
Al-Masri also was reported killed in the January 2006 strike that targeted al-Zawahri but his body was never found.
The missile strike on Monday hit a compound that used to be a religious school near Azam Warsak village, about two miles from the Afghan border. Umar claimed only religious students died in the attack.
"Whenever America targets and kills innocent people, it comes up with such propaganda, that it has killed a big personality, in an attempt to justify the cruelty it has done," he said.
Two Pakistani intelligence officials and at least one pro-Taliban militant said they believed al-Masri had died in Monday's strike and an American official in Washington expressed cautious optimism. The U.S. is offering a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture.
Mehsud is the leader of a coalition of Taliban groups in Pakistan and he was accused by the CIA of plotting the December assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
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2 French aid workers held in Afghanistan released
By JENNY BARCHFIELD, Associated Press Writer
PARIS - Two French humanitarian aid workers kidnapped at gunpoint last month have been released, aid group Action Against Hunger said Saturday.
The two are "apparently healthy," the Paris-based organization said in a brief statement, adding that arrangements are under way to bring them back to France as soon as possible.
The statement did not provide any details about the circumstances of the release or say who had been behind the kidnapping.
The two aid workers, whose names have not been released, were taken at gunpoint from the house where they were sleeping in the Afghan province of Day Kundi overnight on July 18.
The kidnappers entered the house after tying up guards posted outside and made off with the French nationals in waiting vehicles, Action Against Hunger had said in an earlier statement.
A top aide to the Day Kundi provincial governor said a government delegation from the capital, Kabul, traveled to the province in the past few days and held several rounds of negotiations with the kidnappers, led by a former jihadi commander known as Sedaqat.
Aide Nisar Ahmad said no ransom was paid as part of the agreement to release the hostages but declined to provide any other details on the deal. Ahmad said he did not know if Sedaqat has any connection with the Taliban.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed his relief at the release. In a statement issued by his office Saturday, the French leader thanked his Afghan counterpart, Hamid Karzai, for his "personal investment, thanks to which this hostage situation was rapidly and happily resolved."
In response to the kidnappings, Action Against Hunger suspended its activities in Afghanistan. The group had been working in Afghanistan since 1979 and had 10 foreign staffers and about 150 local employees there, according to its Web site.
It was not immediately clear whether the group will restart its work in the troubled Central Asian nation.
Two French aid workers from another humanitarian group, Terre d'Enfance, were kidnapped last year and held for weeks before being released. The Taliban had claimed responsibility for the April 2007 kidnappings and demanded the withdrawal of French troops in Afghanistan.
France currently has about 1,500 troops in Afghanistan, and Sarkozy has pledged to send 700 more soldiers by the end of the year to help NATO-led forces in the country.
___
Associated Press Writer Rahim Faiez in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.
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Afghan bride, groom among 13 killed in bomb blast: police
Sat Aug 2, 10:17 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - A suspected rebel bomb struck a minibus carrying a newly married couple in Afghanistan Saturday, killing the bride and groom and 11 wedding guests, police said, in the latest in a wave of insurgent attacks.
Authorities meanwhile announced that more than a dozen Taliban-linked militants were killed across the country on Friday, the same day NATO said bombs killed five of its soldiers and a civilian interpreter.
The device that blew up the wedding party in the southern province of Kandahar was likely planted to target security forces, provincial police chief Mutiullah Khan said.
He said 10 people were killed in the blast near the town of Spin Boldak close to the Pakistan border.
"A roadside bomb exploded under a minibus carrying a bride and groom. Ten people including the bride and the groom were martyred," he said.
But Spin Boldak border police commander Abdul Raziq told AFP that 13 had died: eight woman, two children and three men.
Six other people, including women and children, were wounded, both officials said.
They blamed the attack on "enemies of Afghanistan", a reference to Taliban militants involved in an extremist insurgency launched after the hardliners were removed from government in 2001 for harbouring Al-Qaeda.
Violence linked to the insurgency has grown year on year, despite the arrival of more international soldiers -- now numbering nearly 70,000 -- and the growth of the Afghan army and police force.
Afghan and Western officials say much of the unrest is being plotted across the border in Pakistan, which is under pressure to do more again Islamic extremists who set up there after the fall of the Taliban regime.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai told a South Asian summit in Sri Lanka Saturday that terrorism was spreading "like wild fire" in the region, particularly in Pakistan.
"In Pakistan, terrorism and its sanctuaries are gaining a deeper grip as demonstrated by the tragic assassination of Benazir Bhutto," Karzai said, referring to the Pakistani opposition leader killed in December.
The five NATO soldiers killed on Friday died in eastern provinces along the border with Pakistan.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force announced their deaths Friday but would not release their nationalities. Most foreign soldiers in the east are from the United States, which has about 32,000 troops in Afghanistan.
Also Friday, "more than a dozen" rebels were killed in ground fighting and air strikes after attacking an Afghan and US-led coalition patrol in the southern province of Uruzgan, the US military said in a statement.
Several more were killed in the southwestern province of Farah after their hideout was discovered, it said, without giving a number.
Three other militants linked to Taliban, one of them a doctor, were killed when a bomb they were planting exploded in eastern Khost province.
Also in Farah, Islamic rebels captured six policemen following a brief firefight late Friday, provincial police chief Khalilullah Rahmani told AFP.
Seven other police officers were captured in the same area a week ago. Their fate is still unknown, Rahmani said.
The Taliban have captured several people working for the government or whom they accuse of spying for the international forces. Some have been killed.
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Factbox - Security developments in Afghanistan, 02 Aug 2008
Aug 2 (Reuters) - Following are security developments in Afghanistan at 1300 GMT on Saturday:
URUZGAN - Afghan and U.S.-led coalition forces backed by air power killed more than a dozen militants in the southern province of Uruzgan on Friday after being hit by a roadside bomb and an ambush, the U.S. military said.
KANDAHAR - Ten civilians were killed and six wounded when a bus carrying a wedding party hit a landmine in Kandahar's Maroof district on Friday, the Kandahar chief of police said.
FARAH - U.S.-led coalition forces killed "several" militants in an airstrike in the western province of Farah on Friday, the U.S. military said in a statement.
PAKTIA - Three Taliban insurgents were killed when the roadside bomb they were planting exploded in the eastern province of Paktia on Friday, the Interior Ministry said on Saturday.
LOGAR - Afghan security forces killed the leader of a Taliban kidnapping gang in the province of Logar, southeast of Kabul, the Interior Ministry said.
BAGHLAN - Afghan police arrested five Taliban militants in the northern province of Baghlan on Friday, the Interior Ministry said.
FARAH - Afghan police arrested three Taliban kidnappers in Farah on Friday, the Interior Ministry said.
(Compiled by Jon Hemming; Editing by Giles Elgood)
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Pakistan to probe embassy bombing
Saturday, 2 August 2008 BBC News
Pakistan has offered to investigate a bomb attack on India's embassy in Kabul last month that killed more than 50 people, India's foreign secretary says.
The announcement followed talks between the two countries' prime ministers at a South Asian summit in Sri Lanka.
Pakistan has come under pressure over claims, which it denies, that its spy agency was involved in the bombing.
Earlier, the Indian foreign secretary said relations had deteriorated to their worst level for four years.
The leaders are attending the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (Saarc) summit in Colombo along with leaders from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Bhutan and Nepal.
"(Pakistani) Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani said he would conduct an independent investigation," Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon said.
Ceasefire violation?
Mr Gilani met Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday.
Tensions between Pakistan and India - Saarc's biggest and most powerful members - have been exacerbated by a series of bomb attacks on Indian cities and continued hostilities in the disputed border area of Kashmir.
India has accused Pakistan of violating a ceasefire accord in Kashmir, and troops from both sides traded gunfire earlier this week.
Addressing the summit, Mr Gilani condemned last month's Kabul embassy attack, in which two senior Indian diplomats died, and some 150 people were injured.
Officials from India and Afghanistan have publicly accused elements in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of involvement in the attack.
On Friday, newspaper reports in the US quoted Washington sources levelling the same accusations against the ISI.
Pakistan's Foreign Ministry issued another denial, describing the claims as "total rubbish".
Terrorism issues
While food security and trying to improve the lot of the poor are on the agenda at the Colombo summit, correspondents say the key issue is whether the Saarc countries can work together to fight crime and terrorism.
On Saturday, the eight leaders called for a joint effort to combat terrorism.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai told the meeting that terrorism and its sanctuaries were gaining a deeper grip in Pakistan, and called for "collective action to wipe out terrorism in the region".
"While the region has to deal with a myriad of serious problems such as chronic poverty, food and energy shortages, environmental degradation and the like, terrorism is by far the greatest and most menacing of all," he said.
Fierce fighting
Heavy security is in place for the Colombo conference, with almost 20,000 police and troops deployed to guard delegates as fighting in Sri Lanka's decades-long civil conflict continues.
Tamil Tiger rebels declared a unilateral ceasefire throughout the talks, but the government rejected the truce.
There were reports of new military battles in rebel-held areas in the island's north, with the Sri Lankan military saying at least 11 of its soldiers had been killed in fierce fighting.
South Asia is home to the one-fifth of the world's population, but hundreds of millions of South Asians live in poverty.
Since Saarc was founded in 1985, the group's summits have been long on rhetoric but short on follow-up action, analysts say.
The regional grouping has often been overshadowed by tension and hostility between India and Pakistan.
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Terrorism gaining "deeper grip" in Pakistan: Karzai
Colombo, Aug 2 (PTI) Expressing outrage at the suicide bombing in the Indian embassy in Kabul, Afghan President Hamid Karzai today attacked Pakistan saying terrorism and its sanctuaries were gaining "a deeper grip" in that country.
Karzai emphasised the need for more collective action to deal with terrorism, which he described as a growing threat not only to Afghanistan and India but also to the entire region.
"In Pakistan, terrorism and its sanctuaries are gaining a deeper grip as demonstrated by the tragic assassination of Benazir Bhutto," he said addressing the SAARC Summit here.
"While existing on the absolute fringes of our tolerant and peace loving societies, terrorists in our region receive institutional nurturing and support. It is this embedded nature of terrorists that make it a much more sinister threat," the Afghan President said.
Condoling the loss of precious lives in the July 7 attack on Indian embassy in Kabul that killed nearly 60 people including four Indians, Karzai said no outrage or condemnation will cool down the anger over the mindless violence.
"While the people of Afghanistan today are bearing the brunt of international terrorism on a daily basis, it is with tremendous trepidation, that we are watching the wild fire of terrorism spreading across the region," he said.
"It is time we all realise that the pursuit of narrow geo-political interest and the use of militant radicalism as instrument of policy cannot succeed or serve any long term purpose," Karzai said. "In a region, prone to many challenges, terrorism may well prove to be the most destabilising." He called for an urgent and more collective action against terrorism to secure the lives of the future generations. Never before has there been a greater need for collective action against terrorism as today, Karzai said.
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'I fell in love with Afghanistan'
Financial Times, UK By Ann Marlowe August 2 2008
Belinda Bowling, 34, a lawyer born in South Africa, lives in Kabul and works on environmental issues for the United Nations. A stencil she bought in Paris and applied to a living room wall describes her philosophy: Mets toi ici en plein milieu de la vie. De là, on voit toute chose dans sa perspective réelle. ("Put yourself in the middle of life. From there, one sees everything in its real perspective.")
What brought you to Afghanistan?
As a child of apartheid and an adolescent witness to the early days of my country's painful transition to democracy, I'm sensitive to the day-to-day difficulties encountered by a battered population making a transition from one regime to another. When I turned 30 I decided to take a year's career break from my law firm and explore my fragile sense of national identity by travelling to other countries in transition. My journey took me to Kurdistan, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran and Afghanistan. Entranced by the soft light that envelops Kabul at dusk, I fell in love with Afghanistan immediately. Four and a half years later I'm still here.
Tell me about the garden.
Like many Afghan homes, mine has mature grape vines and fruit-yielding apple, pear, pomegranate and almond trees. Only roses over-winter naturally in Kabul's snows; I have to dig out the geraniums and other perennials and keep them inside until spring. Each spring I have to replace the flower and vegetable beds with a new topsoil and sand mixture because in this part of the Taimani neighbourhood - as in much of Kabul - the water is contaminated, which makes the soil very saline. But once this is done the seedlings flourish, along with birds and insects.
You have the only house I've been to in Afghanistan where you enter directly into the kitchen.
Typically in Afghan homes the kitchen is an outhouse shed, since the fumes from the charcoal-burning stoves are unpleasant, and cooking - done by women, of course - is a low-status activity. I wanted to bring the kitchen into the main house, so I converted the large entrance hall. I installed a modern gas stove, built a breakfast bar, so friends can chat with me while I'm cooking, and added a wall of open shelves to hold all my spices and condiments, most of which I've brought back from trips to India, Zanzibar, France and West Africa.
Is the dining room funiture from Afghanistan?
It is from India and Afghanistan. The antique wood-framed and tile-inlaid Venetian mirrors are from Goa and so is the sideboard. The dining room table weighs a ton - it is made from railroad sleepers. It was a nightmare getting it here from India. I eventually flew it in.
The love seat was bought in Kabul from a well-known carpet designer who has branched into furniture design. I had it upholstered in a bold black and white striped kelim made by the nomadic Koochi people.
The circa-1930 gramophone on top of the sideboard is also from India. It works without electricity, which is something that is useful here in Kabul where the municipal power supply is intermittent at best and well-off Afghans and foreigners rely on diesel generators.
Power is a big issue in Kabul, isn't it?
The wastefulness of generators is morally abhorrent. I have tried to limit the use of mine by installing inverters that store a limited amount of energy in car batteries when there is municipal power. These batteries run appliances such as the fridge, computers and TV in the absence of electricity. I'm in the process of building a beach house in South Africa and am trying to incorporate all the lessons I've learnt here regarding energy conservation.
Tell me about your modernist chairs and sofa.
I spotted them by the side of the road at a used furniture shop. I painted the rusted metal black and reupholstered the fabric with white vinyl. Afghans see the style as common but designer friends from abroad have asked where they can find them.
You have a cat. It's not very Afghan to have her indoors, is it?
No. My Afghan colleagues think I am a bit of a loony foreigner. Having pets is utterly alien to them. Shortly after I arrived in Kabul I found Screw (short for the Screwdriver cocktail - it's yellow and she's a ginger cat) in a sewage ditch. It was snowing and she was whimpering because she had been run over by a bicycle. Like all Afghans, she's a survivor - she pulled through and we've been together ever since.
What's the best part of the house when it's 40°C in the summer?
The thick mud walls of old Afghan houses like mine keep the soaring temperatures at bay to some extent. However, I prefer to be outside (as long as there is no dusty windstorm). I had a local carpenter make a large wooden daybed, on which are a kelim and kelim-covered floor cushions, and a low coffee table. One can lounge about on it and read and relax or chat with friends. My other indulgence is a kiddie pool. I spend many summer Friday afternoons on a lilo reading and looking up at the children's kites in the sky.
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Why Pakistan is unlikely to crack down on Islamic militants
By Jonathan S. Landay McClatchy Newspapers August 1, 2008
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration and its allies are pressing Pakistan to end its support for Afghan insurgents linked to al Qaida, but Pakistani generals are unlikely to be swayed because they increasingly see their interests diverging from those of the United States, U.S. and foreign experts said.
The administration sought to ratchet up the pressure last month by sending top U.S. military and intelligence officials to Pakistan to confront officials there with intelligence linking Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence to the Taliban and other militant Islamist groups.
When that failed to produce the desired response, U.S. officials told news organizations about the visit, and then revealed that the intelligence included an intercepted communication between ISI officers and a pro-Taliban network that carried out a July 7 bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, the Afghan capital.
The United States and Britain privately have demanded that Pakistan move against the Taliban's top leadership, which they contend is based near Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's Baluchistan Province, said a State Department official and a senior NATO defense official, who both requested anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly.
Pakistan has been given "a pretty unequivocal message" to end ISI support for the militants and shake up the top ranks of the intelligence agency, the senior NATO defense official said.
On Friday, however, Pakistan vehemently rejected the allegations of ISI involvement in the Indian Embassy blast, which killed 41 and injured 141.
U.S. officials and experts said there's little chance that Pakistan will take any of the actions it's been asked to take.
"There is a limit to what we can do in Pakistan," said the State Department official.
"The fact that we're reduced to trying to send messages to the Pakistanis by putting stories in (newspapers) tells you we don't have any good options," said a former senior intelligence official knowledgeable about South Asia. "It also suggests that the high-level, face-to-face contacts haven't worked so far. The trouble is, these kinds of public threats are likely to backfire."
For one thing, the Taliban and other groups allied with al Qaida could respond to any Pakistani crackdown by stepping up attacks inside Pakistan, which is battling Islamic extremist violence, U.S. officials and experts said.
Furthermore, they said, Pakistan's nearly dysfunctional, feud-riddled civilian government has little power over the Army and the ISI. The latest evidence was a botched attempt under U.S. pressure to put the agency under the Interior Ministry before Prime Minister Yousaf Gilani's three-day visit to Washington this week.
Pakistani generals and other leaders are also infuriated by President Bush's pursuit of a strategic relationship with India, their foe in three wars, as embodied by a U.S.-Indian civilian nuclear cooperation pact that won United Nations approval Friday, the U.S. officials and experts said.
"One thing we never understood is that India has always been the major threat for Pakistan," said former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlain, now the president of the Middle East Institute.
Pakistan is alarmed by India's close ties to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and its growing influence in Afghanistan, where a $750 million Indian aid program includes the construction of a strategic highway that will open the landlocked country to Indian goods shipped through ports in Iran.
Pakistan, which refuses to allow Indian products through its port of Karachi, has long coveted Afghanistan as a market, a trade route to central Asia and a rear area for its army in any new conflict with India.
"Pakistan over the last several years has increasingly come to believe that it is being encircled by India and a U.S.-India-Afghan axis," said Seth Jones, an expert with the RAND Corp., a policy institute.
For these reasons, Pakistan's military leaders may have decided to scale back their cooperation with the Bush administration's war against terrorism and boost support for the Taliban and other militant groups.
"We have created a set of perverse incentives for the Pakistanis to continue their support for the Taliban," said a U.S. defense official, who requested anonymity to speak frankly. "Pakistan does not view the United States as a long-term player in the region and certainly doesn't view Pakistan's strategic interests as congruent with ours, and that divergence is getting larger, not smaller."
Without a strategy to allay Pakistan's fears, U.S. officials and experts warned, there's little point in sending more U.S. and NATO troops to Afghanistan as Bush, Democratic candidate Barak Obama and his GOP rival, John McCain, all advocate.
Pakistan vehemently denies backing the Taliban and other insurgents, pointing out that it's lost hundreds of troops in U.S.-funded counter-insurgency offensives.
But many Afghan and U.S. officials scoff at Pakistan's denials, charging that the Taliban leadership operates undisturbed in Quetta and nearby tribal areas with ISI support, guidance, money and weapons.
Bush, anxious to maintain Pakistani support in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and other al Qaida leaders, apparently believed that Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, the former Army chief, would rein in the ISI.
But that hope has proved to be misplaced. Truces forged by the ISI and the Pakistani army freed Taliban and other fighters to fight in Afghanistan, where the worst violence since the 2001 U.S. intervention is claiming higher U.S. casualties than in Iraq for the first time.
On Friday, five more NATO troops were reported killed in eastern Afghanistan, a sector where U.S. troops are stationed.
Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and CIA Deputy Director Stephen R. Kappes went to Pakistan to confront Prime Minister Gilani, Army Chief of Staff Ashfaq Kayani and ISI Director Lt. Gen. Naveed Taj with the intelligence linking ISI officers to the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan.
The Americans also documented other support that ISI officers have been giving the Taliban and other militant groups, including advance warnings of U.S. missile strikes in Pakistan's tribal region, said the State Department official and senior NATO defense official.
"There is good evidence that elements of the ISI have re-engaged with the Taliban," said the senior NATO defense official.
Gilani and his delegation heard similar complaints in Washington, according to American and Pakistani officials. Pakistan Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar told a television interviewer that Bush asked during a White House meeting, "Who is in control of ISI?"
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Taliban militants kidnap district chief in E Afghanistan
KABUL, Aug. 2 (Xinhua) -- Mohammed Ghias Haqmal, the district chief of Marawar district in eastern Afghanistan's Kunar province, was kidnapped by Taliban militants on Friday night, Shafiq Hamdam who works for the international troops in east Afghanistan told Xinhua.
Meanwhile, the purported Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahaid claimed responsibly for that abduction.
Shafig Hamdam also said that an attack on a logistic convoy in east Afghanistan on Friday left one civilian dead and wounded three others including one Afghan soldier.
Kunar, the eastern frontier province of Afghanistan suffered several conflicts and violence on Friday while a roadside bomb struck a U.S.-led Coalition vehicle in Sauki district and left four foreign soldiers dead.
"The incident occurred in Sauki district Friday evening when a convoy of the Coalition forces passing the area. Aas a result, four soldiers and their Afghan colleague were killed," Hamdam told Xinhua.
Afghanistan has witnessed the surge of Taliban attacks on international and Afghan troops during past weeks when the anti-government militants continue to demonstrate their strength through suicide and roadside bombings.
Escalating insurgency and violent incidents have left around 2,500 people dead since January this year in the war-torn country.
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Ulema ask US to accept failure in Afghanistan
Daily Times (Pakistan) August 2, 2008
PESHAWAR: Ittehad Ulema-e-Afghanistan, an organisation of Afghan refugee religious scholars, has urged the US to declare its failure in Afghanistan and immediately withdraw NATO forces from the country, saying that the people of Afghanistan are able to reconstruct their homeland.
According to a pamphlet issued to press on Friday, the Afghan ulema led by Abdullah made three demands from President Bush.
The first demand is to announce US failure in Afghanistan; the second is to withdraw US and allied forces from Afghanistan and the third is to compensate the Afghan government for killing of thousands of people and damaging their houses and property.
“Let the Afghans be free and give them an opportunity to rebuild their country,” the Ittehad Ulema-e-Afghanistan said, adding that after US forces’ arrival and attacks in Afghanistan, the situation became from bad to worse.
It further said that jihad had become obligatory for all the Muslims whether men or women as the non-Muslims were trying to occupy Afghanistan and use it for their bad designs in the region.
The organisation said that atrocities have doubled after the US invasion on Afghanistan and vowed that through jihad they will free their nationals from the US and allied forces’ atrocities.
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British Muslims fighting UK forces in Afghanistan: report
August 2, 2008
London (PTI): British Muslims are part of the Taliban militia fighting against UK security forces in Afghanistan, a top British commander, who served in the restive country, has said. "There are British passport holders who live in the UK who are being found in places like Kandahar," said Brig. Ed Butler, who spent six months commanding British forces in Afghanistan.
UK security forces have found evidence that British Muslims are actively supporting the Taliban and al-Qaeda in attacks on coalition forces in southern Afghanistan, Brig Butler was quoted as saying by the Daily Telegraph newspaper on Saturday.
When British forces deployed to Helmand province in 2006, Brig Butler warned the government that there was a strong possibility that UK troops would end up killing Muslims who held British passports and were fighting with the Taliban and al-Qaeda, the report said.
According to the report, the commander said British Muslims are helping the Taliban force fighting against the country's troops deployed under the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in southern Afghanistan. Earlier this year, it was revealed that RAF Nimrod spyplanes monitoring Taliban radio signals in Afghanistan had heard militants speaking with Yorkshire and Midlands accents, the report said.
"While my troops have not actually found British passports on enemy dead there has been a suspicion that with the high number of Taliban casualties they have needed to recruit a lot of foreign fighters and some of these are likely to be of British-Muslim descent," one officer said in the report in the British daily.
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Afghanistan: Poppy destruction aiding Taliban, says think-tank
London, 1 August (AKI) - The forced eradication of poppy crops in Afghanistan is fuelling support for the Taliban and the insurgency, according to an international policy think-tank.
The London-based Senlis Council, which has field offices in Kabul and several other Afghan cities, says the eradication of crops was failing farmers, increasing violence and also compromising the safety of international troops.
Paul Burton, head of policy analysis at Senlis, told Adnkronos International (AKI) that poppies should be cultivated for the village-based production of morphine.
Senlis has developed a Poppy for Medicine project model for Afghanistan as a means of bringing illegal poppy cultivation under control in an immediate, yet sustainable manner.
Burton told Adnkronos International (AKI) cultivation was currently dominated by "narco barons" and criminal elements.
"We have never encountered a rich Afghan family," Burton told AKI. "They are forced into a destructive cycle by some of the worst elements that operate in Afghanistan."
Senlis has identified two sites - in the two southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar - for a potential pilot programme.
It has developed an economic proposal it claims would enable villagers, government officials and international agencies, to secure the entire manufacturing process, from the seeds to the final medicine tablets.
They would then be exported from local villages to Kabul and international markets in tablet form.
"This would create sustainable development and alternative employment away from the Taliban," Burton said. "It would keep farmers in gainful employment."
Burton said support was growing for the council's proposal but needed to win the backing of the Afghan government and its international allies.
Senlis says Afghanistan’s opium crisis is the key to the international community’s successful stabilisation and development of the country.
By supporting forced poppy eradication, it says the US-led international community has aggravated the worsening security situation.
According to data compiled by Senlis, Afghanistan produced 92 percent of the world’s total illegal opium in 2006, directly involving at least 13 percent of the country’s population.
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Soldiers start Afghanistan tour
Saturday, 2 August 2008 13:32 UK BBC News
Soldiers based in the west Midlands have begun their tour of duty in Afghanistan.
About 250 members of the 22nd Signal Regiment have flown out to Helmand, where the Army is fighting the Taleban.
They have been joined by 15 members of the Territorial Army, 35th Signal Regiment (Volunteers), from Coventry.
They will be stationed at various bases for the next six months providing communications for the front-line troops and mobile units.
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Badghis government income up by 30%
Written by www.quqnoos.com Saturday, 02 August 2008
Provincial income to exceed Afg5.5 m in first quarter due in part to stronger management
Government tax income in Badghis Province has increased by a staggering 30% in the first quarter of the year, which has reached more than Afg5.5 million.
The tax collector of Badghis province, Muhammad Shah Shafiq, said the development of management systems, and providing new income sources, are the key reasons for the increase of government income in the first three months of the year.
He said according to ministry of finance programs, the province’s tax income was expected to be Afg4.25 million in the first quarter of the year, but when the ministry of finance enforced new tax laws, the government tax incomes in the province increased.
Based on information provided by the customs of the province, the province’s total customs incomes was Afg18 million last year, but it was expected to be exceed Afg21 million this year.
The deputy governor of Badghis, Abdul Ghani Sabir, said the increase in the province’s taxes reveals that the management systems have improved in the province, but he also said that lack of security in some the province’s districts, and lack of infrastructure and facilities, are among the reasons which have had negative impacts on tax collections in the province.
With those issues tackled the income could be even higher in the future.
He added that out of seven 7 districts in the province, including the province’s provincial capital, 4 of them are at times subject to violence at the hands of the ‘government’s enemies’, a term often used to refer to the Taliban.
The deputy governor of Badghis said one of the problems in collecting taxes in the province, is lack of technical equipment, and the government has made a lot of promises to fill this gap, but so far has been unable to do so.
The government’s total income throughout the country has reached Afg8.6 billion in the first three months of this year, which shows a 27% increase of of last year’s total tax income for the first quarter.
Head of the media department of the finance ministry, Aziz Shams, said about Afg3.9 billion from the total amount is obtained through customs, and the rest is attained through other sources such as company taxes, individual taxes, rental taxes and other sources.
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"Dead or alive."
U.S. blunders on Bin Laden will have a heavy cost, author says
Canada.com, Canada Mike Blanchfield Canwest News Service Friday, August 01, 2008
WASHINGTON-U.S. President George W. Bush uttered that threat days following the 9-11 attacks vowing that his country's No. 1 enemy, Osama bin Laden, would be captured.
But nearly seven years later, and with just five months before the Bush presidency ends, bin Laden remains at large. The al-Qaida leader, who credits himself as the mastermind behind the suicide jetliner attacks on New York and Washington from his safe haven in southern Afghanistan, remains a free man with a new base of operations - Pakistan.
Bush's nemesis is alive and well and likely living in the tribal areas of a country that have become the new centre for the reconstituted al-Qaida insurgency against foreign troops in Afghanistan. This has had dire consequences for Canada, which has seen 88 soldiers and a diplomat killed in the three years since the country deployed to Kandahar, the spiritual heartland of the Taliban.
As Pakistan's and the region's leading journalist, author Ahmed Rashid writes in his new book, Descent Into Chaos, the full-blown insurgencies in Pakistan form a bigger crises than existed before 9-11.
"Bush's historical legacy will be one of failure," he writes.
Seth Jones, chief researcher of the Rand Corp., who has repeatedly visited the region in recent years, said "an al-Qaida core out of this area has targeted most major western countries in recent years."
Jones cited Pakistan as the source of foiled al-Qaida plots in Spain and in France in 2008, in Germany and in Denmark in 2007, the 2006 attempt to blow up jetliners bound from London to the U.S., as well as the successful attacks on the London transit system in 2005 that killed more than 50 people.
"From a Canadian standpoint too, the ability and the resurgence of an al-Qaida in Pakistan that's got a transnational international focus, especially on the West means this should be of concern to Ottawa as much as it is to Washington, to London and Berlin, Madrid and other western countries," Jones explained in an interview.
The growing U.S. impatience with Pakistan was obvious this past week as Yousuf Raza Gilani, the country's new prime minister, visited Washington for three days - and the Pentagon launched a missile strike aimed at a senior al-Qaida target in the tribal belt the day he arrived.
Meanwhile, the New York Times reported that the head of the CIA's clandestine operations told Pakistani officials that it had collected evidence that elements within its Inter-Services Intelligence agency helped stage the massive attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul, earlier this summer.
"The inability so far to deal with the resurgence of the Taliban and al-Qaida on Pakistani soil, as well as the questions about how much of an ally, especially Pakistan's intelligence service is, are subjects that came up with the visit this week," said Jones. "This pressured discussion should have happened years ago when this information started to come out, not waiting to 2008."
That pressure was largely brought to bear behind the scenes, as Bush welcomed Gilani as a "strong ally" in the war on terror.
"We are committed to fight against those extremists and terrorists who are destroying and making the world not safe," Gilani replied. "This is our own war. This is a war which is against Pakistan."
The ungovernable tribal belt of western Pakistan has become more than the new base for al-Qaida; American intelligence believes it is the hub for the terrorist group's new, more highly sophisticated communications and propaganda network. If the old, pre-9-11 al-Qaida in Afghanistan was about learning to shoot and how to blow things up, the new Pakistani version is as much about waging a new propaganda war on the West - one that occasionally has featured new audio messages from bin Laden himself.
It took U.S.-led forces less than two months following the 9-11 attacks to overthrow Afghanistan's former Taliban rulers, and that emboldened the Bush administration to look elsewhere, particularly Iraq, which it invaded in March 2003.
"At the same time," said Jones, "what you had was a massive exodus of key senior al-Qaida leaders into Pakistan as well as Taliban leaders like Mullah Omar."
That light U.S. military footprint in Afghanistan has been widely blamed for allowing bin Laden to escape into Pakistan, sometime in late 2001. U.S. warplanes brought down all the military might of its new bunker-busting bombs on bin Laden's Tora Bora mountain redoubt in the rugged eastern Afghan mountains.
On the ground, however, the U.S. relied on Afghan fighters as its proxy warriors and it is widely assumed that bin Laden was either able to buy his way to freedom, or simply to outwit the thinly stretched local fighters.
By 2002, the U.S. considered its job done in Afghanistan and began planning for the Iraq invasion, scaling back military resources. In his book, Rashid writes that the U.S. diverted more than 100 special forces commandos, originally sent to Afghanistan to find bin Laden, to Iraq.
As Iraq continued to implode, al-Qaida was on the mend in Pakistan.
This occurred despite the $10-billon worth of spending the U.S. has poured into Pakistan since 2001. In the spring of 2006, al-Qaida launched its renewed offensive in southern Afghanistan, where Canada's 2,500 troops were stationed. Suicide bombings, and civilian and military casualties, began to skyrocket.
This was further aggravated by a controversial deal in the fall of 2006 between Pakistan and tribal leaders in North Warziristan. Pakistani military leaders signed a truce with local commanders on the condition they stop attacks on Afghanistan.
The deal failed miserably as incursions into Afghanistan have since soared.
This past spring, NATO formally decried the creation of "safe havens" in Pakistan as the greatest threat to its mission, while in recent months, U.S. casualties in Afghanistan began to exceed those suffered in Iraq for the first time.
The two men vying to succeed Bush, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain, have committed to a renewed focus on America's largely forgotten war in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is planning feverishly for the drawdown on troops in Iraq, while trying to find at least the 1,000 soldiers Bush promised to the Afghanistan mission at this year's NATO summit, if not thousands more that its generals say is required.
"Over the long run, what's critical is staying power," said Jones. "What's the U.S. force presence going to look like in 2009, especially at the end of 2009? These are questions that have not been answered."
As for bin Laden, Jones believes he has less to do with the day-to-day operations and planning of the new al-Qaida operation in Pakistan, but the fact that he remains at large still carries large symbolic importance.
"The fact that he's still alive is not a good sign. It does show some intelligence problems and challenges with the U.S. and the Pakistanis," Jones said.
"The greater issue is to deal with the organization rather than capturing or killing bin Laden himself."
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Where is electricity?
Anis 08/01/2008
You may not find a country in the world where residents of its capital city use lanterns at night. It is only Kabul that descends into the abyss of darkness at night despite the flow of billions of dollars. Residents of Kabul are deprived of power supply and only 5 per cent of the population in Afghanistan has electricity. This is despite the fact that Afghanistan has many energy sources.
It is obvious that neither a computer nor a factory can operate without electricity. Neither can one make a contact nor can one speak of the semblance of modern life in the absence of electricity.
Those who are pampered by the international community and make a living with dollars can produce electricity by purchasing big power generators, get special orders to be supplied with power in their homes and use their electric appliances as they please.
Let us forget about the rich and the powerful, who have 24 hours of power supply, and nobody is able to disconnect their supply of power. The Azadi Printing Press and other newspapers, such as Anis, Hewad, Eslah and Kabul Times, which are all the government's mouthpiece and are at the same time discharging their duty by keeping the people informed of the situation, are forced to use generators most of the days and nights.
However, the loved ones, the affluent and those who have occupied government positions by virtue of their power and wealth must have electricity 24 hours a day. Is it not strange? Neither Water and Energy Ministry officials nor anyone else can justify this illegal supply of power.
The total amount of power supplied in our country does not exceed 225MW. This is happening in a situation when our countrymen need 15000MW of electricity and we are capable of generating 23000MW of electricity if we build dams and install turbines.
Recently, the power supply has become worse than the previous six years. The Water and Energy Ministry wants to justify its position by issuing statements and making different excuses. But it is only the second month of summer. The situation is worse than last year this time. Power is supplied only to some parts of the city and that is also for a few hours only. We still do not know what happened to plans to buy power from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The power supply from the neighbouring countries to Afghanistan will continue at least for three years. Given the sensitive situation that we are in today nobody knows what the situation would be in three years' time in the region.
No economy can develop without power and that is why no investor intends to invest in our production sector. We are becoming more and more reliant on Pakistani and Iranian products and our country has become a consumer of the products of the neighbouring countries.
Water and Energy Ministry officials speak with pride about the lack of water, lack of power generators, drought and sometimes of their inability to sign contracts to buy fuel. This is what all officials of the ministry have talked about over the past six to seven years.
It should not be forgotten that we are importing power from neighbouring countries in a situation when our relations have never been stable with them all the time. Our reliance on their power supplies is tantamount to handing them over the power to switch the button of our lives off whenever they please. We have to realize that we do not need to allow them to press our injured finger whenever they want. Everyone is asking: where is electricity?
Originally published by State- owned Afghan newspaper Anis, Kabul, in Dari 30 Jul 08 pp 1,8. BBC Monitoring
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