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February 24, 2008 

Afghan governor survives bomb blast, three cops killed
GARMABAK, Afghanistan (AFP) - A roadside bomb tore through a convoy carrying the high-profile governor of a southern Afghan province Sunday, missing the official but killing three policemen, the governor said.

Afghan woman and child killed in U.S.-led operation
Sun Feb 24, 8:26 AM ET
KABUL (Reuters) - An Afghan woman and child were killed during a U.S.-led operation against Taliban fighters in the southern Helmand province, the U.S. military said on Sunday.

German ministers advocate doubling size of mission to train Afghan police
The Associated Press Sunday, February 24, 2008
BERLIN: Germany's foreign and interior ministers said the size of the European Union's police training mission in Afghanistan should be doubled, and offered in an article published Sunday to double Berlin's own contingent.

East Afghanistan attacks drop, U.S. says
CAMP BLACKHORSE, Afghanistan (AP) — Militant attacks in eastern Afghanistan are down sharply compared with a year ago, a top U.S. general said Sunday.

Coalition forces kill insurgents in S Afghanistan
www.chinaview.cn  2008-02-25 00:40:20
KABUL, Feb. 24 (Xinhua) -- The U.S.-led Coalition forces have killed "a number of" insurgents and detained two suspects in southern Afghanistan's Helmand province during recent two operations to disrupt Taliban networks, a Coalition statement said Sunday.

Taliban Calls for Peace Talks With New Pakistan Government
By VOA News 24 February 2008
Pakistan's Taliban militants say they are willing to talk with the parties expected to form the country's new government, but only if military operations against militants and terrorists end in the tribal regions.

Pakistan Taliban warn new government to keep clear
By Kamran Haider
ISLAMABAD, Feb 24 (Reuters) - Pakistan militants linked to al-Qaeda warned any incoming civilian government on Sunday they would strike even more viciously if President Pervez Musharraf's U.S-backed war on terror continued in tribal areas.

AFGHANISTAN: Winter cold devastates livestock sector
24 Feb 2008 14:34:17 GMT
FARYAB, 24 February 2008 (IRIN) - Afghanistan's livestock sector has been badly shaken after unusually cold temperatures have killed more than 300,000 animals, causing fears of higher meat prices and increased food insecurity among the population.

The ghosts of Pul-e-Charkhi
The Sunday Times February 24, 2008
Since the Taliban were ousted, 86 mass graves have been uncovered in Afghanistan — their occupants the victims of torture and murder. Fariba Nawa went in search of her uncle — a professor who dared to teach We were in territory off limits

Choosing Which War to Fight
New York Times, United States By HELENE COOPER February 24, 2008
TWO weeks ago, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a surprise trip to Afghanistan that was so cloaked in extra security and secrecy that reporters traveling with her weren’t told where they were going until her plane had taken off from London.

Answers for Afghanistan?
Bangkok Post, Thailand Sunday February 24, 2008
The visit to Afghanistan by North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer last week was meant to shore up confidence in the mission to stabilise the country and secure it once and for all from control

Leaving Afghanistan
Khaleej Times BY JONATHAN POWER 24 February 2008
THE first law of holes is when you are in one stop digging. If the NATO nations are honest they have as much idea about what to do next in Afghanistan as the Soviet generals did in 1988 — the year in which the relatively new Secretary General

Sharpe shooters to bolster war on Taliban
The Sunday Times February 24, 2008 David Leppard
THE elite infantry unit made famous by the television series Sharpe, which starred Sean Bean, is to be deployed to fight the Taliban on the front line in Afghanistan.
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Afghan governor survives bomb blast, three cops killed
GARMABAK, Afghanistan (AFP) - A roadside bomb tore through a convoy carrying the high-profile governor of a southern Afghan province Sunday, missing the official but killing three policemen, the governor said.

The newly laid mine struck the lead vehicle in a convoy that was taking Kandahar governor Asadullah Khalid to a meeting with tribal elders to discuss an opium poppy eradication campaign, the governor told AFP.

"It was a new mine. Three of our policemen were martyred and two others wounded," Khalid said.

Khalid's own vehicle was not touched by the blast in Garmabak district, about 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of Kandahar city in an area that has experienced a wave of attacks by Taliban militants.

An AFP reporter travelling with Khalid said he saw the bodies of three policemen. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast.

Kandahar is the birthplace of the extremist Taliban movement that swept to power in 1996 and was later ousted in a US-led invasion in late 2001 for not handing over Al-Qaeda leaders after the 9/11 attacks.

A week ago, the province became the site of the worst suicide attack in Afghanistan's history, a suicide bombing that Khalid said killed about 100 people at a dog-fighting event on the outskirts of Kandahar city.

Khalid's convoy was also the target of a bomb blast nearly two weeks ago. The explosive struck one of the vehicles just outside the city, wounding three policemen.

Roadside and suicide bombings are a hallmark of the Taliban insurgency, which was at its deadliest last year and saw near-daily attacks.

More than 6,000 people were killed in the violence in 2007, most of them rebels but also hundreds of civilians.

Meanwhile, the US-led force that is hunting Taliban militants said a woman and a child were found dead in a compound where soldiers had carried out a raid on a rebel commander Saturday.

Several rebels were also killed in the engagement, it said.

Scores of civilians have been killed in the cross fire between troops and Taliban rebels.
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Afghan woman and child killed in U.S.-led operation
Sun Feb 24, 8:26 AM ET
KABUL (Reuters) - An Afghan woman and child were killed during a U.S.-led operation against Taliban fighters in the southern Helmand province, the U.S. military said on Sunday.

A number of insurgents were also killed in the operation in Kajaki district of the province on Saturday, it said in a statement.

"A search of the site after the exchange revealed a dead female and child in one of the rooms the assailants used to engage coalition forces," it added blaming the Taliban for placing women and children in "harm's way."

The statement did not say if there were any casualties among coalition forces.

Civilian casualties are a sensitive issue for foreign troops stationed in Afghanistan and President Hamid Karzai's government, as it feeds anger among already frustrated Afghans.

More than 520 civilians were killed last year alone during operations by NATO and coalition troops hunting the Taliban, aid groups say.

More than 50,000 foreign troops are stationed in Afghanistan. Coalition forces overthrew the country's Taliban government in 2001 after it refused to hand over al Qaeda chief, Osama bin Laden, architect of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Spearheading an insurgency backed by al Qaeda, the Taliban are largely active in southern and eastern areas close to the border with Pakistan.

Civilians are also often killed in Taliban attacks against the government and foreign troops. The violence in the past two years has been the bloodiest since the Taliban's ouster.

In the latest suspected Taliban attack, three policemen died on Sunday in the southern province of Kandahar when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb, an official there said.
(Writing by Sayed Salahuddin; Editing by Jon Boyle)
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German ministers advocate doubling size of mission to train Afghan police
The Associated Press Sunday, February 24, 2008
BERLIN: Germany's foreign and interior ministers said the size of the European Union's police training mission in Afghanistan should be doubled, and offered in an article published Sunday to double Berlin's own contingent.

The EU has said that the mission should be fully up and running by April after months of difficulties. Nearly 200 police trainers are due to be deployed.

"After a difficult initial phase, the European police mission, Eupol, is finally finding its feet," Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble wrote in a joint commentary for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper.

"Beyond this, we advocate doubling the personnel of Eupol and will make corresponding proposals to our European colleagues," they added. "Germany will ... then offer 120 police officers in total to serve in Eupol Afghanistan, instead of the 60 already offered."

The EU launched its police training mission last June to supplement 500 American experts in the country training the Afghan police.

EU officials acknowledged at the time that the size of the mission fell well short of expectations, and since then the 27-nation union has struggled to find personnel for the operation. It also has been dogged by funding and leadership problems.

The German ministers did not specify over what period of time they would like to see the mission's strength doubled.

NATO officials complain the weakness of the Afghan police force is undermining efforts to stabilize the country and say police training is lagging at least two years behind relatively successful efforts to train the Afghan army.
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East Afghanistan attacks drop, U.S. says
CAMP BLACKHORSE, Afghanistan (AP) — Militant attacks in eastern Afghanistan are down sharply compared with a year ago, a top U.S. general said Sunday.

Army Brig. Gen. Joseph Votel said aggressive military operations, improved Afghan governance and outreach to tribal elders have given U.S. and Afghan troops the upper hand heading into this spring, when militant activity is expected to undergo an annual post-winter spike.

"I think if there's going to be an offensive in the spring — the offensive is going to be ours, led by the (Afghan National Security Forces)," Votel told reporters at Camp Blackhorse, an Afghan army base east of Kabul.

There have been 36 attacks so far this month in the eastern Afghanistan region where U.S. forces are based. That number is on pace to be 35% below the total last February of 110, according to NATO's International Security Assistance Force.

ISAF has tallied 25 roadside bomb attacks in that region so far this month, compared with 62 last February. Border attacks have dropped from 24 last year to six this year.

Votel said the joint forces will be "better poised" to deal with the insurgency this spring because of the high number of insurgent leaders killed or captured within the last year and because tribal elders are "beginning to see the value of embracing their own government."

The U.S. says more than 50 militant leaders have been killed in the last year.

The joint U.S.-Afghan forces have stayed connected with the people by keeping up winter operations, meeting with key tribal leaders and providing humanitarian assistance, Votel said.

About half of the insurgency-related violence in the region is in Kunar province, Votel said, attributing the fighting to poor governance. A newly appointed Kunar governor and better trained Afghan forces will improve the situation.

"We are stronger than the enemy," said Brig. Gen. Rahim Wardak, the commander of the Afghan army's 201st corps. "We have the capability to destroy the enemy and create a good environment for peace for the Afghan residents in the area."

In the latest violence, coalition forces killed several insurgents and two civilians after militants barricaded in a mud-brick home fired on the troops in the southern province of Helmand, the coalition said Sunday.

The troops were looking for a Taliban leader in Kajaki district when they came under fire, a statement said.

"While coalition forces conducted a search of the building during one operation, armed assailants who were barricaded in separate rooms engaged coalition forces with small-arms fire and hand grenades. The assailants were killed when coalition forces responded in self-defense," said coalition spokesman Army Maj. Chris Belcher.

The coalition statement said "a number of insurgents" were killed, as were a woman and child who were in one of the rooms the militants were attacking from.

"It is a deplorable yet common tactic of insurgents to place innocent women and children in harm's way," Belcher said.

Two individuals, suspected of having ties with the Taliban, were detained in the operations, the coalition said.

Afghan authorities have pleaded with international forces to coordinate closely with their Afghan counterparts to prevent civilian casualties, but Taliban militants often fight from villagers' homes, putting civilians at risk. International forces accuse the insurgents of using women and children as human shields.

A freshly planted roadside bomb, meanwhile, hit a vehicle convoy carrying the governor of Kandahar, killing three policemen and wounding two others, said Governor Asadullah Khalid. He was not hurt in the attack.

The convoy was returning from a mission to conduct poppy eradication in Maiwand district, Khalid said. Two suspects were arrested, said Mohammad Nabi, a police official.

Southern Afghanistan, the world's largest opium producing region, has been at the front line of battles between insurgents and foreign forces in recent years.
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Coalition forces kill insurgents in S Afghanistan
www.chinaview.cn  2008-02-25 00:40:20
KABUL, Feb. 24 (Xinhua) -- The U.S.-led Coalition forces have killed "a number of" insurgents and detained two suspects in southern Afghanistan's Helmand province during recent two operations to disrupt Taliban networks, a Coalition statement said Sunday.

The Coalition forces while conducting a search of compounds in the Kajaki District of Helmand on Feb. 23 killed the militants who employed small arms and hand-grenades against the troops, the statement said.

During one operation, "a search of the site after the exchange revealed a dead female and child in one of the rooms the assailants used to engage Coalition forces," said Army Major Chris Belcher, a Coalition forces spokesman.

Two individuals, suspected to have ties to Taliban insurgents, were detained, according to the statement.

The multi-national Coalition forces, with majority a 16,000-strong U.S. troops, are deployed in Afghanistan for fighting militants and ensuring security.

The Coalition forces during a joint operation with the Afghan National Army on Feb. 20 detained 11 suspected insurgents, found 1,000 pounds of heroin and destroyed a weapons cache near Musa Qala town in Helmand.
Editor: Yan Liang 
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Taliban Calls for Peace Talks With New Pakistan Government
By VOA News 24 February 2008
Pakistan's Taliban militants say they are willing to talk with the parties expected to form the country's new government, but only if military operations against militants and terrorists end in the tribal regions.

Taliban spokesman Maulvi Omar made the statement during telephone calls with several news agencies Sunday.

Omar said the new government should avoid repeating the mistakes of Mr. Musharraf, who has been an ally of the United States in the war on terrorism.

Mr. Musharraf angered many Islamists by sending the army into tribal areas, near the border with Afghanistan, as part of a military offensive to flush out fighters connected to the al-Qaida terrorist network.

Hundreds of people have died in attacks linked to the militants over the past year.

The Taliban statements came as leaders from the country's two main opposition parties, the Pakistan People's Party, once headed by the late former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and ex-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-N, continue talks on forming a coalition government.
Some information for this report was provided by AP and Reuters.
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Pakistan Taliban warn new government to keep clear
By Kamran Haider
ISLAMABAD, Feb 24 (Reuters) - Pakistan militants linked to al-Qaeda warned any incoming civilian government on Sunday they would strike even more viciously if President Pervez Musharraf's U.S-backed war on terror continued in tribal areas.

Following last week's inconclusive election, several political parties are in talks to form a coalition strong enough for a ruling majority in the National Assembly. How they deal with militants will be one of their most pressing challenges.

The Pakistan Taliban have been blamed for the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on Dec. 27, as well as killing hundreds in attacks over the past few years.

In northwest Pakistan on Sunday, militants attacked a security post, killing a policeman and two paramilitary servicemen and wounding six others, officials said.

Maulvi Omar, a spokesman for the Pakistan Taliban, told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location that any new military operation in tribal areas would lead to more violence.

"Whoever makes the government, we want to make it clear to them we don't want fighting. We want peace, but if they impose war on us, we will not spare them," he said.

"We don't want political parties to repeat the mistake which Musharraf committed and follow a path dictated by the U.S."

On Sunday mainstream Islamists said they would wait and see what sort of government emerges before deciding on any agitation.

"We'll give them a chance," Qazi Hussain Ahmed, head of the Jamaat-e-Islami, told a news conference in Islamabad.

MUSHARRAF'S FATE IN BALANCE
Provisional results from the Feb. 18 election have been announced for all but 10 seats. Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party leads with 87, followed by the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif with 67.

The fate of Musharraf, a U.S. ally who seized power in a military coup in October 1999, could depend on what kind of coalition emerges, although his supporters, with 39 seats, could still have a say.

If the PPP and PML-N forge a coalition, as expected, it will be the first time in Pakistan's history the two main parties have come together.

Musharraf appeared to win some respite on Sunday from months of calls for him to step down when Amin Fahim, the PPP's choice for prime minister, told CNN there were no immediate plans to seek his removal.

Previously both the PPP and PML-N have called for him to quit or face impeachment.

"We should not rock the boat at this time. We must have a civil transition of power," Fahim said.

Musharraf angered many Islamists by sending the army into tribal lands to flush out al-Qaeda and Taliban militants who took refuge there when U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban in Afghanistan after Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

Islamist parties ruled the border areas of North West Frontier Province and Baluchistan and were the main opposition in the National Assembly for five years until being swept away in last week's vote by liberal groups led by the PPP and PML-N.

The PPP and other parties have also been critical of extremists and militants and vowed to fight them. (Editing by David Fox and Mary Gabriel)
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AFGHANISTAN: Winter cold devastates livestock sector
24 Feb 2008 14:34:17 GMT
FARYAB, 24 February 2008 (IRIN) - Afghanistan's livestock sector has been badly shaken after unusually cold temperatures have killed more than 300,000 animals, causing fears of higher meat prices and increased food insecurity among the population.

"We don't have fodder for our sheep," Muhammad Amin, a local herder, told IRIN from outside the Ganj bazaar in the country's northwestern Faryab Province.

"Livestock prices have plummeted. As the sheep are hungry and in snow, we have no choice but to bring them here to sell," he said.

But for ordinary Afghans, many of whom keep livestock and are already living on the brink of poverty, selling their animals is proving difficult.

"I want to sell them, but there is no one to buy them," said Muhammad Sharif from south-central Ghor Province. "If I can't sell them they will die. This is the only income for my family. I have nothing else to feed them."

316,000 animals perish

Afghanistan's Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (MAIL) has reported that more than 316,000 animals nationwide have died since December after a cold snap saw temperatures drop below 20 degrees Celsius in some places.

In Badghis Province alone, over 24,000 animals have perished, devastating the livelihoods of local farmers.

"I used to have 100 sheep, but now I have just 60; most of which are now sick," Assadullah, a local herder from Moqar District, said.

However, in the capital, Kabul, the repercussions of cold weather on livestock are still not being felt.

"There is no shortage of animals here, but I've heard there is a problem in the north," Mohammad Gul said from outside the Kolola Pushta square livestock market. He added that livestock prices traditionally rise at this time of year due to heavy snows and the inability of farmers to bring their animals to market.

FAO response

With so many animals dying over such a short period of time, the possibility of meat prices rising further is now greater.

"We are very concerned. Many of these farmers are already vulnerable. This will make them more vulnerable and more food insecure," Tekeste Tekie, country representative for the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), told IRIN in Kabul.

In response, FAO, in collaboration with the Afghan government, has dispatched 20 metric tonnes (mt) of feed to Herat, one of the worst affected provinces.

"This is a reasonable amount because we need about one kilogramme of grain per day per cow or half a kilogramme for smaller animals," Tekie said, adding that the grain would be mixed with fodder herders already have. "Traditionally, Herat is not so cold, but this year it has been unusually cold – and people were less prepared this time around."

FAO is also in the process of sending 60mt of feed to Bamyan Province and has appealed to donors for another 1,500mt.

In addition, the agency is working towards procuring antibiotics to treat up to one million animals in those areas where animals have caught infectious diseases because of the cold.

MAIL has already made an urgent appeal for US$4 million for the country's affected livestock owners, but maintains that an additional US$15 million will be needed.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), this has been one of the harshest winters in 30 years in Afghanistan, with close to 900 winter-related human deaths in Herat, Farah, Badghis and Ghor provinces being reported.

With road access to many affected areas still blocked by snow, the true fallout of this year's winter is yet to be realised.
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The ghosts of Pul-e-Charkhi
The Sunday Times February 24, 2008
Since the Taliban were ousted, 86 mass graves have been uncovered in Afghanistan — their occupants the victims of torture and murder. Fariba Nawa went in search of her uncle — a professor who dared to teach We were in territory off limits to civilians. The Afghan army Jeep suddenly braked after a 20-minute ride through unpaved roads on the outskirts of Kabul. The ministry-of-defence spokesman started to point into a shallow ditch. I braced myself. Mina Wali, an Afghan-American woman who had also journeyed from the United States, anxiously exited the vehicle. I wasn’t brave enough to go first; I wanted to see her reaction before I looked where he was pointing.

We were at one of Afghanistan’s newly uncovered mass graves in search of skeletons from nearly 30 years ago, dumped there when I was just six years old. Wali’s father and my paternal uncle were two of the tens of thousands imprisoned by Afghan authorities during the communist regime – 1978 to 1992 – who were never seen again. We called them gomshoda, or the disappeared. Since the ousting of the Taliban in 2001, 86 mass graves have been dug up, though the authorities seem to know little about who was buried in them. Most have been discovered unintentionally, as a result of workers digging to erect new buildings as part of the extensive reconstruction of the country.

Wali and I had chosen to begin our search at a grave near the notorious Pul-e-Charkhi prison, where many of these prisoners were taken – a desert outpost used for target-shooting by the Afghan military. Human bones had begun to surface as workers dug on the site. But as nobody was willing to start the process of identifying the bodies, the digging had stopped.

There were two human bones inside the ditch, probably from the thigh and back Strewn next to them were lapis-coloured pieces of fabric and a pair of black, close-toed plastic shoes. Poor Afghan men wore this type of shoe. The wind had blown empty plastic water bottles on top of the ditch near mounds of fresh dirt.

Wali crouched near the ditch and sobbed. I held back my tears. Stories I had heard over the past 29 years about how the disappeared were executed and some buried alive in this desert raced through my mind. I was standing on ghosts who held on to secrets of torture and atrocities. We sensed our relatives were among them. I had met Wali while reporting on Afghan-Americans who had returned to Afghanistan to do good – she had built a school – and we discovered both of us had family who had been missing from the communist era. Now, here we were.

My quest was to find out what had happened to my uncle – his death has scarred my family – and to come face to face with the man who sealed his fate. It proved to be an uncomfortable but revelatory journey.

I had warm memories of my uncle, Fazel Ahmed Ahrary. He was balding, always reading something or playing with his daughter, Ariya, his favourite. Sometime in spring 1979, a couple of months after the mujaheddin uprising in Herat, I remember my father telling us his brother had been imprisoned. It was the first time I saw my father weep. He knew his brother wasn’t coming back. But Fazel Ahmed’s wife and children refused to believe it. They searched for him for the next three years and then emigrated to the US, with no answers but still hoping he was alive. Last year I told Aunt Roufa, who lives in Hawaii, of my interest in continuing their search and she was enthusiastic: perhaps individuals who had information but had been too scared to talk in the past would be willing to open up now.

The key to unlocking those secrets of the past was held by Assadullah Sarwary, the head of the Afghan secret police in 1978 and 1979, the time at which most people disappeared. There are no reliable statistics, but from nearly every large family in the Afghan diaspora, from Britain to the US, at least one member was jailed during that period. On documents that list names of prisoners who didn’t come back, it is Sarwary’s signature. Today he is the only representative of the communist regime in prison in Kabul on charges of mass murder. Many of his colleagues are either dead, in the West, or rising to the ranks again in today’s western-backed Afghan government. An Afghan court sentenced him to death in February 2006, but human-rights groups and the United Nations objected to the trial, calling it unfair. He has pleaded not guilty and appealed against the sentence. He’s waiting for the Afghan Supreme Court to grant him a military trial because he was in the air force.

The fact that so many linked to the past regime are still in power and that the country is enmeshed in a new war doesn’t bode well for justice. People are still afraid to talk. “There’s a culture of fear. People from each era are still in power, which prevents civilians from coming forward with proof against past criminals. People don’t trust the system,” said Rahimullah Rameh, a lawyer who investigates war crimes for the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.

My uncle was my father’s younger brother – there were five brothers and three sisters – and came from a family of intellectuals and writers from the city of Herat. But Fazel Ahmed was the star. He won a scholarship to study pharmacy in France and then became the head of the pharmacy faculty at Kabul University. He was known among the family as a bookworm, quiet, honest and warm. His marriage was arranged to a cousin, Roufa Ahrary, a poet and teacher, and they had four sons and a daughter. In 1978, when Soviet-backed Afghan revolutionaries staged a coup against President Daud Khan, my uncle was at the height of his career and uninvolved in politics.

But Afghanistan rapidly destabilised after the coup as the American-backed mujaheddin began a fierce guerrilla war against the communists. Kabul University was the hub of political activity, with daily demonstrations against capitalism and imperialism and seminars discussing Marx, Lenin and Mao. But there were tensions among the Afghan communists. There were three communist parties: Khalq, the party in power; Parcham, a more elitist, intellectual party backed by the Soviets; and the Maoists, supported by China, who were outlawed but met in secret. The Khalq party did not accept the other two and imprisoned their more influential members. Punishment of the Maoists was more severe, usually execution, while some in Parcham were spared because of Soviet support. The Khalq formed a strong secret police called Agsa, which Sarwary ran, similar to the East German Stasi.

Students and professors disappeared by the hundreds from the university. My uncle, who was not a member of any party, was demoted from his job as the head of the faculty.

Before visiting that dreadful graveside, I had begun my quest at Kabul University, at the faculty of pharmacy where his students and the classmates who studied with him in France are now professors. Fazel Ahmed’s younger sister Nafisa Masomi and two of my cousins went with me. There, one of his colleagues, Qamaruddin Saifi, and two of his students, Nasim Siddiqi and Hassan Frotan, agreed to talk.

My uncle was a different personality at the university – vivacious and vocal. He stayed behind the scenes politically, but attended various leftist meetings and discussed political crises with his colleagues. The problem was that some of his closest contacts were Maoists, and they were on the government’s hit list. Saifi said the head of the faculty at that time was in the Khalq party, and informed him and several others to stop interacting with Maoists. Saifi listened, but apparently Fazel Ahmed continued talking to these Maoist friends. This could have been the reason he was jailed: guilt by association.

Siddiqi stayed quiet for most of the meeting with us, but said that he kept his mouth shut then and he was even scared to talk now. Frotan, a handsome man in a suit, said he was the last person in the department to see my uncle. Frotan noticed the infamous government black car with tinted windows outside their faculty – the Russian-made vehicle took prisoners who didn’t return. Then he saw Fazel Ahmed, wearing his sheepskin hat and a black suit, walking down with a bureaucrat. “He gave his briefcase to somebody and told them to give it to his wife and our eyes met. I was standing downstairs, too afraid to say anything, as he was being escorted down by another man. The colour in his face was gone. He knew where he was going. He went without any resistance,” Frotan recalled.

Fazel Ahmed Ahrary disappeared at 43 and was never seen again. “We asked the head of the faculty after the regime changed [nine months on] what happened to our professor,” Frotan said. “He knew because he was in the Khalq party, but he wasn’t a killer. He said sadly, ‘Mr Ahrary died under torture. He never made it out of the interrogation room.’ We didn’t ask any more questions.”

I made Frotan repeat “died under torture” a few times before I could digest it. The others in the room tried to share happier memories of my uncle, but I had the answer and I wasn’t going to let it go. Where can I find this head of the faculty? What kind of torture? Who did it? I threw these questions at Frotan and he stared back blankly and shook his head. All he could give was the name of the head of the faculty: Hossain Hilali.

It was the same name that Saifi and Murad Ali Roshandel, another colleague who lives in Germany but has returned to teach in the pharmacy faculty in Kabul, had mentioned earlier in a separate interview. Roshandel said Hilali had warned him to stay away from the Maoists, and that Hilali had seen Roshandel’s and my uncle’s names on a list of professors who were to be arrested. But from the 12 professors at the faculty, my uncle was the only one who was arrested and disappeared. I had to find Hilali if he was alive.

My companion, Wali, had endured a longer and more painful search than I was experiencing.

She was also keen I meet Sarwary and confront the man she believed had ordered the execution of her father. Now 47, she is from my Afghan diaspora community in the San Francisco Bay area, the largest population of Afghans in the United States. She’s here to find her father, Shah Wali, nicknamed “Pilot”, or his remains.

He was a high-profile air-force pilot in charge of Bagram air base, where western troops are now stationed. One night in 1978, in front of his family, authorities showed up at their holiday home in Jalalabad and took him in his pyjamas. Wali was 17 and newly engaged. Her mother was crying and Wali was shaking as he was being taken, but he told them to be brave. That was the last time Wali saw her father.
In her Kabul home, Wali brought out her photo albums. The first photograph was of her father, a striking man with a moustache and smiling eyes. Wali is the mother of three grown children, but she reverts to childlike innocence when she speaks about her dad. He was her hero and as the only daughter, she was his princess.

Two months after the famous pilot was jailed, he sent his family a letter asking for cigarettes and medicine. For the next year, Wali wore black and talked to influential members of the government to release her father.

The same day that Wali and I visited the mass grave, we went to Pul-e-Charkhi. I shivered when I saw the structure inside – four-storey, grey triangular buildings with small, barred windows and stone walls riddled with bullets. It holds 4,000 inmates, including criminals and political prisoners, and despite laws against torture now, authorities still do it, according to inmates. On October 7, 2007, 15 people were killed by a firing squad, the first executions announced during the current president Hamid Karzai’s leadership.

Wali held up her father’s photograph to all the guards in the hope that one might remember him from 29 years ago. The guards who were present at that time seemed uncomfortable, but one of them said that at night they heard moans from the back yards of the prison, which they believed were the restless spirits of the past.

There had been an amnesty in 1979. Families lined up at Pul-e-Charkhi to see who made it out alive after two years of arrests. Wali stood behind the prison door from 8am until 8pm while inmates were driven out in buses and freed. “It was like a zoo,” she said. But her father was not among them. Instead she saw her maternal uncle Ehsan Pattan, the former King Zahir Shah’s royal pilot, who had also been jailed. He told his niece her father was no longer in the prison. Wali left Afghanistan shortly after that. Later, Pattan escaped into exile, but his experiences in Pul-e-Charkhi have turned the 70-year-old into a temperamental and distressed man. He was the last to see Wali’s father, but he has not disclosed details of their time together in prison with Wali yet. “I didn’t want her to suffer.”

The communists took him prisoner on charges of plotting a royal counter-coup, which he denied. Before he was taken to Pul-e-Charkhi, he was holed up with 1,000 men at the ministry of defence for five days. There he watched soldiers throw five men into a well alive and pile dirt on top of them. Pattan says Sarwary, who used to be his student in flight school, came in with a friend, now a member of the Afghan parliament, and called the names of 15 members of the Afghan royal family. Then Pattan heard numerous shots fired in the parking lot of the ministry. All 15 were reported dead, he said.

Eighteen buses carried the prisoners from the ministry to Pul-e-Charkhi, where Pattan spent two years. After two months in a cell, Pattan said in an unaffected tone, Sarwary interrogated and tortured him inside the prison. Wires were clipped to his toes and electric shocks zapped through his body. “He asked how I was planning to bring the king back, what were my plans with Shah Wali [Wali’s father]. He hit me and broke my ribs and two of my teeth.”

After a year, Shah Wali was brought to Pattan’s cell, where they spent three nights, and the brothers-in-law swapped stories. Shah Wali had also been tortured. Pattan said that on the third night, Said Mohammad Gulabzoy, a key Khalq member, called 12 inmates, including Shah Wali, to be taken to the desert target range, the killing fields. “He looked at me and said, ‘Don’t forget your God.’”

Pattan thinks he was saved because he wasn’t important enough to kill. Shah Wali was more powerful and high-ranking. Pattan said he had gone from a celebrated pilot to a security guard in the US, but he has put the past behind him. Yet he would like to see justice against Sarwary. “They should try him again fairly and then execute him in front of the victims’ families.”

But how to reach Sarwary? I spread the word to friends who were connected to the Afghan government that I wanted to interview him. I was told it would be impossible because he was on death row and those inmates were not allowed to be interviewed. But connections can override most rules in Afghanistan. A friend introduced me to a man who knew Sarwary and would be able to get me inside his cell. He took me to the prosecutor handling Sarwary’s case and got permission for the interview.

When I saw him, I felt a surge of anger. But I held back and told myself I had to hear his side of the story. He said the only reason he agreed to see me was because of our mutual acquaintance.

Sarwary’s conditions in jail are a lot more pleasant than those of inmates of the communist times. He’s not in Pul-e-Charkhi but in a temporary cell in police headquarters in the centre of Kabul, where prisoners awaiting trials and sentencing are held. His room mirrored an average Afghan bedroom, with a bed, red mat, a TV, Thermoses of tea and plates of cookies and candies – except there were bars on the window. He wore traditional Afghan garb, loose trousers and a long tunic, and a turquoise ring. His neatly trimmed beard is the same colour as his salt-and- pepper hair. Papers and books were stacked near his bedside. At 66, Sarwary has spent a total of 17 years in prison. His adult life is a cycle of coups and incarcerations in various Soviet-backed regimes, in which he befriended powerful leaders and then became their enemy.

He greeted me with normal Afghan customs of hospitality, offered tea and began his soliloquy as if he had shared his biography numerous times. Animated at times and subdued at others, he never lost his air of confidence, the absolute conviction that he’s innocent. Sarwary was last captured by the mujaheddin in 1992, and the mujaheddin leader Ahmad Shah Massoud kept him in his private prison until he was handed over to Karzai’s administration.

Sarwary spent several years in the Soviet Union training to be a pilot and intelligence officer. He became enraptured with communism. “I had never seen that kind of order and organisation. They were civilised and we were backward.”

When he returned to Afghanistan, he was responsible for 100 planes and 1,500 officers, but that didn’t last long. He teamed up with King Zahir Shah’s cousin Mohammad Daud Khan to overthrow the monarchy in 1973. But while Daud Khan became president, he threw Sarwary in prison for eight months for insubordination. While Daud was pro-Soviet, Sarwary believed he didn’t go far enough in implementing socialism.

Sarwary came from what he claims was a landowning family in Ghazni province, and he was angry with the injustice to the landless poor. He studied Marx and Lenin and believed in communism, but says Afghans can never truly be communists. “We can’t separate ourselves from nationalism, so none of us were really communists.”

His role in the 1978 coup was instrumental – he was friends with Nur Mohammad Taraki, the first communist president, and with Hafizullah Amin, a key member of Khalq who later became prime minister and then president. As head of the secret police, Sarwary claimed he simply arrested people – 1,100 – and those who accuse him of torture and murder are lying. His agency used phone-tapping and informants to capture “enemies”. “I didn’t have the power to kill or order killings. All the evidence against me is false.”

I looked him in the eye and asked him what had happened to those who disappeared. He said Amin, who was assassinated in 1979, was responsible for most of the killings – and the rest of those in power who would know are also dead.

“Did you know Fazel Ahmed Ahrary?” I asked. He paused for a minute and shook his head. I told Sarwary he was my uncle and had disappeared. Do you know where those who disappeared are buried?
“I don’t know anything. If I killed anyone, slaughter me,” he answered angrily, motioning a knife cutting his throat. I knew then that I would not get any information I needed from him. Our meeting ended cordially, with him agreeing to be photographed on my mobile phone. Cameras were not allowed inside the prison, but nobody searched me.

Sarwary’s most faithful ally is Gulabzoy, who was minister of telecommunications when he was chief of Agsa. But while Sarwary anticipates life or death, Gulabzoy makes big decisions in the lower house of the parliament. He visits Sarwary every week and attests that his friend is wrongly accused. “He’s honest, patriotic and gullible – those are his weaknesses,” Gulabzoy said, on the lawn of his two-storey house in Kabul. Most witnesses against Sarwary say Gulabzoy was guilty of the same crimes, but he played his cards better politically.

After 13 years in prison, Sarwary was given the right to a trial in late 2005, and video tapes from the day of the sentencing in Kabul show a mob in the courtroom anxiously waiting to hear the judge read the death penalty. Sarwary had no defence lawyer and sat there calmly as he was sentenced to death. Representatives from human-rights groups, including the UN, attended part of the trial and said international standards of due process and fairness were ignored.

There’s no law against war crimes in Afghanistan, and some legal experts believe it would be better to try Sarwary in the Hague, because Afghanistan’s judicial system is not ready for such cases. Three other Afghans have been indicted for war crimes outside the country – one man from the mujaheddin era in Britain, and two from the communist times in Holland.

Meanwhile, the culture ministry has set up a commission to try to decide what to do with the mass graves. A UN official told me it’s best if families do not get their hopes up that the remains will be identified. According to the ministry of defence, there are no Afghan forensic experts who can do the job and it’s too expensive.

But for Wali and me, the efforts of the commission are not enough. Wali wants to unite all the victims’ families to build a memorial, similar to the Vietnam wall, commemorating those who disappeared, and some relatives are writing books and documenting their stories in hopes of finding closure. I continue my search – for Hossain Hilali, the former director of the faculty of pharmacy, and for others who might have a clue as to what happened to my uncle. Hilali might be in Munich, but numerous internet searches and calls to Afghans there turned up nothing.

The answers I found raised even more questions, and the selective memories of those who were there at the time were too subjective to point to any reliable truth. The trail leading to my uncle has gone cold, but no matter in which direction it leads, the ending is death.

Now I had to share what I knew with those closest to him. My father took the news in his stride when I went back to California to tell him. At 77, his memory is going, but he remembers every detail I told him about my journey and he retells it to all of our guests in an attempt to grasp its reality. I kept delaying the call to Aunt Roufa, my uncle’s wife, and when I did call, I avoided the subject for an hour until finally she asked. With many disclaimers that it could be false, I told her that he may have died under torture.

“I never heard this before. I feel his pain. I think he didn’t have any tolerance for suffering. None of us in the family do,” she said, grappling for an explanation.

I suggested having a memorial service for him, to give him a peaceful rest, but she said no. “I prefer that he has disappeared and not to know. I don’t want to see a body. I don’t know what I would do if I found out he’s dead for sure.”

When I hung up the phone, I burst into tears finally, not because my uncle was dead, but because I had opened up old wounds. I knew that at the other end, in her apartment in Honolulu, Aunt Roufa was alone and in pain.
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Choosing Which War to Fight
New York Times, United States By HELENE COOPER February 24, 2008
WASHINGTON
TWO weeks ago, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a surprise trip to Afghanistan that was so cloaked in extra security and secrecy that reporters traveling with her weren’t told where they were going until her plane had taken off from London.

Arriving in Kabul, Ms. Rice’s entourage was immediately hustled across the runway to a gray C-17 military transport plane for a one-hour trip to Kandahar, where she stayed for less than three hours, never venturing off the airfield where NATO forces have their headquarters. Then it was back to Kabul for lunch with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, in his barricaded palace. A mere eight hours after landing in Afghanistan, Ms. Rice was gone. She had spent, all told, only six hours on the ground; her plane, with its distinct blue and white United States of America logo, made a swift, steep ascent, disappearing from rocket range within minutes.

The secrecy and security that surrounded Ms. Rice’s visit highlight a central question that has now thrust its way into this year’s presidential campaign: Six years after the United States invaded Afghanistan with the goal of rooting out Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the terrorist threat, Afghanistan remains a security danger zone for Americans, far more so than in 2002, the year in between the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

So, has Afghanistan now become a bigger security threat to the United States than Iraq?

The three leading contenders for the presidential nominations have staked out positions that differ radically, along party lines. All three say they believe that Afghanistan is an important security threat that needs to be addressed. But the Republican, John McCain, suggests that Iraq remains America’s bugaboo of security threats, while the two Democrats, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, appear to have moved on to Afghanistan. Both of them argue that focusing on Iraq gets in the way of a more serious threat in Afghanistan.

Senator McCain, the likely Republican nominee, makes a de facto argument that Iraq and Afghanistan are two sides of the same coin. “Senator Clinton and Senator Obama will withdraw our forces from Iraq based on an arbitrary timetable designed for the sake of political expediency and which recklessly ignores the profound human calamity and dire threats to our security that would ensue,” Mr. McCain said in a Feb. 7 speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Distilled to its simplest form, Mr. McCain’s argument is that withdrawing from Iraq would make Americans less safe in the long run, because a withdrawal would embolden Al Qaeda, put American interests at risk in the Middle East, and make an already volatile region less safe.

Senators Obama and Clinton have tacked in the opposite direction. Iraq, they argue, makes Afghanistan more dangerous. The Iraq war, Mr. Obama told an audience of supporters in Houston last Tuesday, “distracted us from the fight that needed to be fought in Afghanistan against Al Qaeda. They’re the ones who killed 3,000 Americans.” He has said that if elected, he would deploy at least two additional brigades in Afghanistan.

Senator Clinton, who has been to Afghanistan three times, holds a similar position, her aides say, except they say that she hasn’t specified how many additional brigades she would send to Afghanistan because she wants to further explore the security situation there first. Mrs. Clinton has proposed appointing a special envoy to deal with the Afghanistan/Pakistan border.

“There is a theater of war, that I would call AfPak, with two fronts — an eastern front and a western front,” said Richard Holbrooke, the former United States ambassador to the United Nations and a supporter of Mrs. Clinton’s. “I believe that we will look back ten years from now and say that AfPak was even more important to our national security than Iraq.”

For the Democrats, who have a base of support that clearly wants out of Iraq, framing the issue in terms of Afghanistan makes it a lot easier, politically, to pull out of Iraq. But leaving Iraq will be no easy thing. Experts who side with Mr. McCain argue that a quick American exit from Iraq could lead to a conflagration in the Middle East that could end up involving Saudi Arabia and Iran in a Shia-Sunni-Kurd war — a conflict that would have few winners and would likely produce an enormous number of civilian casualties.

Beyond that, the logistics of pulling out 130,000 troops from Iraq would be daunting, and it could take close to a year to get all the equipment out. Indeed, some military experts say that if the United States military was given a year to exit Iraq, it would be so consumed with the logistics that it wouldn’t be able to do anything else.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates entered the fray earlier this month, for a moment sounding almost like the (gasp!) Clinton and Obama camps by urging Europeans to draw a distinction between the wars. During remarks on his way to Munich to take the Europeans to task for not sending enough troops to support NATO in Afghanistan, Mr. Gates said part of the problem was that many Europeans were conflating Iraq with Afghanistan.

“I worry that for many Europeans the missions in Iraq and Afghanistan are confused,” Mr. Gates said. “I think they combine the two.” It was an unusually candid acknowledgment from a senior member of the Bush administration that the war in Iraq had exacted a cost, in NATO’s chances for victory in Afghanistan. Many Europeans, Mr. Gates said, “have a problem with our involvement in Iraq and project that to Afghanistan, and do not understand the very different — for them — the very different kind of threat.”

The problem is, with the United States Army stretched thin in Iraq, the Bush administration has, thus far, been left to hector its NATO allies to send additional troops to handle the growing Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. And European populations generally disapprove of their troops being sent into harm’s way in Afghanistan. No surprise, given the opposition on the streets of Europe to the American invasion of Iraq. That’s what Mr. Gates means when he says that Europeans conflate the two: Why help the United States in Afghanistan, the European logic goes, when America would be able to handle Afghanistan much more easily if its G.I.’s weren’t bogged down in Iraq?

In any case, the dynamics of the two conflicts are not the same, many foreign policy experts stress. The rapidly deteriorating situation on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border, the Musharraf government’s increased inability to confront Islamist insurgents in its border provinces, combined with the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan have turned AfPak into America’s No. 1 national security problem, these experts say, even as parts of Iraq seem to have quieted since more American troops were sent there last year. Conditions in Pakistan became even more volatile on Monday after the party of President Pervez Musharraf suffered a drubbing in parliamentary elections, leading some to question how long Mr. Musharraf will be able to cling to power and how much of his already diminished authority he can retain. And Pakistan, the experts say, is inextricably linked to Afghanistan.

“Losing Afghanistan would be far more consequential than losing Iraq,” says Bruce Hoffman, a Georgetown University professor who was an adviser on counterterrorism to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad in 2004. “If Pakistan, especially along the border, fell into complete disarray, the integrity of the Afghan country and its government will be even more threatened, and that would have far greater repercussions for us.”
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Answers for Afghanistan?
Bangkok Post, Thailand Sunday February 24, 2008
The visit to Afghanistan by North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer last week was meant to shore up confidence in the mission to stabilise the country and secure it once and for all from control of extremism in the form of the Taleban. Though Mr Jaap de Hoop Scheffer succeeded in putting the best possible face on that mission, it is clear that the troubles are not going away without some major changes in policy direction.

Few would have predicted that this far removed from the sweeping United States-led victories over the Taleban in late 2001 that Afghanistan's position would still be so precarious. That is not to say that there haven't been dramatic changes in personal freedoms as well as economic prosperity in some parts of the country, and this cannot be discounted. But in large parts of the south and southwest of the country the Taleban still exerts its fear-based hold.

Suicide attacks have been on the rise. Last Sunday, a bomb in Kandahar killed over a hundred people, and there have been several smaller bombs set off since then in the city despite the increased security.
There has for some time been an internal squabble within Nato over what US Defence Secretary Robert Gates recently called a "two-tier" deployment scheme, meaning that some countries are not willing to have their troops serve where they are most needed- in the south. Mr Gates went on record as saying this state of affairs could "in effect destroy the alliance".

And, not surprisingly, the longer the conflict continues, the more the resolve of those nations which do put troops in harm's way seems to waver. There is considerable speculation that after elections this year Italy will no longer send troops to the south. Canada has said it will withdraw its troops altogether in 2012.

During his visit, Mr Jaap de Hoop Scheffer identified the training of Afghan police and security forces as an important priority to take the pressure off Nato. This is something everyone can agree on.

Another proposal discussed by the Nato chief with President Hamid Karzai is more controversial, but in the long run it may be the best hope for reducing the involvement of foreign troops in Afghanistan. That is to engage the Taleban in negotiation.

Members of Nato, and in particular Great Britain, have been urging this course over the objections of Afghan officials, including President Hamid Karzai. This was a major factor in the highly publicised expulsion of two European diplomats from the country, as well as the refusal by President Karzai to accept the appointment of Lord Ashdown as UN envoy.

Mr Jaap de Hoop Scheffer's very carefully phrased comments to the press indicated that he might have had some success in getting President Karzai to moderate his view.

Saying that President Karzai acknowledged the need for dialogue, the Nato chief added:"I think he realises very well that in Afghanistan some sort of political process has to take off. You do not of course talk to people who are beheading people and hanging them and burning schools.

"But everywhere in the world where there is a conflict at a certain stage, a form of political process has to start."

At the same time, it will be necessary for the new Pakistani government to begin confronting its own cross-border Taleban problem. In that regard, it is highly encouraging that in the recent polls extremists were largely voted out of office in the regions where they had success in the last national election.
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Leaving Afghanistan
Khaleej Times BY JONATHAN POWER 24 February 2008
THE first law of holes is when you are in one stop digging. If the NATO nations are honest they have as much idea about what to do next in Afghanistan as the Soviet generals did in 1988 — the year in which the relatively new Secretary General of the Soviet Communist Party, Mikhail Gorbachev, decided that the Red Army should cut its horrific losses and pull out and leave the Afghans to fight each other.

The Afghan tribes have an uninterrupted record of success in resisting the foreign invaders — Genghis Khan, the Persians, the British in Winston Churchill's day as a subaltern, the Soviets and now NATO. Time, they know, is on their side. Their rifles, explosives and suicide bombers are a match for the most modern weapons in NATO's armoury. The only thing that could possibly subdue them would be a massive number of NATO boots on the ground, prepared to engage in close up fighting, but to find numbers of this order would mean switching the full force of America's military might from Iraq to Afghanistan and persuading America´s allies to beef up their contributions to levels that would triple or quadruple present deployments.

While the politicians are finding it hard to come to terms with leading a retreat, given the constant pressure from Washington, they are — as Chancellor Angela Merkel has made clear — slowly but clearly turning tail. It is no use that the so-called opinion leaders in the strategic think tanks and newspaper editorial pages are warning of disaster if there is a pull out. They are not the ones getting killed for a hopeless cause. Moreover, even the most informed of them do not seem able to map out a convincing scenario for turning the tables on the Taleban. A few thousand more troops, a better coordinated aid programme, an imposed Western tsar, a beefed up local police force — none of these will work as long as Afghanistan has its poppies and mountains and corruption continues to seep into almost every pore of society. If this were doable it would have been done by now.

The stakes, we all know, are high because the Taleban with their tribal network spanning across a ridiculously placed border dividing Afghanistan and Pakistan give refuge to Al Qaeda. Getting rid of Al Qaeda must be a priority on the world's common agenda. But this is not the way to do it. And economically and socially developing Afghanistan can only be done when the populace face down their local persecutors and oppressors and demand it.

So how to deal with Al Qaeda? The mistakes date from the immediate reaction to 9/11. Afghanistan should never have been bombed. That immediately marked America and Britain as the enemy in the minds of a good proportion of the Afghans. But that mistake was part of a larger mistake — the determination to go to war with modern military means against Al Qaeda — a grouping of a few hundred at that time, even if it meant putting at mortal risk the populations of whole countries, Afghanistan, Iraq and, if Barack Obama continues his threat, perhaps Pakistan.

The Anglo-American onslaught, accompanied in Afghanistan by a 37-nation coalition, has created more Al Qaeda militants than it has killed. It has alienated most of the Muslim world and has provided reason for tens of thousands of preachers, hundreds of thousands of enraged young men and millions of ordinary folk to talk of hitting back. The mild majority do it by thought and word. A few thousand are now determined to do it by deed. As the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the situation in Pakistan deteriorate these numbers will grow geometrically.

Osama bin Laden and his intimates should have been run down by careful international police work, just as the Israelis ran down so many hiding Nazi leaders and Interpol and the French successfully hunted down the (then) world´s worst terrorist, Carlos 'the Jackal' aka Illich Ramirez Sanchez. The best Persian-speaking Pakistani detectives should have been drafted into a special Interpol task force manned by the best (and darkest complexioned) of the FBI and Scotland Yard.

It is probably still not too late to change tactics 180 degrees, although the job will be much harder than it would have been six years ago. Who has the courage to stand up and say this, or are European and Canadian leaders just going to scuttle away from the mess one by one, leaving the Americans to stew in their juice?

Jonathan Power is a veteran foreign affairs commentator based in London
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Sharpe shooters to bolster war on Taliban
The Sunday Times February 24, 2008 David Leppard
THE elite infantry unit made famous by the television series Sharpe, which starred Sean Bean, is to be deployed to fight the Taliban on the front line in Afghanistan.

Military commanders say that the battalion, 1 Rifles, consisting of 450 crack troops and support, will be deployed alongside 3 Commando Brigade of the Royal Marines in September.

The move, to be announced by Des Browne, the defence secretary, this summer, will mean that there will be more than 8,000 troops in Afghanistan - a significant upgrading of Britain’s fighting capability.
It heralds a tacit recognition by ministers and military chiefs that the situation in the province of Helmand is precarious and may deteriorate further if Britain’s presence is not reinforced.

Senior officers say the Rifles will fight alongside two other battalions of Royal Marines, which will take on the Taliban in Helmand this autumn.

The command of the Rifles is set to be transferred from the army to the navy in five weeks’ time. The move has led some in the military to suggest that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) is trying to beef up the marines on the cheap.

However, supporters of the Rifles believe the decision to deploy them will signal to the Taliban that British forces will not flinch in their determination to press them back high into the mountains.

Troop numbers increased last year by 1,400 to 7,000. In a recent statement to parliament Browne said that overall force levels in Afghanistan would remain “broadly unchanged” for the next few months.
However, the number of frontline fighting units is expected to increase substantially when Browne formally confirms the deployment of the Rifles and other fighting units in July.

The Rifles are a historic regiment which fought in the Napoleonic wars and at the battle of Balaclava. They became part of the Royal Green Jackets in 1966 but were reformed last year. Their exploits were dramatised in the ITV series Sharpe, in which Bean played the role of Richard Sharpe, a fictional British soldier in the Napoleonic wars.

When John Reid, then defence secretary, first announced the deployment of a British battlegroup to Afghanistan in 2006, he said he hoped they would be able to leave “without a shot being fired”. But last summer Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, Britain’s ambassador to Kabul, predicted British involvement in the region would last at least 30 years.

Bob Gates, the US defence secretary, has urged all Nato countries to deploy troops to southern Afghanistan.

The number of British troops killed in Afghanistan since 2001 rose to 89 last week after a Royal Marine from Plymouth died in an explosion.
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