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Afghan leader fires top general
Sun Aug 24, 7:55 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - President Hamid Karzai fired Sunday the top army general for western Afghanistan and a commando commander after a military operation involving air strikes that he said had killed more than 89 civilians.
Afghanistan says 90 civilians killed in missile strikes
Sun Aug 24, 9:33 AM
HERAT, Afghanistan (AFP) - An official investigation has found that more than 90 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed in coalition air strikes this week, the Afghan religious affairs minister said Sunday.
US expresses regret of Afghan deaths
Sun Aug 24, 10:20 AM ET
CRAWFORD, Texas (AFP) - The United States expressed regret Sunday for any civilian deaths from US-led military operations in Afghanistan, without confirming reports of nearly 90 killed in one incident this week.
Iran condemns bombardment of residential houses in Afghanistan
Tehran, Aug 24, IRNA
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi here on Sunday strongly condemned the savage bombardment of Afghan residential houses claiming the lives of innocent women, children and elderly people.
Afghan chief rails against airstrike
Karzai says a U.S. attack killed up to 95 civilians, but the U.S. says only five innocents died in the battle with rebels.
Minneapolis Star Tribune, Minnesota - World By CARLOTTA GALL New York Times August 23, 2008
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN-President Hamid Karzai on Saturday strongly condemned a coalition airstrike that he said killed up to 95 Afghan civilians -- including 50 children -- in a village in western
10 Taliban fighters killed in Afghan clashes
By AMIR SHAH, Associated Press Writer Sun Aug 24, 11:11 AM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - Taliban militants attacked a patrol of U.S.-led coalition troops in northern Afghanistan, while insurgents came under fire by NATO aircraft after attacking an Afghan army
Taliban turns lethal: 101 US deaths in Afghanistan
By JASON STRAZIUSO, Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan - Taliban insurgents once derided as a ragtag rabble unable to match U.S. troops have transformed into a fighting force — one advanced enough to mount massive conventional attacks
NATO-chartered helicopter crashes in Afghanistan
Sun Aug 24, 6:07 AM ET
KABUL (Reuters) - A NATO-chartered helicopter crashed on Sunday in Afghanistan's eastern Kunar province, near the border with Pakistan, causing some casualties, a spokesman for the alliance said.
Taliban win over locals at the gates of Kabul
While clashes in remote Helmand dominate the headlines, another battle is being waged by the insurgents on Kabul's doorstep. There, the Taliban are winning support by building a parallel administration, which is more effective, more popular and more brutal than the government's
Taleban winning war, says Zardari
By Owen Bennett-Jones BBC News, Islamabad Sunday, 24 August 2008
The Pakistani Taleban have "the upper hand" and should be put on the list of banned organisations in Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto's widower, Asif Ali Zardari, has said.
Pakistan rejects truce offer by militants in tribal area: official
Sun Aug 24, 10:35 AM ET
KHAR, Pakistan8 (AFP) - Pakistan on Sunday rejected a ceasefire offered by Taliban militants in a troubled tribal region near the Afghan border as troops killed seven rebel fighters, officials said.
AFGHANISTAN: Sharifa, "If we had roads, cars and clinics in our village… my baby would not have died"
24 Aug 2008 11:40:04 GMT
FAIZABAD, 24 August 2008 (IRIN) - Sharifa, 23, was banded on a wooden ladder and taken to a hospital in Faizabad, the provincial capital of Badakhshan Province, northeastern Afghanistan
New Afghan crisis may be real election issue
TheChronicleHerald.ca, Canada By RALPH SURETTE Sat. Aug 23, 2008
SUDDENLY the political air is even more unstable than we knew. Last week, I was saying that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has unexpectedly taken to itching for an election – even if he has to break his
Uprooted civilians beg Pakistan, militants to talk
The Associated Press By NAHAL TOOSI 24/08/2008
PESHAWAR, Pakistan-Some of the women were eating lunch, while others were busy making bread.
Kabul's past may be Afghanistan's future
Small programs, like a Canadian-backed one to refurbish historic areas, may be the way to go in war-torn Afghanistan
GRAHAM THOMSON Canwest News Service; Edmonton Journal Sunday, August 24, 2008
One of the more promising signs for Afghanistan's future lies, perhaps, in its past, in the heart of old Kabul - buried under decades of filth, garbage and neglect.
Media: Unprecedented Beijing
Olympics has special meaning to Afghanistan
KABUL, Aug. 24 (Xinhua) -- The Afghan private TV channel Saba broadcast the closing ceremony of Beijing Olympic Games alive on Sunday, and said the unprecedented and impressive
Taliban win over locals at the gates of Kabul
While clashes in remote Helmand dominate the headlines, another battle is being waged by the insurgents on Kabul's doorstep. There, the Taliban are winning support by building a parallel administration, which is more effective, more popular and more brutal than the government's
The Observer - International Jason Burke in Maidan Shah Sunday August 24 2008
US-led troops arrest local mullah - official
Written by www.quqnoos.com Sunday, 24 August 2008
District head says he has no idea why coalition troops arrested 16 men
US-LED coalition forces have arrested 16 people, including a mullah and a religious scholar, in the eastern province of Nangarhar, officials said.
Police seize tonnes of stone used to make guns
Written by www.quqnoos.com Sunday, 24 August 2008
Two men arrested after security officials discover tonnes of chromite
(PAN) Security officials have arrested two men after discovering more than 60 tonnes of the precious chromite stone, which is used to make weapons, officials said.
Rise in looting 'worrying', ministry says
Written by www.quqnoos.com Saturday, 23 August 2008
Precious artefacts snatched six times in last month, Culture Ministry says
THIEVES have stolen historic monuments and grave stones in the western province of Herat on six separate occasions in the last month, the Ministry of information and Culture says.
Police and army 'kill 15 rebels' in Helmand
Written by www.quqnoos.com Saturday, 23 August 2008
Operation launched to rid district of Taliban militants, official says
AFGHAN policemen and soldiers have killed 15 rebels during an on-going operation in the southern province of Helmand, security officials and residents in the area said.
Back to basics on Afghanistan
Globe and Mail, Canada ALEXANDRE TRUDEAU August 23, 2008
Alexandre Trudeau should stick to filmmaking. The documentarian and political heir could not have been more wrong when he argued this week that Canada should end its "aggressive"
Annual drama festival kicks off in Kabul
Written by www.quqnoos.com Sunday, 24 August 2008
Fifth theatre festival brings hopes of political and social reform
THE FIFTH annual drama festival kicked off in Kabul on Saturday as the capital geared up to go to the theatre.
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Afghan leader fires top general
Sun Aug 24, 7:55 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - President Hamid Karzai fired Sunday the top army general for western Afghanistan and a commando commander after a military operation involving air strikes that he said had killed more than 89 civilians.
In a decree, Karzai "orders the immediate removal" of General Jalandar Shah Behnam, head of the corps for western Afghanistan, and Major Abdul Jabar, a statement from the president's office said.
The move came after the incident in Azizabad village in the western province of Herat on Friday involving air strikes by the US-led coalition targeted at Taliban militants, it said.
"In the tragic air strike and irresponsible and imprecise military operation in Azizabad village ... more than 89 of our innocent countrymen, including women and children, were martyred," the statement said.
The interior ministry previously put the death toll at 76, including around 50 children and 19 women.
The coalition has insisted only 30 militants were killed but has said it is looking into the incident.
An investigation team set up by Karzai was in the area on Sunday to meet locals and find out what had happened.
Karzai had also ordered the two men he had sacked to Kabul for investigation, the statement said, giving no other details.
If the toll is confirmed, it would be one of the deadliest for civilians since international troops arrived in Afghanistan in 2001 and toppled the hardline Taliban regime now waging a growing insurgency.
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Afghanistan says 90 civilians killed in missile strikes
Sun Aug 24, 9:33 AM
HERAT, Afghanistan (AFP) - An official investigation has found that more than 90 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed in coalition air strikes this week, the Afghan religious affairs minister said Sunday.
The Afghan and US-led coalition military forces involved in the anti-Taliban operation that called in the strikes Friday had also not coordinated their actions, Minister of Hajj and Islamic Affairs Nematullah Shahrani told AFP.
President Hamid Karzai appointed the minister to head an investigation into the incident in the western province of Herat after Afghan officials said high numbers of civilians were killed but the coalition said only 30 militants died.
"We went to the area and found out that the bombardment was very heavy, lots of houses have been destroyed and more than 90 non-combatants including women, children and elders have died," the minister said.
"Most are women and children," he added.
Karzai earlier Sunday said 89 civilians had been killed in the strikes in Shindand district. He also fired two senior Afghan army commanders in the area.
The toll is one of the highest for civilians since international troops arrived in Afghanistan to topple the hardline Taliban regime in late 2001.
Shahrani said his investigation was continuing and he was due to meet US Special Forces who had also been involved in the operation.
"They have claimed that Taliban were there. They must prove it," the minister said. "So far it is not clear for us why the coalition conducted the air strikes," he said.
He said his preliminary investigation had also found that there was no coordination between the Afghan and international troops involved in the action.
"The foreign troops are not coordinating their operations with Afghans, they just don't do it," he said.
The strikes have drawn angry reactions from locals, who demonstrated on Saturday, and from parliament.
Such incidents have a "very bad impact," said the minister.
"It causes the people to distance themselves from the government," he said, adding Karzai had ordered Shahrani's team to pay 100,000 afghanis (2,000 dollars) for each person killed.
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US expresses regret of Afghan deaths
Sun Aug 24, 10:20 AM ET
CRAWFORD, Texas (AFP) - The United States expressed regret Sunday for any civilian deaths from US-led military operations in Afghanistan, without confirming reports of nearly 90 killed in one incident this week.
"We regret the loss of life among the innocent Afghanis who we are committed to protect," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said as US President George W. Bush spent time on his Texas ranch.
He spoke after Afghan President Hamid Karzai fired two top Afghan army commanders after coalition air strikes he said killed more than 89 civilians in one of the deadliest such incidents since 2001.
"These reports are being investigated in Afghanistan and we'll look for the results of that investigation," Fratto said.
"Coalition forces take precautions to prevent the loss of civilians, unlike the Taliban and militants who target civilians and place civilians in harm's way," the spokesman said.
In a presidential decree, Karzai ordered "the immediate removal" of the top army general for western Afghanistan and a commando commander after Friday's joint Afghan and US-led coalition operation in Herat province.
General Jalandar Shah Behnam, head of the corps for western Afghanistan, and commando Major Abdul Jabar, were fired for "negligence and concealing facts," it said, giving no details.
"In the tragic air strike and irresponsible and imprecise military operation in Azizabad village in Shindand district more than 89 of our innocent countrymen, including women and children, were martyred," the statement said.
The interior ministry previously put the death toll at 76, including around 50 children and 19 women.
An official investigation has found that more than 90 civilians were killed, according to the Afghan religious affairs minister.
The coalition has insisted only 30 militants were killed.
In a separate statement earlier from Bagram airbase near Kabul, the coalition said it was "aware of allegations that the engagement in the Shindad District of Herat province Friday may have resulted in civilian casualties," and said it is looking into the incident.
If the number of dead cited by Karzai is confirmed, it would be one of the highest tolls for civilians since international troops arrived in Afghanistan in 2001 and toppled the hardline Taliban regime.
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Iran condemns bombardment of residential houses in Afghanistan
Tehran, Aug 24, IRNA
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi here on Sunday strongly condemned the savage bombardment of Afghan residential houses claiming the lives of innocent women, children and elderly people.
The savage move was in violation of all human values, Qashqavi said while condemning the attack.
According to the Information and Press Bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he said, "Unfortunately, the US has made an unjustifiable mistakes by bombarding Afghan residential houses in west, center, south and east.
They have blatantly violated human rights and trampled upon all human values through their barbaric and inhuman act, he said.
US neo-conservatives who have launched an improper move in dealing with insecurity and violence in Afghanistan, have taken a harsh military approach, said Qashqavi.
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Afghan chief rails against airstrike
Karzai says a U.S. attack killed up to 95 civilians, but the U.S. says only five innocents died in the battle with rebels.
Minneapolis Star Tribune, Minnesota - World By CARLOTTA GALL New York Times August 23, 2008
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN-President Hamid Karzai on Saturday strongly condemned a coalition airstrike that he said killed up to 95 Afghan civilians -- including 50 children -- in a village in western Afghanistan on Friday, and said his government would be announcing initiatives to prevent such heavy losses of civilian life.
"Afghanistan takes every necessary measure to avoid and stop such tragic accidents happening in the future," he said.
Government officials who traveled to the village of Azizabad in Herat Province on Saturday said the death toll had risen to 95 from 76, making it one of the deadliest bombing strikes on civilians in six years of the war.
Originally the U.S. coalition said the battle killed 30 militants, including a wanted Taliban commander, but U.S. coalition spokeswoman Rumi Nielson-Green said Saturday that five civilians -- two women and three children connected to the militants -- were among the dead.
The United States said it would investigate.
"Obviously there's allegations and a disconnect here. The sooner we can get that cleared up and get it official, the better off we'll all be," said U.S. coalition spokesman 1st Lt. Nathan Perry.
The competing claims were impossible to verify because of the remote and dangerous location of the battle site. Complicating the matter, Afghan officials are known to exaggerate civilian death claims for political payback, to qualify for more compensation money from the United States or because of pressure from the Taliban.
On Saturday, when Afghan soldiers tried to hand out food and clothes in Azizabad, villagers started throwing stones at the soldiers, who then fired on the villagers and wounded several.
"The people were very angry," said Ghulam Azrat, 50, a school official in the village. "They told the soldiers, 'We don't need your food, we don't need your clothes. We want our children. We want our relatives. Can you give it to us? You cannot, so go away.'"
A spokesman for Afghan police in western Afghanistan, Rauf Ahmadi, said the soldiers fired into the air.
The Karzai government has expressed outrage over airstrikes that have led to civilian deaths, as popular support for the coalition presence in Afghanistan dwindles. The tension comes at a delicate time for the American-led coalition, which is facing a resurgent Taliban with a perceived shortage of troops, leading it to rely more on air power to battle militants.
"This puts us in a very difficult position," said one government official, asking not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter. "It provides propaganda to the Taliban and if they don't take responsibility, it actually helps the Taliban."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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10 Taliban fighters killed in Afghan clashes
By AMIR SHAH, Associated Press Writer Sun Aug 24, 11:11 AM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - Taliban militants attacked a patrol of U.S.-led coalition troops in northern Afghanistan, while insurgents came under fire by NATO aircraft after attacking an Afghan army outpost in the south. At least 10 militants were killed in the fighting, officials said.
Violence has spiked around Afghaninstan in recent weeks, and the Taliban have stepped up attacks against international troops. Last week the U.S. military suffered its 101st death, when Sgt. 1st Class David J. Todd Jr., 36, of Marrero, La., died in a gunfire attack. This year will likely be deadlier for U.S. troops than last year's record 111 deaths.
In the north, coalition troops returned fire after being attacked by militants while on patrol in the volatile Tagab valley of Kapisa province — near where the Taliban killed 10 French troops on Tuesday, said coalition spokesman 1st Lt. Nathan Perry.
Rahimullah Safi, the province's deputy governor, said six militants were killed in the clash, while Perry said "multiple militants" were killed.
In southern Helmand province Sunday, militants attacked an Afghan army unit that was guarding an outpost in Helmand's Musa Qala district. NATO aircraft responding to the attack killed four militants, the military alliance said in a statement.
In the eastern Kunar province, a civilian Mi-8 supply helicopter contracted by NATO-led troops crashed shortly after takeoff Sunday, killing one person on board and wounding three others, the alliance said in a statement.
It said the helicopter was leaving a NATO base in the area when it crashed. The statement gave no furtehr details.
More than 3,400 people — mostly militants — have been killed in insurgency-related violence this year, according to figures from Western and Afghan officials.
This year will likely be the deadliest for international troops since the 2001 invasion. Some 188 international soldiers, including the 101 Americans, have died in Afghanistan this year, according to an Associated Press count. That pace should far surpass the record 222 international troop deaths in 2007.
President Hamid Karzai, meanwhile, sacked two Afghan army officers following a joint Afghan-coalition operation in the country's west that he said killed at least 89 civilians.
Karzai ordered the Defense Ministry to investigate Gen. Jalandar Shah, the corps commander for the Afghan National Army in Herat, and Maj. Abdul Jabar, the commander of the commando unit involved in the Friday raid in Azizabad village of Herat's Shindand district.
An Afghan human rights group that visited the site of the operation said Saturday that at least 78 people were killed in clashes and an airstrike. The Ministry of Interior has said 76 civilians died, including 50 children under the age of 15, though the Ministry of Defense said 25 militants and five civilians were killed.
Karzai said Sunday that at least 89 civilians were killed.
Originally the U.S. coalition said the battle killed 30 militants, including a wanted Taliban commander, but U.S. coalition spokeswoman Rumi Nielson-Green said Saturday that five civilians — two women and three children connected to the militants — were among the dead.
The U.S. said it would investigate.
___
Associated Press writer Fisnik Abrashi contributed to this report.
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Taliban turns lethal: 101 US deaths in Afghanistan
By JASON STRAZIUSO, Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan - Taliban insurgents once derided as a ragtag rabble unable to match U.S. troops have transformed into a fighting force — one advanced enough to mount massive conventional attacks and claim American lives at a record pace.
The U.S. military suffered its 101st death of the year in Afghanistan last week when Sgt. 1st Class David J. Todd Jr., a 36-year-old from Marrero, La., died of gunfire wounds while helping train Afghan police in the northwest. The total number of U.S. dead last year — 111 — was a record itself and is likely to be surpassed.
Top U.S. generals, European presidents and analysts say the blame lies to the east, in militant sanctuaries in neighboring Pakistan. As long as those areas remain havens where fighters arm, train, recruit and plot increasingly sophisticated ambushes, the Afghan war will continue to sour.
"The U.S. is now losing the war against the Taliban," Anthony Cordesman, of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote in a report Thursday. A resurgent al-Qaida, which was harbored by the Taliban in the years before the Sept. 11 attacks, could soon follow, Cordesman warned.
Cordesman called for the U.S. to treat Pakistani territory as a combat zone if Pakistan does not act. "Pakistan may officially be an ally, but much of its conduct has effectively made it a major threat to U.S. strategic interests."
An influx of Chechen, Turkish, Uzbek and Arab fighters have helped increased the Taliban's military precision, including an ambush by 100 fighters last week that killed 10 French soldiers, and a rush on a U.S. outpost last month by 200 militants that killed nine Americans.
Multi-direction attacks, flawlessly executed ambushes and increasingly powerful roadside and suicide bombs mean the U.S. and 40-nation NATO-led force will in all likelihood suffer its deadliest year in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, on a visit to Kabul last week, said he knows that something must "be raised with Pakistan's government, and I will continue to do so." French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who rushed to Afghanistan after the French attack, warned Thursday that "terrorism is winning."
"Military sanctuaries are expanding in the (Pakistani) tribal areas," Gen. David McKiernan, the American four-star general in charge of the 50,000-strong NATO-led force here, told The Associated Press last week. McKiernan has called for another three brigades of U.S. forces — roughly 10,000 troops — to bolster the 33,000 strong U.S. force here.
Complicating relations between the Afghan government and the U.S., last week a joint Afghan-U.S. military operation in Herat province killed around 90 civilians, President Hamid Karzai's office says. The U.S. said it was investigating.
Some 188 international soldiers have died in Afghanistan this year, including the 101 Americans, according to an Associated Press count. This year's toll is easily on track to surpass the record 222 international troop deaths in 2007.
U.S. critics of the Afghan government are becoming more vocal. Rep. Jim Marshall, a Georgia Democrat who is a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said last week that Karzai's government "is not nearly where it should be."
"I'm not willing to have a long-term U.S. commitment, a substantial U.S. commitment to Afghanistan without seeing substantial reform and improvement in the government," Marshall said on a visit to Kabul.
Karzai's influence barely extends outside the capital. The Interior Ministry is seen as uniformly corrupt, and opium poppy cultivation has soared in recent years.
McKiernan said that "there is a sense of real frustration with the government of President Karzai. People were expecting gains over time but they aren't feeling much."
Karzai admitted in an AP interview last week that Afghanistan still lacks a properly functioning government and that corruption is rampant. He said he will run for a second term next year in hopes of addressing those problems.
The president also blamed the rise in Afghan violence directly on Afghanistan's and NATO's neglect of the sanctuaries, training grounds and financial center of the Taliban — a clear reference to Pakistan.
The U.S. is believed to have launched several missile strikes into Pakistan's tribal areas this year in an attempt to take out militant leaders. Missiles destroyed a suspected hide-out in South Waziristan, near the Afghan border, on Wednesday, killing at least five people.
Seth Jones, a RAND Corp. analyst who has studied Afghanistan for years, said Taliban militants have simply become better at war after seven years of practice against U.S. and NATO forces. Fighters, particularly militant commanders, are also using their sanctuary in Pakistan to devastating effect, he said.
"I think there's got to be a strike on the leadership structure, including Mullah Omar, Siraj Haqqani, and (Gulbuddin) Hekmatyar," who reside in Pakistan, said Jones. "As the insurgency has become more sophisticated, many of the senior leaders continue to exist, and they are one of the reasons the insurgency is getting better."
Marshall, the Democratic congressman, said Pakistan itself is feeling threatened by the increase in militancy on its soil and wants to see insurgent leaders taken out.
"You've seen the progression here," Marshall told AP. "Initially we wouldn't even fire back across the (Pakistan) border. We changed that. We're firing back. We're pursuing, and now acting on intelligence we are prepared to use discreet weaponry to take out high value targets" in Pakistan.
"They want the minimal American presence to help them do that," he said.
Rep. Chris Shays, a Republican member of the House Homeland Security committee, said it appears the United States is making some of the same mistakes in Afghanistan that it did in Iraq, such as underfunding the training of the Afghan army. He also called for an increase in the use of "soft power" like aid work and "some sort of effort in reconciliation."
"I don't pretend to know enough about how that would be involved," he said in a visit to Kabul last week, "but the bottom line is that as I look at this issue, I don't see how we can succeed on our present track."
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Associated Press reporters Kathy Gannon and Rahim Faiez contributed to this report from Kabul.
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NATO-chartered helicopter crashes in Afghanistan
Sun Aug 24, 6:07 AM ET
KABUL (Reuters) - A NATO-chartered helicopter crashed on Sunday in Afghanistan's eastern Kunar province, near the border with Pakistan, causing some casualties, a spokesman for the alliance said.
The civilian helicopter crashed soon after taking off from a military base in rugged area of the province, the spokesman said, ruling out any hostile action.
He had no details about the type of the helicopter, number of people on board or identity of the casualties. Kunar is part of the main bastion for Taliban Islamists fighting the Afghan government and foreign troops backing it.
A spokesman for the Taliban said the group had shot down the helicopter.
The militants have shot down a number of aircraft since 2001, when U.S.-led troops overthrew Taliban's government, but frequently claim credit for crashes attributed to technical failure.
(Reporting by Sayed Salahuddin; Editing by David Fox)
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Taliban win over locals at the gates of Kabul
While clashes in remote Helmand dominate the headlines, another battle is being waged by the insurgents on Kabul's doorstep. There, the Taliban are winning support by building a parallel administration, which is more effective, more popular and more brutal than the government's
Jason Burke in Maidan Shah The Observer (UK), Sunday August 24 2008
Ismatullah stood at the crossroads in the dusty Afghan town of Maidan Shah, squinted in the blinding noon sun and stroked his long, grey beard. 'What the governor said in our meeting was very good,' he said diplomatically. 'He quoted the Koran very correctly. But I am not sure how much power he has. Now I am going home - and the Taliban control my district, not him.'
The tribal elder lives only a few miles from Maidan Shah, in a part of Afghanistan which, until a few months ago, was considered under the authority of President Hamid Karzai's central government. Maidan Shah is a typical Afghan town - a scruffy huddle of mechanics' workshops, stalls selling out-of-date Iranian jam, the charred frames of two fuel trucks burnt out in a recent insurgent attack, and a clutch of battered barrows from which destitute farmers in rags sell bruised apples and tiny brown pomegranates. A dozen men lie on the flat floor of the single restaurant amid clouds of flies, sip smeared glasses of tea and stare hard at strangers.
Follow the main road back towards the Afghan capital and in 15 minutes you will be at the narrow pass in the ring of craggy, dusty hills around the city known for centuries as 'the Gates of Kabul'. If there is a front line between the insurgents and the government, it is here, just a dozen miles south of the capital. There is no clear front line, of course - which is part of the problem.
In the UK, it is the south of Afghanistan, where British troops are fighting, that has received most attention. Yet last week's battle in which 10 French soldiers died took place only an hour's drive from Kabul. It is in places like Maidan Shah, not remote provincial Helmand, that the struggle for Afghanistan will be won or lost. 'The war in the south is basically a tough, bitterly fought stalemate,' admitted one senior Nato officer last week. 'It is around Kabul that the Taliban must now be stopped.'
Reporting from these contested zones is difficult. Even on the outskirts of Kabul, Westerners and government officials risk attack or kidnap. However, scores of interviews and two journeys through the embattled areas south of the capital help to establish at least a partial picture of what is happening on the ground.
Although news bulletins inside and outside Afghanistan are dominated by bomb blasts or clashes, the real strength of the insurgents lies not in their ability to ambush convoys or plant roadside bombs but in the parallel administration they have managed to establish in huge areas across the south and east of Afghanistan. There they make the law, enforcing a harsh, but sometimes welcome, order while intimidating any dissenters. Their strategy is deliberate and long-term. From this new position of strength, they are building durable networks of support. What has happened in Wardak province shows how they have done it.
The only cases that come before Amanullah Ishaqzai, a government judge in Wardak, are those which require an official stamp or disputes among the province's mainly Shia Muslim Hazara ethnic minority, who have historically suffered at the hands of the Sunni Pashtun tribes who make up the bulk of the Taliban. Most of the province's 800,000 inhabitants, mainly peasants, go to the insurgents for rough but often effective justice.
'I can't blame them,' Ishaqzai said. 'A court case in the government system takes five years and many bribes. The Taliban will settle it in an afternoon.'
Every villager has stories of how the Taliban settle the myriad property disputes which mark Afghan society. In scores of cases, Ishaqzai said, he had convened a traditional tribal council with an Islamic scholar as a judge rather than send cases to higher courts. 'That way at least they get a decision,' he said. The clerics involved are often senior Taliban commanders.
It is not just civil cases. According to Mohammed Musa Hotak, an MP from Wardak, the Taliban arrived in a village in the southern district of Jalreez last week, arrested three well-known thieves, tarred their faces and paraded them as 'an example'. The men would probably be hanged, Hotak said. Last year human rights groups in Afghanistan estimated that the Taliban had executed between 70 and 90 people in the villages they control and punished thousands more for criminal acts.
Often such acts are popular. According to Hotak, the first act of the Taliban in the villages near his home had been to announce that they would take
responsibility for law enforcement. 'They said they were responsible for every chicken,' Hotak said. 'People believe them. When they kill a robber, everyone is happy.'
A government minister talked of how in his own village earlier this month a shopowner had complained to the Taliban after being robbed and had got his goods back after the insurgents simply circulated a 'night letter', one of the pamphlets that have been the Afghan insurgents' favoured means of communication for decades, saying that they knew the thief and would hang him publicly. A second shopkeeper who went to the local authorities obtained nothing but a beating when he belatedly asked the insurgents' help. Death threats are common, officials said, sometimes delivered by text message.
Ismatullah the elder was clear. 'When the Taliban were in power, you could drive all the way to Kandahar [Afghanistan's second city, 250 miles away] with a bag of money and no one would touch you,' he said. 'Now the government are thieves. Since 2001 nothing has changed, except security is worse.'
The road to Kandahar has certainly seen better days. Ruined by the fighting that racked Afghanistan in the 1990s, rebuilt at a cost of £200m since, it is now pocked with the scars of bomb blasts and many of the new bridges have been destroyed in recent months. Each week government and coalition convoys are attacked - 50 trucks were burnt in one go last month, another dozen last week. Minutes after the governor of Wardak, interviewed in his heavily protected office-cum-residence in Maidan Shah, assured The Observer that the road was safe to travel, a convoy carrying a high-ranking government official was shot up 10 minutes' drive away.
The Taliban patrol openly a few hundred metres from the highway. In the more remote districts, villagers said, the local police often conclude deals with the underpaid, demoralised, poorly equipped Afghan National Police.
'The police know that, if they stay in their station and do nothing, the Taliban leave them alone and only launch attacks in the next district,' said one elder from the small town of Chak. The Wardak police chief, Abdul Yamil Muzzafaruddin, denied the claim.
In some areas they control, the Taliban enforce their strict interpretation of Islamic law, banning music and television. Men who do not wear long beards are roughed up or threatened. Wedding parties find unwelcome guests arriving to check for 'immoral behaviour' and to help themselves to the food. Schools, especially those for girls, are regularly burnt. In other areas, the local commanders are more lenient, restricting themselves to punishing 'criminals' and 'spies'. One commander contacted by The Observer through an intermediary complained of insufficient funds for 'investment' (and ammunition).
In one village in the Chak district, locals protested to the Taliban earlier this year that if their school was destroyed their children would never escape the crushing poverty of rural Afghanistan. 'The villagers said, "We want our children to be engineers and doctors",' said Roshanak Wardak, an MP and doctor who lives in Sayyatabad on the southern limits of the province. 'The Taliban told them that they had no need of such people, just religious scholars.'
However, refugees who have fled from the province to Kabul said that exploitation of local communities by the Taliban was rare. 'They ask the landowners for food, but not us,' said Roz Ali, 42. 'Anyway we have nothing to give.' However, taxes are sometimes levied on farm production - including opium.
This parallel government has not come about by chance. It is the result of a careful, four-phase strategy that the Taliban put into practice across much of Afghanistan, first in their southern heartland and later further north.
First came consolidation. 'Back in 2002 everyone was scared of the coalition forces and hopeful for change,' said Abdul Hadi, an elder from Chak district. 'The Taliban kept a low profile. Many fled to Pakistan.'
By 2005, senior figures began returning to Wardak, reactivating old networks and preaching that a new jihad was necessary to fight the 'Christian invaders'. Exploiting local power struggles, anger at corrupt local authorities and their own authority as educated clerics among an illiterate population, Taliban leaders were able to extend their influence. By the end of last year they moved to the next phase: recruitment.
Though fiercely loyal to the government, Roshanak, the MP, needs close contacts with the Taliban to survive. 'I know a lot of them,' she said. 'There are the old Taliban and the clerics, and then there are now the young guys. They are angry, poor, violent teenagers. They are easy to recruit.'
In some instances, young men are pressured to join the ranks of the insurgents, sometimes for a single operation. Others are attracted by cash offered by the Taliban high command in Pakistan. The younger men provide the foot soldiers and mid-level command that the leadership needs to develop a real presence on the ground.
Overlaid on the network of local Taliban are other groups, too - from neighbouring provinces, the south, even from overseas. These latter are often the most extreme. Some units include Pakistanis, others 'freelance jihadi militants' from the Middle East, some connected to al-Qaeda. Then there are also pure criminals, borrowing the label of Taliban.
Intelligence estimates obtained by The Observer conservatively place the strength of the Wardak Taliban at about 800 lightly armed men, split into dozens of different factions. Though significant, such a force should be easy for the 70,000 heavily armed soldiers of the coalition to destroy. But it isn't.
From the offices of Halim Fedayi, the new governor of Wardak province, the sound of heavy machine guns can often be heard. Nato troops from Turkey use the hills behind as a firing range. 'Wardak has an undeservedly bad reputation due to media exaggeration,' Fedayi, a former aid worker who took up his post a month ago, said in fluent English. 'I have hundreds of development projects, banking investment, parks and clinics being built. Wardak is a good news story. But resources are scarce and demands are enormous.'
Sitting on a metal bed on a small hill a few miles south of the governor's office, Salim Ali, a 20-year-old policeman, forced a slim smile. With three colleagues, for a pound a day, he guards the road passing through the 'gates of Kabul'. 'There's less traffic these days,' he says. 'People are frightened.'
Indeed, Salim Ali's vigil may already be redundant. There are signs that the insurgents are penetrating the capital itself. Ten days ago authorities reported a 'rocket strike' on the newly refurbished airport. Only it was not rockets, which have a range of many miles, that were fired at the terminal but rocket-propelled grenades, launched from 200 metres away. General Mohammed Shah Paktiwal, head of Kabul's CID, said 'terrorists' were responsible.
The incident may have been a one-off - the suicide bombs that hit Kabul last year are less frequent - but the insecurity in the Afghan capital is palpable. Though few genuinely think the Taliban could once again capture the city as long as foreign troops remain in the city, the cries of 'Allahu Akbar' or 'God is great' from pious locals during a nocturnal lunar eclipse last week prompted a major security alert. The authorities were scared that the Taliban had penetrated Kabul in force.
The alarm bells ringing are being heard. The United States has announced a £5m quick-impact reconstruction plan for Wardak. The province is also the target of a new Afghan local governance initiative. Last week Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reaffirmed their nations' commitment to Afghanistan.
But a series of very senior figures in the international military, aid and diplomatic community in Kabul said they feared that the radical change in strategy now necessary to secure success in Afghanistan was unlikely to happen. 'There are simply too many structural and ideological blockages,' said one.
And the fear and the insurgents remain. 'We sent a deputation to the Taliban leadership in Pakistan asking them why they were so focused on Wardak', Hotak, the MP, said. 'We told them that capturing Maidan Shah would just cause them problems. They did not respond.'
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Taleban winning war, says Zardari
By Owen Bennett-Jones BBC News, Islamabad Sunday, 24 August 2008
The Pakistani Taleban have "the upper hand" and should be put on the list of banned organisations in Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto's widower, Asif Ali Zardari, has said.
He says the world and Pakistan are losing the war on terror.
"It is an insurgency", he said, "and an ideological war. It is our country and we will defend it.
"The world is losing the war. I think at the moment they (the Taleban) definitely have the upper hand.
"The issue, which is not just a bad case scenario as far as Pakistan is concerned or as Afghanistan is concerned but it is going to be spreading further. The whole world is going to be affected by it."
Mr Zardari's strong remarks came shortly after the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) put his name forward as its presidential nominee.
The president is elected by the members of parliament and the four provincial assemblies, and Mr Zardari says he is confident he has the numbers he needs to win on 6 September.
Asif Zardari spent more than a decade in prison on murder and corruption charges but he insisted that the cases had failed because they were politically motivated.
He also dismissed reports that the Swiss authorities were still considering whether they should pursue a money-laundering case against him there.
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Pakistan rejects truce offer by militants in tribal area: official
Sun Aug 24, 10:35 AM ET
KHAR, Pakistan8 (AFP) - Pakistan on Sunday rejected a ceasefire offered by Taliban militants in a troubled tribal region near the Afghan border as troops killed seven rebel fighters, officials said.
The militants in the Bajaur region offered a unilateral ceasefire as a two-week-old military operation left some 500 people dead.
"We have directed our militants to stop attacks against the government and security forces in Bajaur from today," Maulvi Omar, spokesman for the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (Taliban Movement), told AFP.
The decision has been taken following talks with tribal elders, he said in a telephone call from unknown location.
"The jirga (elders' council) insisted that Taliban should stop fighting in the interest of the people of Bajaur."
The jirga has "assured" that troops will also suspend shelling and bombing raids in the area, he said.
"We are ready for talks with the government and the truce is an important development towards dialogue," Omar said.
But Advisor to Prime Minister on Interior Affairs Rehman Malik immediately rejected the offer.
"We will not accept the ceasefire," Malik told reporters in Islamabad.
"We do not believe in their verbal commitments. If they are sincere they should first surrender," he said, adding that tribal militants have violated their pledges in the past after troops stopped their operations.
Pakistani forces moved into Bajaur, a known hub of Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants, earlier this month. The government says at least 500 militants have been killed since then.
Troops fired artillery shells and gunship helicopters pounded suspected militant hideouts almost daily since the operation was mounted on August 6.
The offensive has displaced nearly 200,000 people in the region so far.
Pakistan's fragile coalition government, which forced US ally president Pervez Musharraf to resign on August 18, is under heavy international pressure to tackle Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants.
US and Afghan officials say the rebels have sanctuaries in the rugged tribal border regions of Pakistan that they use to train, regroup and launch attacks on international troops in Afghanistan.
Pakistani troops killed seven more militants as clashes continued in the tribal belt and Taliban rebels slaughtered an alleged spy, officials said Sunday.
Troops launched a mortar attack on suspected militant hideouts in Bajaur overnight after their checkposts came under attack, security officials said.
"Five militants were killed in the mortar fire targeting suspected militant hideouts," an official said, requesting anonymity.
Officials said that Taliban militants in the area slit the throat of a 35-year-old man after accusing him of spying for US troops across the border in Afghanistan.
Militants also attacked two security posts in another tribal district of South Waziristan late Saturday, wounding three soldiers, officials said adding that two militants were killed in retaliatory strikes.
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AFGHANISTAN: Sharifa, "If we had roads, cars and clinics in our village… my baby would not have died"
24 Aug 2008 11:40:04 GMT
FAIZABAD, 24 August 2008 (IRIN) - Sharifa, 23, was banded on a wooden ladder and taken to a hospital in Faizabad, the provincial capital of Badakhshan Province, northeastern Afghanistan, where she gave birth to a stillborn child and was told that she would never have children again.
After Sierra Leone, Afghanistan has the worst maternal mortality rate in the world with 1,600 deaths for every 100,000 live births (at least 24,000 deaths annually), according to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). Badakhshan has the worst infant and maternal mortality rates in the country.
Sharifa told IRIN about the pain she suffered on her way to Faizabad hospital:
"It was my fourth pregnancy but I felt more pain than before. I had delivered my other three children at home and I was expecting to do the same for the fourth.
"But the pain was terrible this time and then I found out that one of my baby's hands had come out of my body! I was in extreme pain after that.
"There is no doctor or clinic in our village [in Yamgan District, about 200km from Faizabad] so my family decided to take me to a clinic in Jurm [District].
"There is no road or car in our area so they wanted to take me by donkey. I couldn't sit on the donkey because my baby's hand was hanging out of me.
"Then I was banded tightly to a wooden ladder and men carried me on their shoulders to the clinic [in Jurm] where doctors said I should be taken to Faizabad hospital.
"In Jurm my husband rented a car to drive us to Faizabad. I don't remember how long we travelled until we reached Faizabad but I remember I was crying out in pain for hours all the way and my face was covered with mud because my tears mixed with road dust as we were driving.
"I fainted before I was brought into Faizabad hospital and when was I resuscitated I was told the baby had already died. It was a boy - a handsome boy - I was told.
"Doctors told me that I'll never be pregnant again.
"If we had roads, cars and clinics in our village, I would not have suffered that pain and my baby would not have died."
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New Afghan crisis may be real election issue
TheChronicleHerald.ca, Canada By RALPH SURETTE Sat. Aug 23, 2008
SUDDENLY the political air is even more unstable than we knew. Last week, I was saying that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has unexpectedly taken to itching for an election – even if he has to break his own fixed-date law by doing it – mainly because he wants to avoid being hit by the worsening economic situation by budget time next spring.
As it turns out, there’s another situation melting down quickly and ready to blow with unknown electoral consequences that he’d like to avoid: Afghanistan.
It may have blown already after this week’s events: three more Canadians dead after the recent killing of aid workers that was followed with a taunting "open letter" to Canadians, warning us to get out or else; the spectacular killing of 10 elite French paratroopers in an operation that revealed the coalition’s disorganization; a highly sophisticated attack against a U.S. base involving 10 suicide bombers; an earlier daring prison break that liberated hundreds of fighters, and many more.
Alarm bells are going off like crazy at the highest levels, as the Taliban strike repeatedly and with increasing impunity.
An editorial in the New York Times this week stated: "The news out of Afghanistan is truly alarming Unless the United States, NATO and its central Asian allies move quickly, they could lose this war." A recent Pentagon report painted a bleak security picture, saying the Taliban and its allies have "coalesced into a resilient insurgency."
The Senlis Council, which tracks the Afghan war, says that in well over half the country, the Taliban is the governing authority, is controlling more and more local ecomomies and infrastructure, "and is gaining political legitimacy." It says the Taliban’s boast of taking Kabul soon may in fact be possible – signalling the West’s defeat. The Brussels-based International Crisis Group, of which former prime minister Kim Campbell and Canadian jurist Louise Arbour are members, says the insurgency is "gaining support among Afghans who once opposed it," and that the Taliban have become savvy in the propaganda game, selecting targets for their publicity effect and extending to such little things as "ring tones that play songs praising jihad." The open letter to Canadians would be a part of that game.
There’s more. The Taliban, who have been using Pakistan as a staging ground, are striking with effect there as well, as both the country and the government wallow in division – notably, a suicide attack killed 59 this week at Pakistan’s largest munitions plant, increasing political instability.
So what about us – and particularly our political parties – in all this? Obviously, the above narrative is going to be hard to square with assurances that we’re "winning hearts and minds," even if we are winning some. And we remember the fierce debate last winter over whether to leave in 2009 – a debate temporarily put to rest by the Manley Report, which recommended that we indeed leave unless we got more NATO support, which we did.
In that light, the proposed solution to an Afghan mission in danger of failing, with wide consequences for the Western world, is going to be hard to sell also: send more troops. The pressure will be intense. NATO "needs to step up its military effort," says the Times, in what is likely to be the line of response. "With Russia threatening to redraw the post-Soviet map of Europe, this is not the time for NATO to forfeit its military credibility by losing a war."
For Harper, here’s another tricky one. The Afghan crisis is the consequence of the invasion of Iraq, one of history’s most catastrophic mistakes, engineered by his buddy, George W. Bush, and his cronies. Troops were pulled out of Afghanistan in the original "mission accomplished" and sent to invade Iraq for no good reason, giving the Taliban room to return. And the sophisticated terrorist techniques now aimed at coalition forces with deadly effect were learned in Iraq.
What effect would a new uproar over our role in Afghanistan – and indeed in the Western coalition – have on a looming election? That’s hard to say, but a U.S. example is not promising. As Russia invaded Georgia, Republican candidate John McCain made some tough comments and drew even with leader Barack Obama in the polls. That is, one-note militarism might still be able to rally half-plus-one of the voters on grounds that the solution to a failed policy is more of the same. Could it work in Canada? Stephen Harper will no doubt try. As for the opposition’s positions – more development aid, pull out, buy the poppy crop – the question now is: With the barbarians nearly at the gates of Kabul, is it too late for all that?
And it’s not just us. Thanks to Harper’s buddies, the entire Western world is between a rock and a hard place.
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Uprooted civilians beg Pakistan, militants to talk
The Associated Press By NAHAL TOOSI 24/08/2008
PESHAWAR, Pakistan-Some of the women were eating lunch, while others were busy making bread.
Then, the bombs fell like rain.
Pakistan's latest military offensive against Taliban-led insurgents in its northwest had reached 60-year-old Haya Bibi and her extended family. They soon abandoned their mud homes in the Bajur tribal region and joined an exodus of tens of thousands of civilians walking and driving across rugged terrain to escape a 17-day operation some now call a war.
Bibi and some 45 relatives have spent the past week in sweltering, mosquito-infested tents in Pir Piai village near Peshawar city in one of more than 20 relief camps the government says are for the displaced.
Like others among the nearly 1,000 people at this camp, Bibi won't utter a critical word about the masked militants in her area. Pressed on whether she blames the government or the Taliban for her current state, she diplomatically says both, and requests the two sides try to work things out peacefully.
"We are the sufferers," a tearful Bibi says, fingering prayer beads while surrounded by a crowd of nodding relatives. "We don't want the fighting."
Aiding — and not disillusioning — those displaced by the war on terror is a huge challenge facing Pakistan as it tries to wipe out the insurgent presence in Bajur, a rumored hiding place for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri.
U.S. officials say tribal regions such as Bajur are turning into safe havens for militants involved in attacks on American and NATO troops in Afghanistan.
Pakistani officials have been reluctant to divulge details of the operation in Bajur. Death tolls given more than a week ago put the number of suspected insurgents dead at more than 460 along with 22 paramilitary troops killed. No civilian death toll was given, though witnesses have reported dozens.
The information has been difficult to confirm because of the remote, dangerous nature of the fiercely independent and deeply conservative tribal areas, where the federal government has long had limited authority.
But if the numbers given so far are accurate, it is one of the bloodiest episodes since Pakistan first deployed its troops along its volatile border with Afghanistan in support of the U.S.-led war on terror nearly seven years ago.
Attempts to reach the army spokesman Saturday were not immediately successful. But previously officials have said army helicopter gunships and jets have been pounding militant positions since Aug. 6, when scores of insurgents attacked a military outpost.
The offensive comes amid exceptional political turbulence. Pervez Musharraf, a stalwart supporter of the U.S. in the war on terror, recently was forced to resign as president, and the young ruling coalition is on the brink of collapse.
And in Washington, American officials are worried about the new civilian government's resolve to fight militants.
Estimates vary, but at least 50,000 to possibly more than 200,000 people have fled Bajur and nearby Mohmand tribal region, officials say. Many are staying with relatives, while others are at camps facing difficult conditions and the prospect of disease.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said thousands of people had also shifted across the border into Afghanistan.
The U.S., which has pressed Pakistan to forcefully crack down on insurgents in its tribal belt, has declared the resulting civilian uprooting a "disaster" situation, and given $50,000 for aid such as gas stoves and utensils.
The conditions in the two camps visited by The Associated Press were dismal.
In Bibi's camp, for instance, the nearly 1,000 people, more than half of them children, are crowded into classrooms and tents in a school compound. Babies' skins were red raw with mosquito bites. In the sweltering heat, one woman lay shivering under a blanket — a sign of the malaria medical officials say has sprung up.
Diarrhea is ravaging the population, camp officials said, and the smell of fecal matters hangs in the air. There's no air conditioning, which is especially tough on women, who are trying to observe their cultural and religious traditions of staying indoors and out of the sight of unrelated men.
Every day, more families are arriving. On Friday, children helped clear grass to allow space to set up more tents.
"It is so hard here," said Jamshid Khan, a 20-something with a bum leg who reached the camp five days ago. "We want to go back as soon as possible."
Pakistan's Taliban movement, meanwhile, has claimed responsibility for at least three major attacks in recent days, calling them revenge for the Bajur operation and a military offensive in Swat. One attack, a twin suicide bombing at a weapons manufacturing complex near the capital, Islamabad, killed 67 people.
Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the information minister for Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, which lies next to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and is absorbing many of the displaced, called the civilian exodus a "gesture of cooperation from the local people," to allow the operation against the insurgents to avoid "collateral damage."
"To us, the main objective is to bring peace and stability in this area," he said. "We will fight until the last victory."
In interviews at two camps visited by the AP, virtually no one would criticize the Taliban or openly support the military action.
It was difficult to say why — whether they were scared, sympathetic, or genuinely not bothered by the insurgents, or whether tribal loyalties wouldn't allow them to speak ill of the militants to a foreigner.
Did the Taliban force them to give up male members to fight the jihad? "No."
Did the Taliban threaten the people? "No — they leave us alone, and we leave them alone."
Did the Taliban punish men without beards or women who wandered out alone? "No ... they might encourage people to observe Islamic law, but most of us do so anyway."
Is the Interior Ministry chief correct when he says more than 3,000 armed militants — many of them from other countries — are in Bajur? "We don't want to take sides."
Three women, including Bibi, said they saw militants offer to pay drivers to give lifts to civilians trying to escape.
Sartaj Khan, a slender 21-year-old with a sad face in the Pir Piai camp, said, "If anybody says anything bad about the Taliban, they'll go after them."
Not far away, in a separate camp on the outskirts of Charsadda town, more than 150 people are staying in classrooms in a vocational school building.
Khan Wali, a 29-year-old with one wife and four children, said the military operation could lead to more sympathy for the Taliban.
"Why is the government bombing our homes? The Taliban want to bring peace to the area," he said.
He and others also decried suspected U.S. missile strikes that they said have killed innocent people in compounds allegedly inhabited by Taliban and al-Qaida fighters.
"It is because of these atrocities that people are giving the militants more and more sympathy," said Mohammad Shoaib, a 23-year-old manual laborer.
Associated Press Writer Riaz Khan contributed to this report.
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Kabul's past may be Afghanistan's future
Small programs, like a Canadian-backed one to refurbish historic areas, may be the way to go in war-torn Afghanistan
GRAHAM THOMSON Canwest News Service; Edmonton Journal Sunday, August 24, 2008
One of the more promising signs for Afghanistan's future lies, perhaps, in its past, in the heart of old Kabul - buried under decades of filth, garbage and neglect.
Two metres underneath, to be precise.
In the ancient commercial district of Murad Khane - in a project where Canada is the biggest single donor - more than 200 workers are digging away layers of dirt and debris that have built up over the years in this labyrinth of mud-walled alleys and boxlike buildings. At places, the accumulated earth is two metres deep, choking old passageways and raising the floor level of aged courtyards so high that people had to stoop through doorways.
In a technique that would make recyclers smile in Canada, workers are using the recovered earth as the main ingredient in a traditional cement to rebuild the crumbling walls of the district's historic buildings. Murad Khane is rising like a phoenix from its own ashes.
Equally exceptional is that this reconstruction program supported by Western donations has no guards, no guns, no checkpoints. In a country where many Westerners wouldn't go out without a helmet and body armour, Murad Khane's security looks remarkably naked. The only protective gear in sight are hard hats.
The project's security might lie in the fact it is so discreet. In a country suspicious of outsiders, the project doesn't look remotely Western. Its heart might be foreign money but its face is Afghan. The workers on site are mainly local. Even the head architect, who was born in Germany and has an office in London, is of Afghan descent.
To help solidify support among the people who live in this rundown neighbourhood, the project operates an emergency repair program to help locals fix up their own homes that share the decrepit state of the historic buildings.
"The mission is to regenerate Afghanistan's historic areas and revive the traditional economy," said John Elliott, a spokesperson for the Turquoise Mountain Foundation which runs the project. "We're working in the middle of Kabul, the very centre of the centre and there's just a chance that if you can give some kind of economic underpinning to Murad Khane - an economic purpose, an educational purpose - it might act as a catalyst for the rest of the city and the rest of Afghanistan."
That sounds like a lofty goal for a program with a budget of just $4 million a year, compared with the billions being spent by Western countries and aid groups. But Turquoise Mountain thinks modest projects are the way to go in Afghanistan.
"What we need is a patient approach to development here," said Elliott. "I think it has to do with having smaller, more discreet projects. And if you could replicate that across the board, rather than having huge programs which cost hundreds of millions of dollars, having smaller, lower risk projects, then you might achieve something."
Turquoise Mountain started out as something of an experiment in 2006 under the leadership of former British diplomat and author, Rory Stewart. Since then, it has attracted attention, accolades and an increasingly long list of donors, including the Canadian government, which is providing $3 million in funding over four years - making Canada the largest single financial supporter.
While Murad Khane is the most visible sign of Turquoise Mountain's work, the core of the foundation is a school tucked away in a corner of Kabul where master craftsmen teach apprentices the arts of Afghan wood working, ceramics, calligraphy and jewellery making.
The Centre for Traditional Afghan Arts and Architecture has 100 students who spend three years learning their craft along with English and how to run a business.
The goal is to graduate not only skilled workers but entrepreneurs. Students are already turning out intricately carved support columns and decorative panels as part of the restoration work on historic buildings. The students are also helping to build a new home for themselves. The centre plans to relocate to the refurbished Murad Khane district, making the Centre for Traditional Afghan Arts a prominent showpiece for the city and the country.
"If you look at this neighbourhood and other parts of the old city, it is absolutely important to keep and preserve these buildings not just because they're beautiful buildings but there's a connection between the people now and the people in (the) past," said Sayed Majidi, the head of architecture at the Murad Khane site. "If you look at the history of Afghanistan, if you look at the culture that still exists and is expressed in these neighbourhoods, it is a quite important and serious project for all Afghanistan, not just for Kabul."
The five-year project to reclaim Murad Khane is half-way done and is proving to be symbolic of the country's struggle to dig itself out of three decades of war, destruction and neglect.
The work is being done slowly, laboriously, by hand, one shovel full at a time.
"We're not taking on the whole world and not trying to change the world overnight," said Elliott. "The only prudent thing to do is (to) take it one step at a time."
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Media: Unprecedented Beijing
Olympics has special meaning to Afghanistan
KABUL, Aug. 24 (Xinhua) -- The Afghan private TV channel Saba broadcast the closing ceremony of Beijing Olympic Games alive on Sunday, and said the unprecedented and impressive Olympics is specially meaningful to the war-torn Afghanistan as a historic Olympic medal has been attained.
"The post-Taliban country has seized the 21st place among over 200 countries by its first ever bronze medal of Taewondo in Beijing," Saba TV said.
"The bronze medalist Rohullah Nikpay is the pride of whole Afghanistan and his success shows the capability of the Afghan people to the rest of the world," it said.
Peikar Farhad, an Afghan journalist told Xinhua, it is the first time he felt so "involved" as the Olympic Games was held in the neighboring China.
"Despite all kinds of difficulties before the Games' opening," he said," the Chinese people showed the China Power to overcome all problems and made a great Olympic Games."
"It is really international and impressive," Abdul Haleem, another Afghan media person said, "it shows the capability of Chinese people."
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Taliban win over locals at the gates of Kabul
While clashes in remote Helmand dominate the headlines, another battle is being waged by the insurgents on Kabul's doorstep. There, the Taliban are winning support by building a parallel administration, which is more effective, more popular and more brutal than the government's
The Observer - International Jason Burke in Maidan Shah Sunday August 24 2008
Ismatullah stood at the crossroads in the dusty Afghan town of Maidan Shah, squinted in the blinding noon sun and stroked his long, grey beard. 'What the governor said in our meeting was very good,' he said diplomatically. 'He quoted the Koran very correctly. But I am not sure how much power he has. Now I am going home - and the Taliban control my district, not him.'
The tribal elder lives only a few miles from Maidan Shah, in a part of Afghanistan which, until a few months ago, was considered under the authority of President Hamid Karzai's central government. Maidan Shah is a typical Afghan town - a scruffy huddle of mechanics' workshops, stalls selling out-of-date Iranian jam, the charred frames of two fuel trucks burnt out in a recent insurgent attack, and a clutch of battered barrows from which destitute farmers in rags sell bruised apples and tiny brown pomegranates. A dozen men lie on the flat floor of the single restaurant amid clouds of flies, sip smeared glasses of tea and stare hard at strangers.
Follow the main road back towards the Afghan capital and in 15 minutes you will be at the narrow pass in the ring of craggy, dusty hills around the city known for centuries as 'the Gates of Kabul'. If there is a front line between the insurgents and the government, it is here, just a dozen miles south of the capital. There is no clear front line, of course - which is part of the problem.
In the UK, it is the south of Afghanistan, where British troops are fighting, that has received most attention. Yet last week's battle in which 10 French soldiers died took place only an hour's drive from Kabul. It is in places like Maidan Shah, not remote provincial Helmand, that the struggle for Afghanistan will be won or lost. 'The war in the south is basically a tough, bitterly fought stalemate,' admitted one senior Nato officer last week. 'It is around Kabul that the Taliban must now be stopped.'
Reporting from these contested zones is difficult. Even on the outskirts of Kabul, Westerners and government officials risk attack or kidnap. However, scores of interviews and two journeys through the embattled areas south of the capital help to establish at least a partial picture of what is happening on the ground.
Although news bulletins inside and outside Afghanistan are dominated by bomb blasts or clashes, the real strength of the insurgents lies not in their ability to ambush convoys or plant roadside bombs but in the parallel administration they have managed to establish in huge areas across the south and east of Afghanistan. There they make the law, enforcing a harsh, but sometimes welcome, order while intimidating any dissenters. Their strategy is deliberate and long-term. From this new position of strength, they are building durable networks of support. What has happened in Wardak province shows how they have done it.
The only cases that come before Amanullah Ishaqzai, a government judge in Wardak, are those which require an official stamp or disputes among the province's mainly Shia Muslim Hazara ethnic minority, who have historically suffered at the hands of the Sunni Pashtun tribes who make up the bulk of the Taliban. Most of the province's 800,000 inhabitants, mainly peasants, go to the insurgents for rough but often effective justice.
'I can't blame them,' Ishaqzai said. 'A court case in the government system takes five years and many bribes. The Taliban will settle it in an afternoon.'
Every villager has stories of how the Taliban settle the myriad property disputes which mark Afghan society. In scores of cases, Ishaqzai said, he had convened a traditional tribal council with an Islamic scholar as a judge rather than send cases to higher courts. 'That way at least they get a decision,' he said. The clerics involved are often senior Taliban commanders.
It is not just civil cases. According to Mohammed Musa Hotak, an MP from Wardak, the Taliban arrived in a village in the southern district of Jalreez last week, arrested three well-known thieves, tarred their faces and paraded them as 'an example'. The men would probably be hanged, Hotak said. Last year human rights groups in Afghanistan estimated that the Taliban had executed between 70 and 90 people in the villages they control and punished thousands more for criminal acts.
Often such acts are popular. According to Hotak, the first act of the Taliban in the villages near his home had been to announce that they would take
responsibility for law enforcement. 'They said they were responsible for every chicken,' Hotak said. 'People believe them. When they kill a robber, everyone is happy.'
A government minister talked of how in his own village earlier this month a shopowner had complained to the Taliban after being robbed and had got his goods back after the insurgents simply circulated a 'night letter', one of the pamphlets that have been the Afghan insurgents' favoured means of communication for decades, saying that they knew the thief and would hang him publicly. A second shopkeeper who went to the local authorities obtained nothing but a beating when he belatedly asked the insurgents' help. Death threats are common, officials said, sometimes delivered by text message.
Ismatullah the elder was clear. 'When the Taliban were in power, you could drive all the way to Kandahar [Afghanistan's second city, 250 miles away] with a bag of money and no one would touch you,' he said. 'Now the government are thieves. Since 2001 nothing has changed, except security is worse.'
The road to Kandahar has certainly seen better days. Ruined by the fighting that racked Afghanistan in the 1990s, rebuilt at a cost of £200m since, it is now pocked with the scars of bomb blasts and many of the new bridges have been destroyed in recent months. Each week government and coalition convoys are attacked - 50 trucks were burnt in one go last month, another dozen last week. Minutes after the governor of Wardak, interviewed in his heavily protected office-cum-residence in Maidan Shah, assured The Observer that the road was safe to travel, a convoy carrying a high-ranking government official was shot up 10 minutes' drive away.
The Taliban patrol openly a few hundred metres from the highway. In the more remote districts, villagers said, the local police often conclude deals with the underpaid, demoralised, poorly equipped Afghan National Police.
'The police know that, if they stay in their station and do nothing, the Taliban leave them alone and only launch attacks in the next district,' said one elder from the small town of Chak. The Wardak police chief, Abdul Yamil Muzzafaruddin, denied the claim.
In some areas they control, the Taliban enforce their strict interpretation of Islamic law, banning music and television. Men who do not wear long beards are roughed up or threatened. Wedding parties find unwelcome guests arriving to check for 'immoral behaviour' and to help themselves to the food. Schools, especially those for girls, are regularly burnt. In other areas, the local commanders are more lenient, restricting themselves to punishing 'criminals' and 'spies'. One commander contacted by The Observer through an intermediary complained of insufficient funds for 'investment' (and ammunition).
In one village in the Chak district, locals protested to the Taliban earlier this year that if their school was destroyed their children would never escape the crushing poverty of rural Afghanistan. 'The villagers said, "We want our children to be engineers and doctors",' said Roshanak Wardak, an MP and doctor who lives in Sayyatabad on the southern limits of the province. 'The Taliban told them that they had no need of such people, just religious scholars.'
However, refugees who have fled from the province to Kabul said that exploitation of local communities by the Taliban was rare. 'They ask the landowners for food, but not us,' said Roz Ali, 42. 'Anyway we have nothing to give.' However, taxes are sometimes levied on farm production - including opium.
This parallel government has not come about by chance. It is the result of a careful, four-phase strategy that the Taliban put into practice across much of Afghanistan, first in their southern heartland and later further north.
First came consolidation. 'Back in 2002 everyone was scared of the coalition forces and hopeful for change,' said Abdul Hadi, an elder from Chak district. 'The Taliban kept a low profile. Many fled to Pakistan.'
By 2005, senior figures began returning to Wardak, reactivating old networks and preaching that a new jihad was necessary to fight the 'Christian invaders'. Exploiting local power struggles, anger at corrupt local authorities and their own authority as educated clerics among an illiterate population, Taliban leaders were able to extend their influence. By the end of last year they moved to the next phase: recruitment.
Though fiercely loyal to the government, Roshanak, the MP, needs close contacts with the Taliban to survive. 'I know a lot of them,' she said. 'There are the old Taliban and the clerics, and then there are now the young guys. They are angry, poor, violent teenagers. They are easy to recruit.'
In some instances, young men are pressured to join the ranks of the insurgents, sometimes for a single operation. Others are attracted by cash offered by the Taliban high command in Pakistan. The younger men provide the foot soldiers and mid-level command that the leadership needs to develop a real presence on the ground.
Overlaid on the network of local Taliban are other groups, too - from neighbouring provinces, the south, even from overseas. These latter are often the most extreme. Some units include Pakistanis, others 'freelance jihadi militants' from the Middle East, some connected to al-Qaeda. Then there are also pure criminals, borrowing the label of Taliban.
Intelligence estimates obtained by The Observer conservatively place the strength of the Wardak Taliban at about 800 lightly armed men, split into dozens of different factions. Though significant, such a force should be easy for the 70,000 heavily armed soldiers of the coalition to destroy. But it isn't.
From the offices of Halim Fedayi, the new governor of Wardak province, the sound of heavy machine guns can often be heard. Nato troops from Turkey use the hills behind as a firing range. 'Wardak has an undeservedly bad reputation due to media exaggeration,' Fedayi, a former aid worker who took up his post a month ago, said in fluent English. 'I have hundreds of development projects, banking investment, parks and clinics being built. Wardak is a good news story. But resources are scarce and demands are enormous.'
Sitting on a metal bed on a small hill a few miles south of the governor's office, Salim Ali, a 20-year-old policeman, forced a slim smile. With three colleagues, for a pound a day, he guards the road passing through the 'gates of Kabul'. 'There's less traffic these days,' he says. 'People are frightened.'
Indeed, Salim Ali's vigil may already be redundant. There are signs that the insurgents are penetrating the capital itself. Ten days ago authorities reported a 'rocket strike' on the newly refurbished airport. Only it was not rockets, which have a range of many miles, that were fired at the terminal but rocket-propelled grenades, launched from 200 metres away. General Mohammed Shah Paktiwal, head of Kabul's CID, said 'terrorists' were responsible.
The incident may have been a one-off - the suicide bombs that hit Kabul last year are less frequent - but the insecurity in the Afghan capital is palpable. Though few genuinely think the Taliban could once again capture the city as long as foreign troops remain in the city, the cries of 'Allahu Akbar' or 'God is great' from pious locals during a nocturnal lunar eclipse last week prompted a major security alert. The authorities were scared that the Taliban had penetrated Kabul in force.
The alarm bells ringing are being heard. The United States has announced a £5m quick-impact reconstruction plan for Wardak. The province is also the target of a new Afghan local governance initiative. Last week Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reaffirmed their nations' commitment to Afghanistan.
But a series of very senior figures in the international military, aid and diplomatic community in Kabul said they feared that the radical change in strategy now necessary to secure success in Afghanistan was unlikely to happen. 'There are simply too many structural and ideological blockages,' said one.
And the fear and the insurgents remain. 'We sent a deputation to the Taliban leadership in Pakistan asking them why they were so focused on Wardak', Hotak, the MP, said. 'We told them that capturing Maidan Shah would just cause them problems. They did not respond.'
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US-led troops arrest local mullah - official
Written by www.quqnoos.com Sunday, 24 August 2008
District head says he has no idea why coalition troops arrested 16 men
US-LED coalition forces have arrested 16 people, including a mullah and a religious scholar, in the eastern province of Nangarhar, officials said.
The district’s head, Mhabat Khan, said on Saturday that the men were arrested in the Chahar Dehi village of Bati Cot district.
He said a religious scholar and the mullah of a local mosque, Maulawi Muhammad Amin, were among those arrested.
Khan said he had no idea why the people were arrested.
Deputy head of the provincial council, Maulawi Abdul Aziz Khairkhwa, confirmed the arrests.
Khairkhwa said he spoke about the arrests with the province’s governor, Gul Agha Shirzai, and the Provincial Reconstruction Team, who promised to release the men as soon as possible.
The coalition were not immediately available for comment.
Earlier this month, US-led troops seized another religious scholar in the province, sparking large demonstrations.
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Police seize tonnes of stone used to make guns
Written by www.quqnoos.com Sunday, 24 August 2008
Two men arrested after security officials discover tonnes of chromite
(PAN) Security officials have arrested two men after discovering more than 60 tonnes of the precious chromite stone, which is used to make weapons, officials said.
Officers from the National Directorate of Security (NDS) found the stones, worth up to $60,000 per tonne, in the central province of Maydan Wardak, which borders the capital Kabul, the governor’s spokesman, Adam Khan Seerat, said.
Seerat said the stones were being smuggled into Pakistan and were seized by NDS officers on Friday before being handed over to the Ministry of Mines.
Two men were arrested in connection with the discovery, sources inside the NDS said.
The governor, Mohammad Halim Fedayee, urged the Ministry of Mines to sign deals with local companies to ensure the protection of the precious stone.
Chromite is used to make weapons as its high resistance to heat means that iron can be melted on its surface.
In June, the minister of mines accused foreigners of smuggling the stone out of Afghanistan.
Minister Mohammad Ibrahim Adil said chromite mines have been discovered in 12 provinces and that a further six provinces are expected to contain the precious stone.
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Rise in looting 'worrying', ministry says
Written by www.quqnoos.com Saturday, 23 August 2008
Precious artefacts snatched six times in last month, Culture Ministry says
THIEVES have stolen historic monuments and grave stones in the western province of Herat on six separate occasions in the last month, the Ministry of information and Culture says.
Most of the precious artefacts snatched from the province’s historic sites date back to the Timurid empire, which ruled over much of the region from the 14th century, the ministry said in its monthly newsletter.
The ministry, which said it was doing everything in its power to clamp down on the thefts, said a 'worrying' trend of well co-ordinated thefts in the province had appeared.
It added that protecting historical sites, monuments and sacred places was the duty of both the Afghan government and the Afghan people.
In June, the owner of a private museum in the province accused the minister of information and culture, Abdul Khurram, of receiving backing from Pakistan’s secret service.
The allegation, made by museum owner Ahmad Shah Sultani, was the latest in an escalating war of words between the museums’ officials and Khurram's ministry.
Earlier that month, Sultani accused police in the province of failing to hunt down thieves who allegedly broke into his museum and stole 700 precious artefacts.
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Police and army 'kill 15 rebels' in Helmand
Written by www.quqnoos.com Saturday, 23 August 2008
Operation launched to rid district of Taliban militants, official says
AFGHAN policemen and soldiers have killed 15 rebels during an on-going operation in the southern province of Helmand, security officials and residents in the area said.
The operation was launched on Friday in the province’s Nad Ali district, 15km west of the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, and the fighting has forced many families in the area to flee their homes, a resident said.
The Helmand governor’s spokesmen said the operation had so far led to the death of 15 Taliban militants and that several others had been wounded in the fighting.
The Taliban claim their fighters killed "a large number of foreign troops and Afghan soldiers" during the operation, a claim the governor’s spokesman denied.
The spokesmen said the operation would continue until government troops and policemen had expelled the remaining militants from the district.
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Back to basics on Afghanistan
Globe and Mail, Canada ALEXANDRE TRUDEAU August 23, 2008
Alexandre Trudeau should stick to filmmaking. The documentarian and political heir could not have been more wrong when he argued this week that Canada should end its "aggressive" military operation in Afghanistan and leave alone the Pashtun people who "have extremely different values than ours, values we may not agree with," and whom we "have no reason to tell how to live their lives." "It's not our business to try to teach them lessons," he said.
Mr. Trudeau's claims are mistaken on every level of analysis. One might begin with the fact that the Pashtun - the ethnic group from which the Taliban emerged - represent just 42 per cent of Afghanistan's population, and that the Taliban used their position of power before the 2001 invasion to oppress, and occasionally massacre, non-Pashtun Afghans.
More important than Mr. Trudeau's evident ignorance of Afghan demographics is that, if the country were "left to its own devices," as he suggests, it would almost certainly reclaim its former position as champion of the global league of utterly odious societies, and resume exporting abroad the venom that fuelled its barbarity.
The "extremely different values" to which Mr. Trudeau refers included, before the arrival of Western troops in 2001, denying women health care and education and banning them from public gatherings, amputating their fingers for the sin of wearing nail polish, and executing adulterers by stoning.
There are a great many societies where "values we may not agree with" prevail, and Canadian soldiers are demonstrably not fighting to change them. Afghanistan under the Taliban was in a class of its own. For Afghans, the stakes of a NATO withdrawal before a stable democracy is in place are a return to those medieval conditions, not a benign shift in social norms.
Those stakes are high for us, too. There is little doubt that an Afghanistan allowed to regress to its old habits would be an expansive safe haven for violent extremism, particularly as practised by al-Qaeda, whose leaders are currently trapped in a small corner of Pakistan.
Politicians have cried "wolf" over potential terrorist attacks with sufficient frequency since 2001 to make it easy to forget that the threat remains real, and that all Western states, Canada included, could be affected by it.
Denying militants the use of Afghanistan as a base for international operations has been an undeniable reason for our good fortune to date.
The mission in Afghanistan is far from perfect. Progress toward stable, secular, democratic government there has been erratic. It is unclear whether NATO can shut down an increasingly organized insurgency without substantial reinforcement, and Canada, along with a few partners, has had to shoulder a tremendous military burden in the country's most volatile regions, as other allies have kept their troops far away from trouble.
When Canadian soldiers return from a faraway land in coffins, it is tempting to suggest that their mission was both doomed and unnecessary. But it is neither, and the risks of concluding otherwise are grave indeed.
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Annual drama festival kicks off in Kabul
Written by www.quqnoos.com Sunday, 24 August 2008
Fifth theatre festival brings hopes of political and social reform
THE FIFTH annual drama festival kicked off in Kabul on Saturday as the capital geared up to go to the theatre.
The festival, backed by the Ministry of Higher Education and a number of foreign cultural centres, will feature 28 plays from 12 provinces of the country over a six day period.
The minister for higher education, Muhammad Azam Dadfar, said theatre was an ancient tradition in Afghanistan and that holding festivals allowed the arts to flourish in the country.
Theatre groups from Khost, Kandahar, Helmand, Herat, Sar-e-Pul, Takhar, Logar, Nangarhar, Baghlan and Farah will all come to Kabul to perform.
Muhammd Azim Hussain Zada, head of the theatre and cinema department at Kabul University, said festivals would revitalise theatre in the country and would encourage the young to take an interest in the arts, which all but vanished during years of war.
President Karzai said art had the power to reform society and a country’s politics and he urged the government and non-government bodies to encourage artistic talent.
Hussain Zada said theatre developed between 1948 and 1957 but collapsed during the 1980s and 1990s thanks to the Soviet invasion, the civil war and the Taliban’s clamp down on artistic expression.
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