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Coalition: 33 militants killed in Afghanistan
By STEPHEN GRAHAM, Associated Press Writer Tue Jul 1, 6:46 AM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - Helicopters and a bomber attacked insurgents massing in eastern Afghanistan under cover of darkness, killing an estimated 33 people, the U.S.-led coalition said Tuesday.
NATO, Pakistani forces kill militants on Afghan border: ISAF
KABUL (AFP) - NATO forces in Afghanistan and Pakistani troops together killed a number of Taliban militants who fled across the rugged border between the two countries, the alliance said on Tuesday.
Afghan Government Welcomes Pakistan's Border Moves Against Militants
KABUL (AFP)--Afghanistan on Tuesday welcomed an operation by Pakistani forces against Islamic militants in a tribal district near their shared border but urged Islamabad to expand the hunt.
Afghanistan Strives to Register All Newborns
by Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson
NPR.org, July 1, 2008 · If you ask people in Afghanistan how old they are, you are likely to get a vague response.
Afghanistan needs new humanitarian effort: UN aid chief
GENEVA (AFP) — A new humanitarian action plan is needed for Afghanistan, where people are being hit by resurgent fighting and a food shortage, the United Nations top official on humanitarian aid said Tuesday.
Turning Afghan Heroin into Kalashnikovs
Remote Afghan province is home to major trading post for heroin destined for Europe and arms for Taleban and other militants.
By Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi in Badakhshan (ARR No. 295, 30-Jun-08)
The bazaar sits on a small island in the river Panj, a narrow expanse of shallow but fast-flowing water that is all that separates the Badakhshan region of Tajikistan from the Afghan province of the same name. On either side loom the Pamir mountains
Afghan governor says civilians killed in U.S raid
30 Jun 2008 10:53:41 GMT
KABUL, June 30 (Reuters) - U.S.-led coalition troops, backed by air strikes, killed 28 Taliban insurgents in southwestern Afghanistan, but six to eight civilians were also killed in the operation, the provincial governor said on Monday.
Chinese road worker kidnapped in Afghanistan
Tue Jul 1, 2008 2:11pm BST
KABUL, July 1 (Reuters) - Suspected Taliban insurgents kidnapped a Chinese road construction worker southwest of the capital Kabul on Tuesday, the deputy provincial governor said.
Mullah Omar wears shades, has trimmed beard, lives in Pakistan: ex-follower
The Canadian Press 06/30/2008
KANDAHAR-The notorious leader of the Taliban, one of the world's most wanted fugitives, has reportedly had a makeover and been sighted on numerous occasions in Pakistan.
Netherlands work the 'Dutch touch' in Afghan conflict - Feature
Tue, 01 Jul 2008 05:13:00 GMT EARTHtimes.org
Tarin Kowt, Afghanistan - A Dutch soldier snaps a photo of an Afghan elder for his security clearance at the local army base and tells a seated ring of village leaders that he later intends to pass the picture to Taliban insurgents.
Amid Policy Disputes, Qaeda Grows in Pakistan
The New York Times By Mazzetti and David Rohde 06/30/2008
WASHINGTON -Late last year, top Bush administration officials decided to take a step they had long resisted. They drafted a secret plan to make it easier for the Pentagon’s Special Operations forces to launch missions into the
Taliban border havens targeted
Envoy outlines Islamabad's commitment
The Washington Times - World David R. Sands (Contact) Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Last week's Pakistani offensive against an Islamist warlord near Peshawar was just an example of what is in store for any extremists who challenge the nation's new government militarily, Pakistani Ambassador Husain Haqqani said in an interview Monday.
How British forces are ranged against Afghan opposition
The Scottish Herald IAN BRUCE, Defence Correspondent July 01 2008
There are 7800 British service personnel from almost 80 different units in Afghanistan, ranging from infantry and postal couriers to Apache helicopter gunship crews and RAF jet pilots.
Cut off the Taliban
The Herald, Scotland July 1 2008
A grim milestone was reached yesterday when Lance-Corporal James Johnson of the Royal Regiment of Scotland was named as the 13th victim of the worst month for fatalities for British ground forces in Afghanistan since the invasion of 2001
Evidence Faulted in Detainee Case
New York Times, United States By WILLIAM GLABERSON July 1, 2008
In the first case to review the government’s secret evidence for holding a detainee at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a federal appeals court found that accusations against a Muslim from western China held for more than six years were based
Musharraf accused of shielding Taliban
The Globe and Mail SAEED SHAH From Tuesday's Globe and Mail July 1, 2008
PESHAWAR -President Pervez Musharraf and the Pakistani army are allowing Taliban militants a safe haven in the country's tribal belt in an effort to undermine the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, a key Pakistani provincial official said yesterday.
British troops making progress in Afghanistan, says Douglas Alexander
Telegraph.co.uk, United Kingdom By Aislinn Simpson 30/06/2008
British troops are making progress in Afghanistan both militarily and in rebuilding the country, according to the International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander. Speaking from Lashkar Gar during a visit to inspect development projects,
Pakistan's odd dance with the Taliban
The Daily Star, Lebanon By Mustafa Malik Commentary Tuesday, July 01, 2008
As NATO troops face stepped up guerrilla attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan's new ambassador to Washington, Husain Haqqani, is trying hard to explain to Americans why his government has tried to make peace with the Pakistani Taliban.
Militants burn down ice-cream parlours
www.quqnoos.com Written by PAN Monday, 30 June 2008
Ice-cream shops showing 'un-Islamic' films set on fire by masked men
TALIBAN militants have burned down four ice cream parlours in a province bordering the capital Kabul, a security guard said.
More than 5m children face abuse - ministry
Written by www.quqnoos.com Monday, 30 June 2008
Child labour and police beatings threaten child rights, ministry says
MORE than five million children are in urgent need of help, the Ministry of Work and Social Affairs has said.
Miss Pakistan to quench thirst of Afghans
www.quqnoos.com Written by PAN Monday, 30 June 2008
Beauty queen strikes deal which aims to bring clean drinking water to millions
PAKISTAN’S reigning Miss World, Natasha Paracha, has launched a project to bring clean drinking water to millions of Afghans.
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Coalition: 33 militants killed in Afghanistan
By STEPHEN GRAHAM, Associated Press Writer Tue Jul 1, 6:46 AM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - Helicopters and a bomber attacked insurgents massing in eastern Afghanistan under cover of darkness, killing an estimated 33 people, the U.S.-led coalition said Tuesday.
Reconnaissance aircraft spotted "large groupings" of insurgents armed with heavy machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades on Monday night in Khost province, the coalition said.
"After positively identifying the militants, coalition forces engaged them with attack helicopters and a close air support bomber, killing approximately 33 militants," spokesman 1st Lt. Nathan Perry said.
Fighting between militants and security forces is intensifying in the southern half of Afghanistan. More than 2,100 people died in the violence in the first six months, according to an Associated Press tally.
An Afghan army officer said the clash in Khost began when Taliban militants attacked coalition and Afghan forces patrolling in Tani, a district on the border with Pakistan.
Col. Mohammed Israr, a battalion commander in Khost, said Afghan intelligence reports put the number of enemy dead at about 20.
Israr also said that the group of about 50 militants had crossed from Pakistan, where some Taliban and al-Qaida militants seek refuge, and retreated in that direction under heavy coalition fire.
However, Perry said the clash took place about five miles from the frontier and "did not involve Pakistan."
Most of those killed in the violence this year have been militants, who suffer heavy losses when caught in the open by coalition aircraft. However, foreign troop deaths are also rising as militants get more effective at ambushes and roadside bombings.
At least 45 international troops died in Afghanistan in June, the deadliest month since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion to oust the Taliban.
Police said a roadside bomb killed four officers and seriously wounded two others on Monday as they drove to the aid of colleagues under militant attack near Tirin Kot, the capital of Uruzgan province.
In neighboring Zabul province, police said they killed five Taliban fighters who attacked a police post in Daichopan district before dawn Tuesday.
The U.S.-led coalition said its troops shot dead one militant and detained four during an operation Monday to disrupt Taliban activities in southwestern Nimroz province.
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NATO, Pakistani forces kill militants on Afghan border: ISAF
KABUL (AFP) - NATO forces in Afghanistan and Pakistani troops together killed a number of Taliban militants who fled across the rugged border between the two countries, the alliance said on Tuesday.
The coordinated operation on Monday comes despite growing tensions between Pakistan and western nations with troops in Afghanistan, and less than a month after US forces allegedly killed 11 Pakistani troops in an airstrike.
Insurgents attacked an outpost of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in the eastern Afghan province of Khost on Monday with rockets, grenades and small-arms fire, an ISAF statement said.
ISAF responded with air strikes, artillery and mortar fire.
"The fleeing militants crossed into Pakistan," the statement said.
"ISAF forces thus coordinated with the Pakistan military border area counterparts, and the Pakistan border force subsequently fired artillery on the retreating insurgents inside Pakistan," it said.
The statement did not say how many militants were killed but it said there were no civilian casualties. An ISAF source however said that 11 rebels were believed to have been killed.
Pakistan's military was not immediately available for comment.
Islamabad's new government has come under growing pressure from Kabul and its US and NATO allies over its alleged failure to tackle militants operating from Pakistan's troubled tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai last month threatened to launch military action on Pakistani soil to tackle the rebels, provoking an official protest by Islamabad.
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Afghan Government Welcomes Pakistan's Border Moves Against Militants
KABUL (AFP)--Afghanistan on Tuesday welcomed an operation by Pakistani forces against Islamic militants in a tribal district near their shared border but urged Islamabad to expand the hunt.
Pakistan, which Afghanistan has accused of failing to tackle insurgents based in the semiautonomous Pashtun tribal belt along the rugged frontier, launched an offensive in the Khyber region last weekend.
"Afghanistan's government welcomes in principle the military operation there," Afghan President Hamid Karzai's spokesman Homayun Hamidzada told reporters in Kabul.
"But we know this is not enough," Hamidzada said, calling for an "expanded, serious and broad action against terrorist hideouts inside Pakistani soil."
The spokesman reiterated accusations that militants based in Pakistani tribal regions were crossing the border to launch attacks on Afghan and international forces.
Karzai last month threatened to take military action against insurgents on Pakistani soil, provoking an angry protest by Islamabad, which says it is doing its utmost to counter the rebels.
Pakistan said it launched the operation in Khyber on Saturday to tackle militants who were threatening the northwestern city of Peshawar and attacking convoys supplying NATO and U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
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Afghanistan Strives to Register All Newborns
by Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson
NPR.org, July 1, 2008 · If you ask people in Afghanistan how old they are, you are likely to get a vague response.
Many will tell you they are "around" a given age. Others may give you a range of years. Such vagueness is not due to vanity, nor to any objection to the question. Instead, it is because many people in Afghanistan do not actually know how old they are.
Officials in the Afghan government are trying to change that. Starting this spring, they have been issuing their youngest citizens something most people in Afghanistan have never seen: a birth certificate.
Starting with Kabul
At the moment, Kabul is the only place in Afghanistan where every newborn baby is being registered, including those who are born at home.
The Afghan government, with United Nations help, hopes to do the same for newborns all over the country by the end of 2009. If they succeed, it will be the first time this has happened in Afghan history.
Currently, the government says less than 1 percent of Afghans have a birth certificate.
Najibullah Hameem is a child protection specialist in Kabul with UNICEF, the body funding the birth certificate drive.
"Having identity, proper identity is eveybody's human right," Hameem says. "This is something which is lacking in Afghanistan. By registering births, we are solving so many problems."
The government hopes the program will help ensure all children are vaccinated and receive those shots at the right age. It is also intended to give the government an accurate tally of its youngest citizens, so enough schools can be built.
Some officials hope the certificates might even keep Afghan parents from marrying off their daughters at too early an age. That, in turn, could lower infant and maternal mortality rates.
Inaccessible Regions
Still, despite popular support and the fact that birth certificates are required by law, Mir Abdulrahman Maaqool, a senior Interior Ministry official, says it is difficult to make the certificates standard issue in Afghanistan. One particular problem has been reaching newborns in remote areas, where four of every five Afghans live.
"No one opposes it, but there isn't a whole lot of cooperation, either," says Maaqool. "We tell local religious leaders and village elders about the benefit the certificates can bring to their communities, but they want to be paid a salary by UNICEF or the government. That we simply can't afford."
Nor does the Afghan government have the means to collect or store nationwide data.
"We need to support them in terms of space, in terms of equipment, in terms of transportation, which is a main issue," says Hameem. "Currently we have provided motorbikes to birth [registrars]. By motorbikes you can access all the communities."
However, another stumbling block to the rollout of the certificate program is that many areas of the country are engulfed in war and too dangerous to access to offer the certificates. Hameem says this could prevent the Afghan government from meeting its 2009 goal of registering all newborns.
Finding a Name
In a Kabul maternity ward, hospital worker Mahbooba asks a dozen mothers if they have chosen names for their babies. All but one say no. Parents in Afghanistan often take several days to select a name.
The exception on this afternoon is 22-year-old Shamina.
Mahbooba asks the new mother what name she has chosen for her son. "Karam," she replies, and the hospital worker scribbles it down on the birth certificate.
Even though most parents do not settle on a name before they leave the hospital, Mahbooba prefers to register the babies immediately after birth, as the hospital has no way to ensure that the parents will return to complete the birth certificate.
Mahbooba says she now finds herself suggesting names to the parents. Most of the time, she says, parents go along with her suggestions. She guesses it is because she selects religious names found in the Quran.
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Afghanistan needs new humanitarian effort: UN aid chief
GENEVA (AFP) — A new humanitarian action plan is needed for Afghanistan, where people are being hit by resurgent fighting and a food shortage, the United Nations top official on humanitarian aid said Tuesday.
"I think we do need to step up our efforts," said UN relief coordinator John Holmes, who has just returned from a visit to Afghanistan.
"I think we need to put together a new humanitarian action plan there, we need to mobilise more resources," he told reporters in Geneva.
He said the humanitarian situation in the country was "not only serious, but is also deteriorating".
An appeal for funds would be made in the coming weeks, he said. The actual sum was being finalised, but he estimated it would be around 300-400 million dollars.
Holmes said the appeal should cover assistance for 4.5 million people, including 2.7 million living in urban areas and the others in rural regions.
The package would include assistance in food, nutrition, health and development of agriculture.
Afghanistan is facing a food shortage problem due to sharply higher food prices as well as a drought that is reducing the country's production of wheat -- a staple food -- by about 40 percent.
With more refugees returning from Pakistan and Iran, the country is also having problems resettling these displaced people.
At the same time, resurgent fighting is displacing people within the country.
Earlier Tuesday, officials said NATO and US troops killed dozens of militants on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
US-led helicopters and bombers killed 33 insurgents in eastern Khost province late Monday, while NATO soldiers in the same area co-operated with Pakistani troops across the frontier to kill several more rebels, they said.
But the violence came as the international troops passed a grim milestone: 49 soldiers died in June, making it their bloodiest month in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban and worse than Iraq for the second month in a row.
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Turning Afghan Heroin into Kalashnikovs
Remote Afghan province is home to major trading post for heroin destined for Europe and arms for Taleban and other militants.
By Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi in Badakhshan (ARR No. 295, 30-Jun-08)
The bazaar sits on a small island in the river Panj, a narrow expanse of shallow but fast-flowing water that is all that separates the Badakhshan region of Tajikistan from the Afghan province of the same name. On either side loom the Pamir mountains, a range of high peaks that cuts the region off from the rest of the world.
When the bazaar opened about five years ago, the hardy Pamiri people of Tajikistan rejoiced that they would now have contact with people on the Afghan side of the river from whom they had been cut off for decades – by the Soviets, by war, and by ruined economies.
Some boasted happily that Tajikistan would soon be able to share its technical know-how with its Afghan brothers.
That know-how has since flowed both ways, although not as the optimists hoped.
The unprepossessing frontier bazaar squatting on the river Panj has become one of the largest arms-for-drugs trading centres in the world.
In the middle of the river, local mafiosi cut deals that will arm Taleban insurgents in southern Afghanistan, as well as al-Qaeda and other militant groups in the wider region. In return for Russian-made weapons, they trade Afghan heroin that will eventually be sold on the streets of European cities.
The Joint Bazaar, as it is called, covers approximately 2,000 square metres surrounded by concrete walls.
Border police control access to the site, Tajik officers on one side, Afghans on the other.
Inside, local merchants display their wares on hand-woven carpets. Foodstuffs from Tajikistan such as dried mulberries, apples, and almonds compete with offerings from the Afghan side, mostly exotic fruit brought from Pakistan, like mangoes and tangerines.
Colourful Pamir “jurabi”, the thick knitted socks that locals wear in winter, alternate with piles of cheap clothing as the customers haggle over prices.
But the real business here is conducted behind the scenes. From the northern side of the border, smugglers bring in gemstones and weapons to exchange for high-quality Afghan heroin.
Business is booming, according to Mohammad Aslam (not his real name), a trader from Afghanistan.
“My income has doubled these days,” he told IWPR. “On the one hand, we are making money from heroin; on the other, we can take weapons into Afghanistan and make even more money selling them to arms smugglers from the south.”
The bazaar provides the meeting place where contacts are made and deals are struck. But the goods are not stored here – Mohammad Aslam explained that smugglers bring samples of their wares, and then discuss quantity and price.
“After we agree on a deal, we pay some money in advance and meet at a specified time to exchange the rest of the goods,” he said.
The price list is fairly standard, according to the smuggler.
“The automatic weapons that are brought in by the Russians are mostly Kalakovs, which are more expensive than Kalashnikovs,” he said.
“Kalakov” is local parlance for late-model Kalashnikov rifles such as the AK-74, which are more prized than the old AK-47.
“We trade a kilogram of heroin for ten Kalakovs or 15 [old-model] Kalashnikovs,” he said. “After that, we sell them to smugglers from Helmand and Kandahar either for cash or for more heroin.”
The traders do a good business, since the insurgents are willing to pay top dollar for firearms.
“While we exchange a kilo of heroin for ten Kalakovs, the Taleban will give us a kilo for just five or six [guns],” he continued. “Everybody benefits.”
The guns come disassembled for ease of shipping.
“They come in small parts, and that is how we take them into Afghanistan,” said Mohammad Aslam. “When we manage to get one Kalashnikov to the centre of Badakhshan we can sell it for 200 US dollars, but the same gun will fetch 50 per cent more in Jalalabad.”
The arms-for-heroin trade is of course a risky business.
“The location for exchanging large amounts of heroin and weapons is always kept secret,” he said. “If it’s a major deal, we take a lot of armed men with us to guarantee our security. Then we load the merchandise onto donkeys or mules.”
The terrain is so rugged that only the smaller, more nimble animals can negotiate some pathways, which seem to extend directly up the mountainside.
The smugglers do not seem overly worried about police or other law enforcement officials.
Mohammad Aslam’s past includes a stint as a “warlord” in one of Afghanistan’s many armed militias, and he has retained some useful contacts.
“We have armed supporters in the area who are in turn supported by some people in the authorities,” he said. “We also have old friends in the government, and everybody gets a cut of the deal.”
The arms make their way south, and not only to the Taleban.
Standing beside Mohammad Aslam was Mir Alam, all the way from Sorkh Rod district in the southeast Afghan province of Nangarhar. He had just picked up a consignment of weapons and was about to head south in his Russian-made jeep.
“I am just looking for a good customer,” he said. “It isn’t important to us who it is. Most of the Taleban are good customers, but we also take these guns further into Pakistan, to the Landi Kotal market, where we sell them to international arms smugglers.”
From Landi Kotal – located high in the Khyber Pass – the weapons make their way to radical groups all over the world, Mir Alam said, explaining, “Landi Kotal is one of the largest arms markets in the region. The mujaheddin and al-Qaeda purchase weapons for Palestine, Kashmir and other battle fronts.”
As in most businesses, demand drives prices.
“When Arabs come to Pakistan, the price goes up,” said Mir Alam.
Whatever the fluctuations, the trade is immensely lucrative, and is a better earner than simply selling narcotics, because of the high demand for arms.
“The exchange of arms for heroin makes a lot of money – more than we get from heroin smuggling alone,” said Mir Alam. “Each time the weapons are exchanged for heroin, both sides get a profit from both arms and heroin. It’s a good trade. I know people who have luxury palaces in Dubai and other Arab countries thanks to this trade.”
The major profits go to those with the clout to call on adequate protection. “The big smugglers are backed by governments in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia,” he said. “These smugglers can pay huge amounts of money. But we don’t do badly.”
On the other side of the border, heroin is smuggled further into Tajikistan, and from there through the Central Asian republics to Russian and European markets. The trade generates large profits along its way, although not so much for those who simply ferry it across the Tajik-Afghan border.
“We really don’t make that much money out of this,” said one Tajik smuggler. “Our job is just to get the sacks of heroin across the border, then the Russian mafia come with their vehicles, many of which have police insignia. They take the heroin and give us the guns. Then they take the drugs to Europe.
“All along the way we bribe the police. The Russians do, too, but they have to give money to high-ranking officials. Failing that, it’s impossible.”
In past years, Badakhshan mostly grew, processed and exported its own opium, the raw material of heroin. Now, given the explosion of cultivation in the south, especially in Helmand, and a largely successful eradication process in Badakhshan itself, the northern province has become a clearing-house for drugs from other provinces.
One resident of Ishkashim district of Afghan Badakhshan, speaking on condition of anonymity, was happy to guide a visitor through the process by which raw opium is turned into heroin.
“I have been running a small heroin-processing lab for three years now,” he said. “My brothers and partners, however, are mostly involved in smuggling, because it gives them a lot of income.”
The lab is located underground, and is not exactly hi-tech. It consists of six barrels, a few basins, a press and bags of opium.
“First you pour between 18 and 36 kilos of opium into each barrel and boil it in water for two or three days,” he explained. “Then you press the paste and dry it in the sun. To obtain the white powder, you pour a certain kind of acid on it.”
According to one drug smuggler, a kilo of opium costs between 200 and 300 US dollars here. It takes five to seven kilos of opium to produce one kilo of heroin, which sells for approximately 2,000 dollars at the Panj River market. Once it is safely across the Tajik border, the price goes up to 5,000 dollars.
On the streets of Europe or the United States, of course, the price increases exponentially.
The provincial government of Afghan Badakhshan freely admits that it has little control over the processing and smuggling drugs in Badakhshan. Many parts of this mountainous region are remote and inaccessible, and coupled with the tangled bureaucracy, it is all but impossible to curb the trade.
“Since the borders are administered directly by the Ministry of the Interior, I do not feel responsible,” said provincial governor Abdul Majid. “Badakhshan is like a fortress, and I do not have control over its gatekeeper.”
The governor was able to reduce poppy cultivation by 72 per cent in 2007, taking Badakhshan from being one of the leading producers of opium in Afghanistan to nearly poppy-free status.
But Abdul Majid has not been able to make a dent in the smuggling trade, and also acknowledges that there are heroin labs in Badakhshan.
According to the governor, unless the administrative system is changed and the border police are brought under his control, he will not be able to patrol the smuggling routes.
The laboratories are located in remote areas which cannot be adequately policed, he added.
“Badakhshan is so mountainous that in some places people have to walk for two days just to reach a road,” he said. “These labs are not permanent fixtures; they just consist of a couple of barrels and basins. If the police find out about them, they can easily be moved to another location, so control is a bit difficult.”
General Abdul Rahman Rahman, commander-in-chief of the Afghan border police, also confirmed that organised crime was rife in the north. But he said the authorities were trying to contain the menace by training and equipping the police force.
“While terrorism is the main challenge in the south, the presence of local and international mafia presents another challenge in the north,” he told reporters at a press conference in Mazar-e-Sharif. “Local [militia] commanders are another kind of problem, and they support this mafia in the north.”
He acknowledged that police were not always up to the task of dealing with the drug problem, but insisted the situation was improving.
“Our police are getting training and equipment,” he said. “We will prevent such situations in the future.”
The Tajik police at the border were not quite so forthcoming.
A young officer, standing at the gate of the market, flatly denied that any smuggling was going on.
“No one can do illegal work here,” he told IWPR. “You can see everybody, and they are not exchanging anything except food, clothes and fruit. We are here to maintain security at the bazaar, so that people can work in a safe environment. We want to cement the brotherhood between Afghans and Tajiks.”
Smugglers say it is unlikely that governments in the region can prevent the trafficking of guns and heroin – the scale, and the profits, are simply too big.
“The weapons find their way to Arab countries and the heroin finds its way to Europe, so the entire world is involved in the trade,” said Mohammad Aslam. “The local governments know they can’t do anything to stop it, so they just take their cut. And so do we.
“The people who buy weapons support poppy cultivation. There’s an agreement there, and things are getting better day by day.”
Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi is an IWPR reporter based in Mazar-e-Sharif.
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Afghan governor says civilians killed in U.S raid
30 Jun 2008 10:53:41 GMT
KABUL, June 30 (Reuters) - U.S.-led coalition troops, backed by air strikes, killed 28 Taliban insurgents in southwestern Afghanistan, but six to eight civilians were also killed in the operation, the provincial governor said on Monday.
Sunday's raid was aimed at a Taliban meeting in the Khash Rud district of Nimroz province on Sunday, provincial governor Ghulam Dastagir Azad told reporters.
"The operation was carried out on the basis of a tip-off. Twenty-eight Taliban and between six to eight civilians were killed in it," he said, without giving further details.
The U.S. military confirmed the mission, but said nothing of civilian casualties. It said the operation was aimed at disrupting militant activities in Nimroz.
The issue of civilians killed by foreign troops is a sensitive one in Afghanistan as it further undermines public support for the presence of around 71,000 international troops in the country.
In the first six months of this year, 698 civilians were killed, 255 of them by Afghan government and foreign forces. In the same period last year, a total of 430 civilians were killed, the United Nations said.
In the latest operation, U.S.-led coalition forces identified numerous militants armed with AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades and hand grenades, the U.S. military said in a statement.
"Multiple militant groups engaged the force in a compound and in nearby areas. Coalition forces then killed them using small-arms fire. Two additional groups of armed militants manoeuvred against the force and were killed by air strikes," it said.
A Taliban spokesman said no member of the group was killed and the casualties were civilians participating in a party.
Also in Nimroz, 15 Taliban insurgents were killed in a joint Afghan and U.S.-led forces operation after a group of insurgents attacked an Afghan police post in the Dasht-e Bakwa on Sunday, the Afghan Interior Ministry said.
Elsewhere, two Afghan soldiers were killed and three more were wounded when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb in the eastern province of Paktia on Sunday, the Ministry of Defence said in a statement issued on Monday.
Afghanistan has faced an upsurge of violence since 2006 and some Western politicians have warned it may slide back into anarchy.
According to Afghan and U.N. officials more than 13,000 people have been killed since 2006 when the Taliban regrouped to overthrow the Afghan government and drive out foreign troops. (Reporting by Mirwais Afghan; Writing by Sayed Salahuddin; Editing by Alex Richardson)
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Chinese road worker kidnapped in Afghanistan
Tue Jul 1, 2008 2:11pm BST
KABUL, July 1 (Reuters) - Suspected Taliban insurgents kidnapped a Chinese road construction worker southwest of the capital Kabul on Tuesday, the deputy provincial governor said.
Taliban insurgents have kidnapped dozens of foreigners in Afghanistan in the last two years, killing some, but freeing most, sometimes in return for ransom payments.
Gunmen seized the Chinese man and his Afghan driver in the Jalrez district of Maidan Wardak province, just southwest of Kabul, while he was returning from the construction site, deputy provincial governor Ali Ahmad Asheh told Reuters.
The driver was later released.
Two German engineers were kidnapped in the same province a year ago. One was shot dead after suffering a heart attack, the other was freed after more than a month in captivity.
Maidan Wardak was relatively free of violence until last year, when the Taliban moved in from the south, capitalising on discontent in the province that had only a very small police force and and saw very low levels of development and aid, despite being only around an hour's drive from the capital. (Reporting by Sher Ahmad; Writing by Jon Hemming; Editing by Alex Richardson)
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Mullah Omar wears shades, has trimmed beard, lives in Pakistan: ex-follower
The Canadian Press 06/30/2008
KANDAHAR-The notorious leader of the Taliban, one of the world's most wanted fugitives, has reportedly had a makeover and been sighted on numerous occasions in Pakistan.
The one-eyed cleric Mullah Omar has significantly changed his appearance since he fled from his native Afghanistan seven years ago, says a former follower. Mullah Mohammed Zaher says he has personally met with the reclusive jihadist several times in Quetta, Pakistan.
He says the Taliban founder has turfed his trademark turban, trimmed his beard and begun wearing sunglasses.
Coupled with the fact that few pictures of him exist, Zaher says it would be difficult to pick Omar out of a crowd.
"He has totally changed his appearance," says Zaher, a self-described Taliban commander under the former regime.
"He does not look like a Talib anymore. He does not even wear a turban."
Zaher says Omar has several safe houses in the Quetta area, and that he has eaten meals with him there more than once in recent years.
"I used to meet him. I have seen his home," Zaher said through a Pashto-language interpreter.
"He used to call us over."
Zaher also lent support to a claim made five years ago by Afghan President Hamid Karzai about what the Taliban founder has been up to.
He says Omar is now a religious imam and has led Friday prayer services at a mosque next to a medical clinic in Quetta's Saleem plaza.
The Afghan president publicly declared in 2003 that his intelligence sources had informed him that Omar was seen praying at that mosque in the bustling plaza.
Despite Karzai's claim, few reports have emerged since then about the fugitive mullah's whereabouts.
"We got a call about 10 days ago from our sources in Quetta that Mullah Omar was seen at a mosque near Saleem complex in the city," Karzai told Newsline.com in December 2003. "I know where the Saleem complex is. I have lived in Quetta myself for many years."
A U.S. intelligence source told CNN in 2006 that American officials believed Omar was in the Quetta area, and that at one point they had his whereabouts pinned down to a precise neighbourhood.
Britain's Independent newspaper reported last year that Omar was being sheltered by Pakistan's intelligence services - a claim the Pakistani government vigorously denied.
But Zaher says it's true.
He says Omar has even spent the night on a military compound in the Nawakilli area near Quetta, where he says he and other militants received bomb-making lessons from members of the Pakistani army.
Zaher escaped to Pakistan after the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.
He says he became tired of facing harassment and extortion from corrupt officials in the new Karzai government, and he moved his family to Quetta in 2003.
He says old Taliban friends soon contacted him and put him in touch with Pakistani military officials, who trained him and paid him $500 a month to join the insurgency.
He says he left the insurgency a little over two years ago, and moved back to Kandahar city's District Six.
Zaher says he has not seen or spoken to Omar since then.
When asked how it could be possible that the Americans would still be searching for Omar despite all these supposed sightings, Zaher grows cross.
His voice rising to a near-shout, he lays out a cynical conspiracy theory that appears to be remarkably popular even among ordinary Afghans:
"Nobody wants to catch him!"
A.R. Khan, a Kandahar-based journalist, did additional reporting and provided translation during the interviews.
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Netherlands work the 'Dutch touch' in Afghan conflict - Feature
Tue, 01 Jul 2008 05:13:00 GMT EARTHtimes.org
Tarin Kowt, Afghanistan - A Dutch soldier snaps a photo of an Afghan elder for his security clearance at the local army base and tells a seated ring of village leaders that he later intends to pass the picture to Taliban insurgents. The pinch of black humour relayed through an interpreter could drop like a lead balloon, but fortunately it's taken the right way - the dozen Pashtun tribesmen laugh out loud, all except the butt of the joke, who forces a wry grimace.
"They like it when you fool around with them," Warrant Officer Nico says after the meeting in the so-called Green Zone, a swathe of lush farmland along the River Tiri Rud in the otherwise barren and Taliban- infested central Uruzgan province.
It's no play area though. Earlier in the day the enemy fired a 107- mm rocket at the troops and three hours later insurgents launch an attack on a nearby police post, illuminating the sky with explosions and tracer rounds. People die violent deaths here, often.
Yet somewhere between the violence, fear and poverty that plague Afghanistan there is a place for a gentler, more human level of contact between representatives of very different cultures.
It is varyingly seen as a strength and weakness of the 1,650 Dutch troops deployed in the country that they tend to be less confrontational and hard-hitting than, say, their US or British allies.
"We are here to work safely, we are not here to get (the Taliban) all the time but to work with the people," said Dennis, a Sergeant First Class who like the rest of the contingent does not use his surname for security reasons.
"We usually work in groups of 50 to 60 so that if the Taliban see us they think 'not today'. But if they want to shoot, let them," he added.
Insurgents shelter in local houses but searches are conducted with an effort towards civility, including a knock or ring on the bell before dozens of dusty army boots stomp through.
At the expense of surprise, women and children are given time to move into a separate room before the unit enters. And in line with NATO policy, the Dutch put Afghan government troops to the fore when searching.
Patrols are often combined with "consent-winning" missions by the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) to implement projects like the installation of wells and water pumps and the construction of bridges and roads.
It's not a give-away bonanza: "If you get shot at from a village and you go over there and no-one tells you anything, then I don't want to do a project there, they have got to earn it," said Nico, who works in the PRT.
There is known to be high-level friction between US and Dutch authorities over what tactics to adopt in Uruzgan, which is also a centre of the illegal opium poppy growing industry.
Critics down the chain of command argue that the softer, reconstruction-focussed path of the Dutch comes at the expense of counter-insurgency operations.
"They are trying to repair the house before they have put out the fire," said a sceptical US Army NCO who has worked in Uruzgan.
After spending more than a year training for the mission, some Dutch troops are indeed frustrated with the "smiling and waving" approach and complain they are hampered by the politicians back home.
"Look how the British and US do things, we need to push harder, hunt them down, but instead we do PRT patrols and build wells and water pumps and then we are gone in four months," an infantry sergeant said. "I'm not saying you should bomb and storm everywhere but if you are going to do something, then do it," he added.
There are no plans to alter the Dutch way of doing business, according to the contingent commander, Colonel Richard Harskamp, who disagrees that the combat element is being neglected.
"My guys treat people with respect but if they are required to they will fight as fiercely as the US troops," Harskamp said. "It is showing the guts to take a little more risk by not kicking the door down but knocking and asking to come in. The long term effect is that you can come back."
Meanwhile, the Taliban are likely indifferent to the distinctions between their enemies. Whether referring to Dutch, Australian or US soldiers, they are collectively tagged 'Amerikayan' in the Pashtu language.
Sixteen soldiers from the Netherlands died in Aghanistan since NATO deployed across the southern provinces in 2006. Eleven were killed in combat-related incidents but it's hard to say if the relatively low number is the result of the lighter Dutch touch.
"We haven't had as many casualties as the British or Canadians, we have a lot of angels on our shoulders," concluded one soldier.
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Amid Policy Disputes, Qaeda Grows in Pakistan
The New York Times By Mazzetti and David Rohde 06/30/2008
WASHINGTON -Late last year, top Bush administration officials decided to take a step they had long resisted. They drafted a secret plan to make it easier for the Pentagon’s Special Operations forces to launch missions into the snow-capped mountains of Pakistan to capture or kill top leaders of Al Qaeda.
Intelligence reports for more than a year had been streaming in about Osama bin Laden’s terrorism network rebuilding in the Pakistani tribal areas, a problem that had been exacerbated by years of missteps in Washington and the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, sharp policy disagreements, and turf battles between American counterterrorism agencies.
The new plan, outlined in a highly classified Pentagon order, was intended to eliminate some of those battles. And it was meant to pave a smoother path into the tribal areas for American commandos, who for years have bristled at what they see as Washington’s risk-averse attitude toward Special Operations missions inside Pakistan. They also argue that catching Mr. bin Laden will come only by capturing some of his senior lieutenants alive.
But more than six months later, the Special Operations forces are still waiting for the green light. The plan has been held up in Washington by the very disagreements it was meant to eliminate. A senior Defense Department official said there was “mounting frustration” in the Pentagon at the continued delay.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush committed the nation to a “war on terrorism” and made the destruction of Mr. bin Laden’s network the top priority of his presidency. But it is increasingly clear that the Bush administration will leave office with Al Qaeda having successfully relocated its base from Afghanistan to Pakistan’s tribal areas, where it has rebuilt much of its ability to attack from the region and broadcast its messages to militants across the world.
A recent American airstrike killing Pakistani troops has only inflamed tensions along the mountain border and added to tensions between Washington and Pakistan’s new government.
The story of how Al Qaeda, whose name is Arabic for “the base,” has gained a new haven is in part a story of American accommodation to President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, whose advisers played down the terrorist threat. It is also a story of how the White House shifted its sights, beginning in 2002, from counterterrorism efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan to preparations for the war in Iraq.
Just as it had on the day before 9/11, Al Qaeda now has a band of terrorist camps from which to plan and train for attacks against Western targets, including the United States. Officials say the new camps are smaller than the ones the group used prior to 2001. However, despite dozens of American missile strikes in Pakistan since 2002, one retired C.I.A. officer estimated that the makeshift training compounds now have as many as 2,000 local and foreign militants, up from several hundred three years ago.
Publicly, senior American and Pakistani officials have said that the creation of a Qaeda haven in the tribal areas was in many ways inevitable — that the lawless badlands where ethnic Pashtun tribes have resisted government control for centuries were a natural place for a dispirited terrorism network to find refuge. The American and Pakistani officials also blame a disastrous cease-fire brokered between the Pakistani government and militants in 2006.
But more than four dozen interviews in Washington and Pakistan tell another story. American intelligence officials say that the Qaeda hunt in Pakistan, code-named Operation Cannonball by the C.I.A. in 2006, was often undermined by bitter disagreements within the Bush administration and within the C.I.A., including about whether American commandos should launch ground raids inside the tribal areas.
Inside the C.I.A., the fights included clashes between the agency’s outposts in Kabul, Afghanistan, and Islamabad. There were also battles between field officers and the Counterterrorist Center at C.I.A. headquarters, whose preference for carrying out raids remotely, via Predator missile strikes, was derided by officers in the Islamabad station as the work of “boys with toys.”
An early arrangement that allowed American commandos to join Pakistani units on raids inside the tribal areas was halted in 2003 after protests in Pakistan. Another combat mission that came within hours of being launched in 2005 was scuttled because some C.I.A. officials in Pakistan questioned the accuracy of the intelligence, and because aides to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld believed that the mission force had become too large.
Current and former military and intelligence officials said that the war in Iraq consistently diverted resources and high-level attention from the tribal areas. When American military and intelligence officials requested additional Predator drones to survey the tribal areas, they were told no drones were available because they had been sent to Iraq.
Some former officials say Mr. Bush should have done more to confront Mr. Musharraf, by aggressively demanding that he acknowledge the scale of the militant threat.
Western military officials say Mr. Musharraf was instead often distracted by his own political problems, and effectively allowed militants to regroup by brokering peace agreements with them.
Even critics of the White House agree that there was no foolproof solution to gaining control of the tribal areas. But by most accounts the administration failed to develop a comprehensive plan to address the militant problem there, and never resolved the disagreements between warring agencies that undermined efforts to fashion any coherent strategy.
“We’re just kind of drifting,” said Richard L. Armitage, who as deputy secretary of state from 2001 to 2005 was the administration’s point person for Pakistan.
Fleeing U.S. Air Power
In March 2002, several hundred bedraggled foreign fighters — Uzbeks, Pakistanis and a handful of Arabs — fled the towering mountains of eastern Afghanistan and crossed into Pakistan’s South Waziristan tribal area.
Savaged by American air power in the battles of Tora Bora and the Shah-i-Kot valley, some were trying to make their way to the Arab states in the Persian Gulf. Some were simply looking for a haven.
They soon arrived at Shakai, a remote region in South Waziristan of tree-covered mountains and valleys. Venturing into nearby farming villages, they asked local tribesmen if they could rent some of the area’s walled family compounds, paying two to three times the impoverished area’s normal rates as the militants began to lay new roots.
“They slowly, steadily from the mountainside tried to establish communication,” recalled Mahmood Shah, the chief civilian administrator of the tribal areas from 2001 to 2005.
In many ways, the foreigners were returning to their home base. In the 1980s, Mr. bin Laden and hundreds of Arab and foreign fighters backed by the United States and Pakistan used the tribal areas as a staging area for cross-border attacks on Soviet forces in Afghanistan.
The militants’ flight did not go unnoticed by American intelligence agencies, which began to report beginning in the spring of 2002 that large numbers of foreigners appeared to be hiding in South Waziristan and neighboring North Waziristan.
But Gen. Ali Mohammad Jan Aurakzai, the commander of Pakistani forces in northwestern Pakistan, was skeptical. In an interview this year, General Aurakzai recalled that he regarded the warnings as “guesswork,” and said that his soldiers “found nothing,” even when they pushed into dozens of square miles of territory that neither Pakistani nor British forces had ever entered.
The general, a tall, commanding figure who was born in the tribal areas, was Mr. Musharraf’s main adviser on the border areas, according to former Pakistani officials. For years, he would argue that American officials exaggerated the threat in the tribal areas and that the Pakistani Army should avoid causing a tribal rebellion at all costs.
Former American intelligence officials said General Aurakzai’s sweeps were slow-moving and easily avoided by militants. Robert L. Grenier, the C.I.A. station chief in Islamabad from 1999 to 2002, said that General Aurakzai was dismissive of the reports because he and other Pakistani officials feared the kind of tribal uprising that could have been touched off by more intrusive military operations. “Aurakzai and others didn’t want to believe it because it would have been an inconvenient fact,” Mr. Grenier recalled.
Signs of Militants Regrouping
Until recent elections pushed Mr. Musharraf off center stage in Pakistan, senior Bush administration officials consistently praised his cooperation in the Qaeda hunt.
Beginning shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Musharraf had allowed American forces to use Pakistani bases to support the American invasion of Afghanistan, while Pakistani intelligence services worked closely with the C.I.A. in tracking down Qaeda operatives. But from their vantage point in Afghanistan, the picture looked different to American Special Operations forces who saw signs that the militants whom the Americans had driven out of Afghanistan were effectively regrouping on the Pakistani side of the border.
When American military officials proposed in 2002 that Special Operations forces be allowed to establish bases in the tribal areas, Pakistan flatly refused. Instead, a small number of “black” Special Operations forces — Army Delta Force and Navy Seal units — were allowed to accompany Pakistani forces on raids in the tribal areas in 2002 and early 2003.
That arrangement only angered both sides. American forces used to operating on their own felt that the Pakistanis were limiting their movements. And while Pakistani officials publicly denied the presence of Americans, local tribesmen spotted the Americans and protested.
Under pressure from Pakistan, the Bush administration decided in 2003 to end the American military presence on the ground. In a recent interview, Mr. Armitage said he had supported the pullback in recognition of the political risks that Mr. Musharraf had already taken. “We were pushing them almost to the breaking point,” Mr. Armitage said.
The American invasion of Iraq in 2003 added another complicating factor, by cementing a view among Pakistanis that American forces in the tribal areas would be a prelude to an eventual American occupation.
To have insisted that American forces be allowed to cross from Afghanistan into Pakistan, Mr. Armitage added, “might have been a bridge too far.”
Dealing With Musharraf
Mr. Bush’s re-election in 2004 brought with it another problem once the president overhauled his national security team. By early 2005, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Mr. Armitage had resigned, joining George J. Tenet, who had stepped down earlier as director of central intelligence. Their departures left the administration with no senior officials with close personal relationships with Mr. Musharraf.
In order to keep pressure on the Pakistanis about the tribal areas, officials decided to have Mr. Bush raise the issue in personal phone calls with Mr. Musharraf.
The conversations backfired. Two former United States government officials say they were surprised and frustrated when instead of demanding action from Mr. Musharraf, Mr. Bush repeatedly thanked him for his contributions to the war on terrorism. “He never pounded his fist on the table and said, ‘Pervez you have to do this,’ ” said a former senior intelligence official who saw transcripts of the phone conversations. But another senior administration official defended the president, saying Mr. Bush had not gone easy on the Pakistani leader.
“I would say the president pushes quite hard,” said the official, who would speak about the confidential conversations only on condition of anonymity. At the same time, the official said Mr. Bush was keenly aware of the “unique burden” that rested on any head of state, and had the ability to determine “what the traffic will bear” when applying pressure to foreign leaders.
Tensions Within the C.I.A.
As attacks into Afghanistan by militants based in the tribal areas continued, tensions escalated between the C.I.A. stations in Kabul and Islamabad, whose lines of responsibility for battling terrorism were blurred by the porous border that divides Afghanistan and Pakistan, and whose disagreements reflected animosities between the countries.
Along with the Afghan government, the C.I.A. officers in Afghanistan expressed alarm at what they saw as a growing threat from the tribal areas. But the C.I.A. officers in Pakistan played down the problem, to the extent that some colleagues in Kabul said their colleagues in Islamabad were “drinking the Kool-Aid,” as one former officer put it, by accepting Pakistani assurances that no one could control the tribal areas.
On several occasions, senior C.I.A. officials at agency headquarters had to intervene to dampen tensions between the dueling C.I.A. outposts. Other intragovernmental battles raged at higher altitudes, most notably over the plan in early 2005 for a Special Operations mission intended to capture Ayman al-Zawahri, Mr. bin Laden’s top deputy, in what would have been the most aggressive use of American ground troops inside Pakistan. The New York Times disclosed the aborted operation in a 2007 article, but interviews since then have produced new details about the episode.
As described by current and former government officials, Mr. Zawahri was believed by intelligence officials to be attending a meeting at a compound in Bajaur, a tribal area, and the plan to send commandos to capture him had the support of Porter J. Goss, the C.I.A. director, and the Special Operations commander, Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal.
But even as members of the Navy Seals and Army Rangers in parachute gear were boarding C-130 cargo planes in Afghanistan, there were frenzied exchanges between officials at the Pentagon, Central Command and the C.I.A. about whether the mission was too risky. Some complained that the American commando force was too large, numbering more than 100, while others argued that the intelligence was from a single source and unreliable.
Mr. Goss urged the military to carry out the mission, and some C.I.A. officials in Washington even tried to give orders to execute the raid without informing Ryan C. Crocker, then the American ambassador in Islamabad. But other C.I.A. officials were opposed to the raid, including a former officer who said in an interview that he had “told the military guys that this thing was going to be the biggest folly since the Bay of Pigs.”
In the end, the mission was aborted after Mr. Rumsfeld refused to give his approval for it. The decision remains controversial, with some former officials seeing the episode as a squandered opportunity to capture a figure who might have led the United States to Mr. bin Laden, while others dismiss its significance, saying that there had been previous false alarms and that there remained no solid evidence that Mr. Zawahri was present.
Bin Laden Hunt at Dead End
By late 2005, many inside the C.I.A. headquarters in Virginia had reached the conclusion that their hunt for Mr. bin Laden had made little progress since Tora Bora.
Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., who at the time ran the C.I.A.’s clandestine operations branch, decided in late 2005 to make a series of swift changes to the agency’s counterterrorism operations.
He replaced Mr. Grenier, the former Islamabad station chief who in late 2004 took over as head of the agency’s Counterterrorist Center. The two men had barely spoken for months, and some inside the agency believed this personality clash was beginning to affect C.I.A. operations.
Mr. Grenier had worked to expand the agency’s counterterrorism focus, reinforcing operations in places like the Horn of Africa, Southeast Asia and North Africa. He also reorganized and renamed Alec Station, the secret C.I.A. unit formed in the 1990s to hunt Al Qaeda.
Mr. Grenier believed that the Counterterrorist Center and Alec Station had both grown very rapidly since 2001 and needed to be restructured to eliminate overlap.
But Mr. Rodriguez believed that the Qaeda hunt had lost its focus on Mr. bin Laden and the militant threat in Pakistan.
So he appointed a new head of the Counterterrorist Center, who has not been publicly identified, and sent dozens more C.I.A. operatives to Pakistan. The new push was called Operation Cannonball, and Mr. Rodriguez demanded urgency, but the response had a makeshift air.
There was nowhere to house an expanding headquarters staff, so giant Quonset huts were erected outside the cafeteria on the C.I.A.’s leafy Virginia campus to house a new team assigned to the bin Laden mission. In Pakistan, the new operation was staffed not only with C.I.A. operatives drawn from around the world, but also with recent graduates of “the Farm,” the agency’s training center at Camp Peary in Virginia.
“We had to put people out in the field who had less than ideal levels of experience,” one former senior C.I.A. official said. “But there wasn’t much to choose from.”
One reason for this, according to two former intelligence officials directly involved in the Qaeda hunt, was that by 2006 the Iraq war had drained away most of the C.I.A. officers with field experience in the Islamic world. “You had a very finite number” of experienced officers, said one former senior intelligence official. “Those people all went to Iraq. We were all hurting because of Iraq.”
Surge in Suicide Bombings
The increase had little impact in Pakistan, where militants only continued to gain strength. In the spring of 2006, Taliban leaders based in Pakistan launched an offensive in southern Afghanistan, increasing suicide bombings by sixfold and American and NATO casualty rates by 45 percent. At the same time, they assassinated tribal elders in Pakistan who were cooperating with the government.
Once again, Pakistani Army units launched a military campaign in the tribal areas. Once again, they suffered heavy casualties.
And once again, Mr. Musharraf turned to General Aurakzai to deal with the problem. Having retired from the Pakistani Army, General Aurakzai had become the governor of North-West Frontier Province, and he immediately began negotiating with the militants. On Sept. 5, 2006, General Aurakzai signed a truce with militants in North Waziristan, one in which the militants agreed to surrender to local tribes and carry out no further attacks in Afghanistan.
To help sell Washington on the deal, Mr. Musharraf brought General Aurakzai to the Oval Office several weeks later.
In a presentation to Mr. Bush, General Aurakzai advocated a strategy that would rely even more heavily on cease-fires, and said striking deals with the Taliban inside Afghanistan could allow American forces to withdraw from Afghanistan within seven years.
But the cease-fire in Waziristan had disastrous consequences. In the months after the agreement was signed, cross-border incursions from the tribal areas into Afghanistan rose by 300 percent. Some American officials began to refer to General Aurakzai as a “snake oil salesman.”
A Rising Terror Threat
By the fall of 2006, the top American commander in Afghanistan had had enough.
Intelligence reports were painting an increasingly dark picture of the terrorism threat in the tribal areas. But with senior Bush administration officials consumed for much of that year with the spiraling violence in Iraq, the Qaeda threat in Pakistan was not at the top of the White House agenda.
Mr. Bush had declared in a White House news conference that fall that Al Qaeda was “on the run.”
To get Washington’s attention, the commander, Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, ordered military officers, Special Operations forces and C.I.A. operatives to assemble a dossier showing Pakistan’s role in allowing militants to establish a haven.
Behind the general’s order was a broader feeling of outrage within the military — at a terrorist war that had been outsourced to an unreliable ally, and at the grim fact that America’s most deadly enemy had become stronger.
For months, military officers inside a walled-off compound at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, where a branch of the military’s classified Joint Special Operations Command is based, had grown increasingly frustrated at what they saw as missed opportunities in the tribal areas.
American commanders had been pressing for much of 2006 to get approval from Mr. Rumsfeld for an operation to capture Sheik Saiid al-Masri, a top Qaeda operator and paymaster whom American intelligence had been tracking in the Pakistani mountains.
Mr. Rumsfeld and his staff were reluctant to approve the mission, worried about possible American military casualties and a popular backlash in Pakistan.
Finally, in November 2006, Mr. Rumsfeld approved a plan for Navy Seal and Army Delta Force commandos to move into Pakistan and capture Mr. Masri. But the operation was put on hold days later, after Mr. Rumsfeld was pushed out of the Pentagon, a casualty of the Democratic sweep of the 2006 election.
When General Eikenberry presented his dossier to several members of Mr. Bush’s cabinet, some inside the State Department and the C.I.A. dismissed the briefing as exaggerated and simplistic. But the White House took note of his warnings, and decided to send Vice President Dick Cheney to Islamabad in March 2007, along with Stephen R. Kappes, the deputy C.I.A. director, to register American concern.
That visit was the beginning of a more aggressive effort by the administration to pressure Pakistan’s government into stepping up its fight. The decision last year to draw up the Pentagon order authorizing for a Special Operations campaign in the tribal areas was part of that effort.
But the fact that the order remains unsigned reflects the infighting that persists. Administration lawyers and State Department officials are concerned about any new authorities that would allow military missions to be launched without the approval of the American ambassador in Islamabad. With Qaeda operatives now described in intelligence reports as deeply entrenched in the tribal areas and immersed in the civilian population, there is also a view among some military and C.I.A. officials that the opportunity for decisive American action against the militants may have been lost.
Pakistani military officials, meanwhile, express growing frustration with the American pressure, and point out that Pakistan has lost more than 1,000 members of its security forces in the tribal areas since 2001, nearly double the number of Americans killed in Afghanistan.
Some architects of America’s efforts in Pakistan defend the Bush administration’s record in the tribal areas, and vigorously deny that Washington took its eye off the terrorist threat as it focused on Iraq policy. Some also question whether Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri, Al Qaeda’s top two leaders, are really still able to orchestrate large-scale attacks.
“I do wonder if it’s in fact the case that Al Qaeda has really reconstituted itself to a pre-9/11 capability, and in fact I would say I seriously doubt that,” said Mr. Crocker, the American ambassador to Pakistan between 2004 and 2006 and currently the ambassador to Iraq.
“Their top-level leadership is still out there, but they’re not communicating and they’re not moving around. I think they’re symbolic more than operationally effective,” Mr. Crocker said.
But while Mr. Bush vowed early on that Mr. bin Laden would be captured “dead or alive,” the moment in late 2001 when Mr. bin Laden and his followers escaped at Tora Bora was almost certainly the last time the Qaeda leader was in American sights, current and former intelligence officials say. Leading terrorism experts have warned that it is only a matter of time before a major terrorist attack planned in the mountains of Pakistan is carried out on American soil.
“The United States faces a threat from Al Qaeda today that is comparable to what it faced on Sept. 11, 2001,” said Seth Jones, a Pentagon consultant and a terrorism expert at the RAND Corporation.
“The base of operations has moved only a short distance, roughly the difference from New York to Philadelphia.”
Mark Mazzetti reported from Washington, and David Rohde from Washington and Islamabad, Peshawar and Rawalpindi, Pakistan. David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington.
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Taliban border havens targeted
Envoy outlines Islamabad's commitment
The Washington Times - World David R. Sands (Contact) Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Last week's Pakistani offensive against an Islamist warlord near Peshawar was just an example of what is in store for any extremists who challenge the nation's new government militarily, Pakistani Ambassador Husain Haqqani said in an interview Monday.
Several more actions planned for the Afghan border area in the coming days will demonstrate to the world the new government's commitment to fighting the Taliban and other extremist groups, the ambassador told editors and reporters at The Washington Times.
"The message [in Saturday's strike against a Taliban-allied militant group led by Mangal Bagh] is that this is going to happen to anyone who does the same thing," said Mr. Haqqani, who said government forces would chase down Mr. Bagh in the remote corner of Pakistan's tribal regions where he has fled.
Mr. Bagh and his force of tribal militants sparked the weekend attack by encroaching into positions around the northwestern city of Peshawar and seeking to impose extreme Islamic practices on the inhabitants. The group was quickly routed by Frontier Corps troops backed with tanks and helicopters, sending Mr. Bagh fleeing for safety.
The envoy, appointed shortly after a new democratic coalition won Pakistan's February parliamentary elections, added that "there are going to be several actions in the next few days" along the border with Afghanistan that will demonstrate Pakistan's commitment to working with Afghanistan and NATO forces to crush terrorist havens inside the country.
Haqqani
U.S. and Afghan officials have criticized Pakistan's commitment in the past to hunt down Taliban and al Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden, who is thought to have taken refuge in loosely governed tribal areas that straddle the border.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said last week that the flow of fighters into Afghanistan remained "clearly a concern." Assistant Secretary of State Richard A. Boucher, who arrived in Islamabad on Monday for three days of talks, told a Senate hearing last week that previous Pakistani agreements to work with local tribal leaders to curb the militants had not worked.
The ruling coalition headed by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, an ally of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, sparked concern in Washington by appearing to revive a strategy used by President Pervez Musharraf to cut deals with prominent militant leaders and tribal chiefs.
U.S. military leaders and Afghan officials complained that militant cross-border strikes surged after past efforts at compromise.
But Mr. Gilani and Pakistani army chief Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani on June 25 endorsed another action plan to deal with extremists on the border, a mix of negotiations with some militant leaders and military action against others.
Mr. Haqqani said the new plan would have far greater legitimacy and effectiveness because it had been drafted and approved by a democratically elected government.
ASSOCIATED PRESS Pakistani tribal people line up Monday to offer funeral prayers for those killed in an attack by government forces on a militant compound in Qambarkhel in Pakistan's tribal area of Khyber. Mangal Bagh, the Taliban-allied leader targeted by the attack, was not captured.
He said the first operation, launched in the Khyber tribal area Saturday, had achieved its "basic objective" by destroying bases and safe houses belonging to Mr. Bagh in the village of Bara, about 10 miles outside Peshawar. The militant leader was not caught.
"The message is, 'This is going to happen to anyone who tries to do this kind of thing,'" the ambassador said. "The Pakistani military has been given the job and task of ensuring that there will be no flow of Taliban fighters from Pakistan into Afghanistan."
Mr. Gilani, meeting with Mr. Boucher in Islamabad, said his government was ready to sit down with Islamists who rejected violence, but would "never negotiate with militants nor allow foreigners to use our soil against another country."
A powerful explosion Monday, the third day of the Bara mission, destroyed a militant compound and killed up to eight people, according to wire service accounts.
The compound belonged to a militant belonging to the Vice and Virtue Movement, which is suspected of launching attacks inside Afghanistan.
While Mr. Haqqani labeled the operation a success, Baitullah Mehsud, considered one of the Taliban's top military commanders in Pakistan, said he was suspending his own contacts with the government to protest the attack.
Parties critical of Mr. Musharraf dominated the February vote, but Mrs. Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz of Nawaz Sharif, another former prime minister, have quarreled at times about the new government's agenda.
The ambassador, a former scholar and journalist well known in Washington's think-tank community, said the new government may take longer to reach a decision than when Mr. Musharraf dominated the political landscape, but that its policies were more likely to stick.
"There's a difference between a drift and a transition," Mr. Haqqani said. "Making decisions is a slightly lengthier process than it was when one person could make it. But the upside to it is that once the decision is made, it has national support and consensus."
Mr. Haqqani also faulted aspects of U.S. policy toward the region in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks, saying there has been a "complete failure" of American public diplomacy in Pakistan and the Muslim world to explain and defend U.S. objectives and interests in the global war on terrorism.
He said the obsession with security after Sept. 11 had damaged the country's image abroad, sometimes in ways Americans do not appreciate.
"You would not believe how small things help bin Laden," he said. "Every time a significant, respectable Pakistani is humiliated at an American airport, despite having a valid visa, the story doesn't even make it into your papers, but it's the biggest story of the day in Pakistan."
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How British forces are ranged against Afghan opposition
The Scottish Herald IAN BRUCE, Defence Correspondent July 01 2008
There are 7800 British service personnel from almost 80 different units in Afghanistan, ranging from infantry and postal couriers to Apache helicopter gunship crews and RAF jet pilots.
The main striking power for 16 Air Assault Brigade, the unit tasked with overseeing security in Helmand province, lies with five infantry battalions whose rifle companies are combined with other support elements such as gunners and engineers to form a self-contained battlegroup.
Two of the Royal Regiment of Scotland's five infantry battalions, the Argylls and the Royal Highland Fusiliers, are part of the garrison, along with 2nd and 3rd battalions of the Parachute Regiment and 1st battalion, the Royal Irish Regiment.
advertisementThere is also a reinforced armoured infantry company of about 120 soldiers from the Highlanders who operate Warrior fighting vehicles to add protection and firepower to the military mix. Each 28-tonne Warrior carries a section of seven infantrymen and is equipped with a 30mm cannon and a 7.62mm chain gun mounted in a turret.
To provide heavier fire support, there are borrowed sections - usually two guns, or complete batteries of six to eight guns - from five regiments of the Royal Artillery, plus the entire firepower of the 7th Parachute Regiment, Royal Horse Artillery. This unit is equipped with 105mm light howitzers designed to be carried rapidly into action slung beneath Chinook helicopters.
Platoon (30 men) or company-sized (100 men) drafts from the Duke of Lancaster's Regiment, the Yorkshire Regiment and the 2nd battalion, Royal Irish and other Territorial Army formations have also been "bolted on" to make up shortfalls in front-line strength.
The Scots Dragoon Guards (SDG) and two other cavalry regiments have troops of Scimitars and other tracked reconnaissance vehicles. The RAF has aircraft and flight and ground maintenance crews from eight squadrons, with direct ground attack and reconnaissance supplied by a small force of Harrier jump jets, and the vital troop transportation role performed by eight overworked Chinook helicopters.
About half of the servicemen and women on the ground are combat troops, with the rest providing everything from state-of-the-art medical facilities to the logistical supply chain delivering beans and bullets.
Among the more esoteric units in the province is a small cell of psychological warfare specialists and a handful of bomb-disposal experts with the most dangerous job in Afghanistan.
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Cut off the Taliban
The Herald, Scotland July 1 2008
A grim milestone was reached yesterday when Lance-Corporal James Johnson of the Royal Regiment of Scotland was named as the 13th victim of the worst month for fatalities for British ground forces in Afghanistan since the invasion of 2001. Afghanistan has become a much more dangerous place, a consequence of the fight being taken to the Taliban. Is the campaign winnable? That Lance-Corporal Johnson was killed by a so-called "legacy" landmine dating back perhaps nearly 40 years is a reminder, if any were needed, that if a force is to harbour hope of prevailing it must be in the fight for the long haul.
History teaches that a long-term commitment is no guarantee of success. If there is progress, it comes at a cost. To date, 110 British personnel have been killed in Afghanistan. British troops are engaged in Helmand province, one of the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan by dint of very high poppy production. Opium cultivation funds the Taliban, provides a source of income for poor farmers whose families cannot survive on the virtually unsustainable legal agricultural economy (while trapping them in debt to money-lending smugglers), and makes very rich senior government officials who exploit political influence to ease the movement of illicit drugs.
Corruption in high places filters down through the administrative ranks and further undermines the offices of a fragile state. Despite the billions of dollars in aid that pour into Afghanistan each year, President Hamid Karzai's government has largely failed to build alternative industries, such as carpet-making, that could take Afghans out of subsistence farming.
advertisementWeaning them off poppy cultivation, the other part of the equation, is, perhaps, even more problematic. The effort to do so, as part of a difficult strategy to provide the security and stability necessary as precursors to building roads, schools, medical centres, dams, irrigation systems and the other foundations of civil society, has put British and other Nato troops increasingly into direct conflict with the Taliban. Notions of progress are anathema to the insurgency. It needs to keep farmers subjugated and productive poppy growers. Cutting the Taliban's connections with the opium trade would deal the insurgency a severe blow.
But how to sever the link? In power, the Taliban virtually eradicated opium cultivation. It has returned with a vengeance, to the Taliban's advantage. Deploying its medieval tactics to tackle the problem anew would be counter-productive and could not be tolerated. Poppy cultivation is central to the Afghan problem. Increasingly it puts British troops in the line of fire and vulnerable to roadside bomb attacks. Perhaps we need a smarter response that redirects some of the millions in aid to buying up crops and putting opium to legitimate medical use. Legitimising and controlling the process would damage the Taliban and could strike a blow against the corruption eating away at the heart of government in Kabul. With so much potentially to gain, for the safety of British troops, too, it merits thorough consideration.
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Evidence Faulted in Detainee Case
New York Times, United States By WILLIAM GLABERSON July 1, 2008
In the first case to review the government’s secret evidence for holding a detainee at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a federal appeals court found that accusations against a Muslim from western China held for more than six years were based on bare and unverifiable claims. The unclassified parts of the decision were released on Monday.
With some derision for the Bush administration’s arguments, a three-judge panel said the government contended that its accusations against the detainee should be accepted as true because they had been repeated in at least three secret documents.
The court compared that to the absurd declaration of a character in the Lewis Carroll poem “The Hunting of the Snark”: “I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.”
“This comes perilously close to suggesting that whatever the government says must be treated as true,” said the panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
The unanimous panel overturned as invalid a Pentagon determination that the detainee, Huzaifa Parhat, a member of the ethnic Uighur Muslim minority in western China, was properly held as an enemy combatant.
The panel included one of the court’s most conservative members, the chief judge, David B. Sentelle.
The release on Monday of the unclassified parts of the decision followed a brief court notice last week. The notice said a classified decision had directed the government to release Mr. Parhat, transfer him to another country or conduct a new military hearing at Guantánamo to determine if he had been properly classified as an enemy combatant.
The Justice Department declined to comment on the ruling.
Although the decision was a defeat for the Bush administration, it was unclear what it might mean immediately for Mr. Parhat, a former fruit peddler who in recent years sent a message to his wife that she should remarry because his imprisonment at Guantánamo was like already being dead.
American officials have said that they cannot return Mr. Parhat and 16 other Uighur detainees at Guantánamo to China for fear of mistreatment and that some 100 other countries have refused to accept them.
Detainees’ lawyers said the ruling in the case of Mr. Parhat, who says he went to Afghanistan in 2001 to escape China, could broadly affect other detainees because of its skeptical view of the government’s evidence.
A lawyer representing other detainees, Marc D. Falkoff, said the evidence against many of the 270 men now at Guantánamo was similar to that in the Parhat case.
“This opinion shows that the government is going to have a hard time defending the military’s decision to detain many of these men,” said Mr. Falkoff, a professor at Northern Illinois University College of Law.
Pentagon officials have claimed that the Uighurs at Guantánamo were “affiliated” with a Uighur resistance group, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, and that it, in turn, was “associated” with Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
The ruling released Monday overturned the Pentagon’s finding after a 2004 hearing that Mr. Parhat was an enemy combatant based on that affiliation. He and the 16 other Uighurs were detained after the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
The court said the classified evidence supporting the Pentagon’s claims included assertions that events had “reportedly” occurred and that the connections were “said to” exist, without providing information about the source of such information.
“Those bare facts,” the decision said, “cannot sustain the determination that Parhat is an enemy combatant.”
Some lawyers said the ruling highlighted the difficulties they saw in civilian judges reviewing Guantánamo cases.
“This case displays the inadequacies of having civilian courts inject themselves into military decision-making,” said Glenn M. Sulmasy, a law professor at the Coast Guard Academy and a national security fellow at Harvard.
The appellate panel reviewed Mr. Parhat’s case under a limited procedure Congress provided for challenging military hearings at Guantánamo. The case was argued before the Supreme Court’s decision on June 12 that detainees have a constitutional right to seek release in more expansive habeas corpus proceedings.
The 17 Uighurs now held at Guantánamo say they are allies, not enemies, of the United States.
The Uighur Muslims, who come from an area of far western China they call East Turkestan, claim oppression at the hands of the Chinese government, including forced abortions and relocations of educated people to remote areas.
The Chinese government has described the East Turkestan Islamic Movement as a terrorist organization. American officials agreed in 2002, when they were pressing for Chinese support for military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The decision was written by Judge Merrick B. Garland, an appointee of President Bill Clinton. It was joined by Chief Judge Sentelle, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, and Judge Thomas B. Griffith, a 2005 appointee of President Bush.
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Musharraf accused of shielding Taliban
The Globe and Mail SAEED SHAH From Tuesday's Globe and Mail July 1, 2008
PESHAWAR -President Pervez Musharraf and the Pakistani army are allowing Taliban militants a safe haven in the country's tribal belt in an effort to undermine the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, a key Pakistani provincial official said yesterday.
In an interview, Afrasiab Khattak, the “peace envoy” of the government of the insurgency-racked North West Frontier Province, charged that Mr. Musharraf and the army are still dictating policy for the region, and that “they want the Afghan government to fail. A hangover of the ‘strategic-depth' policy is still running.”
The Pakistan army's doctrine of “strategic depth” requires a client regime in Kabul, so that Afghanistan will not side with India in the event of another India-Pakistan war. Islamabad backed the Taliban government of the 1990s in Kabul, but Mr. Karzai is hostile to Pakistan.
Echoing Washington's concerns, Mr. Khattak said: “Unfortunately, the [Taliban] sanctuaries have not been dismantled. They are still functioning.”
Islamabad has repeatedly denied that it allows its soil to be used against foreign governments, but Washington and Kabul believe that the Taliban and al-Qaeda enjoy refuge in Pakistan's tribal zone, known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).
After February elections that restored democracy in Pakistan, Mr. Musharraf, who was army chief until the end of last year, was supposed to have retreated to a ceremonial role, while the military said it would be subservient to civilian rule. However, Mr. Khattak, who is a leader of the Awami National Party and heads the NWFP government's negotiations with militants, insisted that the army was still dominant. “In the past, the Afghan policy has been lead by the army. I have no reason for saying it has been reversed. Actions speak louder than words.”
The current military operation in FATA is limited in scope, raising questions about whether it is the start of a concerted move against the bands of extremists established across the tribal zone or just a stunt designed to give the appearance of a crackdown. The new Pakistani government has advocated peace negotiations, not military action, against the extremists in FATA and NWFP, alarming the United States and Afghanistan.
Pakistan's homegrown Taliban movement has, so far, not been touched by the present offensive, which has targeted local fundamentalist groups in FATA's Khyber area. Pakistan's Taliban and their Afghan brethren are not in Khyber but are holed up in other parts of FATA.
Yesterday, Pakistan's fitful military operation against Islamist extremists pushed into its third day, consisting primarily of isolated assaults on buildings used by warlords in Khyber agency. The army met almost no resistance.
The main targets were the compounds of Khyber militant leader Mangal Bagh, whose religious warriors had for months been menacing the outskirts of the provincial capital, Peshawar. The lightly armed Frontier Corps paramilitary was used, rather than the regular Pakistan army.
Mr. Bagh himself was across the other side of Khyber agency, close to the Afghan border in the remote Tirah Valley, when troops blew up his home in Bara town, which is just outside Peshawar. Whether the military now presses on to the Tirah Valley will be a key test of its resolve, experts said.
“If he [Bagh] is not pursued, then this is a PR exercise, which is very dangerous,” said Talat Masood, a retired general turned military analyst. “It would be a grave mistake if they did not follow through and pursue this group to the Tirah Valley and also stop them escaping to Afghanistan. That would just embolden them.”
Special to The Globe and Mail
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British troops making progress in Afghanistan, says Douglas Alexander
Telegraph.co.uk, United Kingdom By Aislinn Simpson 30/06/2008
British troops are making progress in Afghanistan both militarily and in rebuilding the country, according to the International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander. Speaking from Lashkar Gar during a visit to inspect development projects, Mr Alexander said he was "extraordinarily proud" of British forces and what they have achieved.
His comments come shortly after the 110th service person was killed in the wartorn country since the US-led invasion in 2001, the 13th in just 10 days.
The MoD is expected to name the latest soldier, who was killed by a landmine thought to have been left over from the Soviet occupation, within days.
Yesterday, the Ministry of Defence named Warrant Officer 2nd Class Dan Shirley, 32, as one of the most recent soldiers killed when his open-topped Land Rover rolled as he travelled between Sangin and Camp Bastion.
Mr Alexander insisted that the heavy losses experienced by British forces were not in vain.
He said: "I've heard already of the more than six million children who are now in school.
"That's two million of them young girls, compared with a figure of 900,000 boys in 2001 when the Taliban didn't feel the need for girls to go to school.
"We've seen real improvements also in terms of healthcare and in terms of the economy. So I'm encouraged by what I've seen at the same time as feeling extraordinary pride and admiration in the work of our service personnel."
During his visit to the country, which began on Sunday, he announced that Britain will provide £30m funding towards an initiative encouraging business investment in Afghanistan.
The UK will work with companies such as Roshan, Afghanistan's largest mobile phone company, independent broadcaster Tolo TV, the Aga Khan Development Network, and the US and Afghan Governments to reform and improve the way people do business in the country.
Mr Alexander said: "We have already seen significant economic progress since 2001: average incomes have more than doubled, the economy has grown on average by 15 per cent a year since 2002 and private sector investment reached $1 billion per year in 2006.
"Development of the private sector is the only way to provide jobs and income for the 65 per cent of the Afghan population who are under 25 years old."
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Pakistan's odd dance with the Taliban
The Daily Star, Lebanon By Mustafa Malik Commentary Tuesday, July 01, 2008
As NATO troops face stepped up guerrilla attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan's new ambassador to Washington, Husain Haqqani, is trying hard to explain to Americans why his government has tried to make peace with the Pakistani Taliban. That peace deal, despite the army's confrontation with a senior Pakistani Taliban leader in the past few days, appears to have bolstered the flow of Pakistani fighters into Afghanistan. Kandahar Governor Asadullah Khalid says most of the 56 militants killed in a recent military operation there were Pakistanis.
The Pakistani Army had pushed for the Taliban deal and, more ominously, its paramilitary troops are reported to be training Taliban guerrillas. Some Pakistani officials say the recent American air strikes that killed 11 of their soldiers were a US warning to their army.
So why is the army helping the Taliban? I asked Haqqani at a dinner reception in Arlington, Virginia. The ambassador said he prefers "not to answer this question." After a pause, he added: "The army operates in Pakistan's social environment." I was surprised by the envoy's effort to explain, rather than deny, his military's involvement in Taliban activities.
Pakistan's "social environment" is indeed overwhelmingly supportive of the guerrilla movement to expel NATO troops from Afghanistan. The discredited Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf led the "war on terror" against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda to gain American support for his military rule. But the current democratically elected government, sensitive to public opinion, considers it suicidal to do so. Government officials also point out that Musharraf's military crackdowns against the Taliban have increased, instead of decreased, the guerrilla group's popularity and militancy.
During a fall trip through Pakistan, I was told by politicians, scholars and ordinary people that they didn't differentiate between NATO and Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Pakistani youths, supported by the CIA and American arms, fought to roll back the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
In Islamabad, Senator M. Enver Baig of the ruling Pakistan People's Party reminded me that the US government and media called the anti-Soviet guerrillas "mujahideen" or freedom fighters. He said the Taliban were resisting "American hegemony," but that they "don't hate Americans."
The Taliban are made up mostly of Pashtun, who make up 42 percent of Afghanistan's population and nearly 20 percent of Pakistan's. Numerically, Pakistan has twice as many Pashtun as in Afghanistan. Many Pashtun in both Pakistan and Afghanistan resent the boundary, drawn by the British colonial power, that divides them between the two countries.
The Pashtun are known for their infinite hospitality and legendary spirit of independence. Unlike Al-Qaeda, the Taliban didn't have an anti-American agenda. Their belief that they had a "duty" to protect their guest Osama bin Laden made them face the catastrophe of the 2001 US invasion. In Bajaur tribal agency, I was told that if George W. Bush had become a Pashtun guest, they would have protected him, too, with their lives.
Similarly, throughout history the Pashtun have shown indomitable valor in beating back invaders, some of them superpowers of their day such as the Greeks, British and Soviets. Today most Pakistanis and Afghans believe in their bones that the Pashtun will drive back the NATO forces from Afghanistan as well, and Pakistanis overwhelmingly support their campaign.
Apart from Pakistan's pro-Taliban social environment, strategic calculations weigh heavily with the Pakistani Army, which dominates the management of Islamabad's Afghan (as well as Kashmiri and nuclear-arms) policy. Army officers resent Afghan President Hamid Karzai's warm ties to India, Pakistan's arch-adversary. And they believe that because NATO will one day be pulling up its stakes from Afghanistan, they need to make sure Kabul doesn't come under the influence of a hostile power, especially India. The Pakistani Army is cultivating the Taliban because it sees them dominating political life in post-NATO Afghanistan. They ruled Afghanistan during 1996-2001, when Pakistan's relations with it were the closest ever.
The Pakistani Army values relations with the United States, but it thinks it can't ignore Pakistan's strategic interests in Afghanistan. The army has, however, lessened somewhat it support for the Taliban in an effort to placate the Bush administration, hoping, perhaps desperately, that the Americans will eventually realize that they will need some day to bid Afghanistan farewell, but that Pakistan cannot do so.
Mustafa Malik, a Washington-based journalist, worked as speechwriter for the late Pakistani Prime Minister Nurul Amin and carried out diplomatic assignments from the Pakistani government. He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR.
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Militants burn down ice-cream parlours
www.quqnoos.com Written by PAN Monday, 30 June 2008
Ice-cream shops showing 'un-Islamic' films set on fire by masked men
TALIBAN militants have burned down four ice cream parlours in a province bordering the capital Kabul, a security guard said.
The militants, who attacked the parlours in the Kulanger district of Logar on Monday, also set fire to DVDs, CDs and televisions used to entertain ice-cream buyers while they eat.
Security guard Mohammad Alem said: "At about 1am 10 masked Talibs came into the market and asked me to show them where the ice-cream shops were. I was scared so I showed them."
The masked men broke down the parlour doors, took out the televisions and set fire to them behind the shop.
They then graffitied every shop in the market with threats against government officials.
A nearby resident said he called the police but they failed to arrive at the scene until the morning, even though the militants stayed in the market for three hours.
One of the parlour’s owners, Aftab, said he had received warnings before the arson attack.
Logar’s police chief, General Gullam Mostafa Mohseni, refused to comment.
A shop owner in the market said the ice-cream parlours sold alcohol and showed un-Islamic films to their customers.
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More than 5m children face abuse - ministry
Written by www.quqnoos.com Monday, 30 June 2008
Child labour and police beatings threaten child rights, ministry says
MORE than five million children are in urgent need of help, the Ministry of Work and Social Affairs has said.
The deputy head of the ministry said during a three-day conference that children in Afghanistan are not only deprived of an education but are forced into illegal jobs.
The conference aims to eliminate child abuse and child labour, and to ensure children are given proper rights.
Recent drought and famine in large parts of Afghanistan have focred many families to send their children onto the streets to beg for food and money to keep them alive.
Police regularly beat children taken off the streets and thrown into detention centres, Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission said in a report last week.
The detention centres for "young offenders" often deprive children of the right to an education, the report said.
"The report shows that children in detention continue to face rights violations- including maltreatment, lack of access to education and health services.
"A punitive and retributive approach to juvenile justice seems to be still predominant in Afghanistan," the United Nations’ children’s body said in a statement.
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Miss Pakistan to quench thirst of Afghans
www.quqnoos.com Written by PAN Monday, 30 June 2008
Beauty queen strikes deal which aims to bring clean drinking water to millions
PAKISTAN’S reigning Miss World, Natasha Paracha, has launched a project to bring clean drinking water to millions of Afghans.
The 23-year-old Miss Paracha, who works for the United Nation's International Renewable Energy Organisation (IREO) in New York, said her agency had struck a deal with a clean water company in Afghanistan.
"This company has a chemical which they put in the water and within 48 hours the water is drinkable," Natasha said, adding the initiative would provide safe drinking water to a large number of Afghans.
Natasha runs a non-profit organisation, Vision of Development, which works for the welfare of children and women in rural areas of Pakistan.
Planning to extend her work across the border, Natasha said Afghanistan needed a lot of help from the global community, particularly neighbouring countries.
On Saturday, Natasha led a silent auction in Manhattan to raise money for charity work in Afghanistan. "My goal is to work towards women's issues and children," she said.
Natasha is also working on an Afghan pageant.
"It is going to take some time as a lot of issues are involved. But it will provide a platform for Afghan women to stand up for what they believe should be the role model for their society," the beauty queen said.
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