 |
||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Serving you since 1998 | ||||||||||||
|
|
6 security forces, 1 civilian killed in attacks in war-torn Afghanistan's south
Associated Press / July 12, 2008
KABUL, Afghanistan - Officials say two insurgent attacks in southern Afghanistan have killed four Afghan police, two soldiers, and a civilian.
Afghanistan discovers mines worth $300 bln
KABUL, July 12 (Xinhua) -- Afghan Minister for Mines Ibrahim Adil has said that his ministry had discovered varieties of mines worth of 300 billion U.S. dollars in Afghanistan's central high lands, a local newspaper reported Saturday.
Afghan play raises ghosts of brutal past
by Thibauld Malterre Sat Jul 12, 1:31 AM ET
BAMIYAN, Afghanistan (AFP) - Unsure, Sardar takes his head in his hands: should he undergo the operation that will enable him to express the horrors of Afghanistan's past 30 years at the risk of reviving unbearable pain?
Taliban sow confusion on Pakistan- Afghan border
By Jonathon Burch and Zeeshan Haider Sat Jul 12, 5:54 AM ET
KABUL/ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - NATO-led peacekeepers in Afghanistan on Saturday blamed militants for a mortar attack two nights earlier that wounded Pakistani soldiers and Afghan police on either side of the border and led to a Pakistani protest.
NATO: Militants sparked border clash
By NAHAL TOOSI Associated Press Sat Jul 12, 6:53 AM ET
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A recent border clash that wounded several Pakistani and Afghan security personnel was sparked by insurgents in Afghanistan who fired at targets in both countries, apparently to stoke cross-border tensions, NATO said Saturday.
'It's impossible to conquer the Afghans'
The Globe and Mail PAUL KORING From Saturday's Globe and Mail July 12, 2008
MOSCOW-Head bowed, exhausted, the statue of a young soldier back from Afghanistan's killing fields is flanked by long, grim, lists of his dead comrades. It's a cautionary monument for Western politicians and generals who boldly
Taliban kill 15 Pakistani soldiers in ambush
Reuters / July 12, 2008 By Sami Paracha
KOHAT, Pakistan - Taliban militants killed at least 15 paramilitary soldiers in an ambush in northwestern Pakistan on Saturday, officials said.
Prophet's cloak can't shelter Kandahar from terror
One of Islam's holiest relics was once a rallying point for the Taliban. Now their insurgency is putting its guardian in harm's way
The Globe and Mail GRAEME SMITH gsmith@globeandmail.com July 11, 2008
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN-At the heart of Kandahar's dirty labyrinth of streets stands a clean square and a lavishly decorated building housing a religious artifact that's key to understanding why this city has suffered the worst of the insurgency.
ISI hand in Kabul attack, says India Army chief
Dawn - International By Our Correspondent July 11, 2008
NEW DELHI-A pattern of angry exchanges is discernible between India and Pakistan over the separate yet related theatres of violence in Kashmir and Afghanistan. India’s Army Chief Gen Deepak Kapoor was quoted on Friday as adding
They lost limbs serving Canada, now Afghan translators hope to live there
The Canadian Press, Afghanistan 12/07/2008
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan-They lost their limbs serving Canada, and now they're asking to be allowed into the country.
Pakistani Minister: Afghanistan Shares Blame for Border Unrest
By David Gollust State Department Voice of America / 11 July 2008
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said Friday Afghanistan bears a heavy share of blame for unrest along their mutual border. The Pakistani official held talks on security and other issues with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Afghanistan's 'sons of the soil' rise up
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Online / July 12, 2008
KARACHI - The resilient Taliban have proved unshakeable across Afghanistan over the past few months, making the chances of a coalition military victory against the popular tide of the insurgency in the majority Pashtun belt increasingly slim.
Kabul: Indian Embassy to resume issuing visa
Indo-Asian News Service Saturday, July 12, 2008 (New Delhi)
Unfazed by the deadly July 7 suicide attack outside its premises, the Indian mission in Kabul has swung into business as it resumes issuing visas to hordes of Afghans, for many of them come to Delhi for medical treatment.
Obama wants Bin Laden executed
July 11, 2008
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said in interview excerpts released Friday that Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden should be executed, if he is ever captured alive.
'It's impossible to conquer the Afghans'
Soviet army veterans who served in Afghanistan in the 1980s warn current forces are ignoring history, 'repeating our mistakes'
PAUL KORING The Globe and Mail (Canada) July 12, 2008
MOSCOW -- Head bowed, exhausted, the statue of a young soldier back from Afghanistan's killing fields is flanked by long, grim, lists of his dead comrades. It's a cautionary monument for Western politicians and generals who boldly
Turkmenistan to develop oil & gas deposits in Afghanistan
ASHGABAT, July 11 (Itar-Tass) -- Turkmenistan’s participation in the geological surveys and development of oil and gas fields in Afghanistan’s bordering districts was in the focus of the first meeting of the Turkmen-Afghan intergovernmental
Back to Top
6 security forces, 1 civilian killed in attacks in war-torn Afghanistan's south
Associated Press / July 12, 2008
KABUL, Afghanistan - Officials say two insurgent attacks in southern Afghanistan have killed four Afghan police, two soldiers, and a civilian.
Deputy police chief Jalani Khan says a roadside bomb Saturday killed four police near Qalat, capital of Zabul province.
Police chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal says a suicide bomb attack on a security patrol also killed two Afghan soldiers and a civilian in Helmand province.
More than 2,300 people _ mostly militants _ have died in insurgency-related violence in Afghanistan this year. Back to Top
Back to Top
Afghanistan discovers mines worth $300 bln
KABUL, July 12 (Xinhua) -- Afghan Minister for Mines Ibrahim Adil has said that his ministry had discovered varieties of mines worth of 300 billion U.S. dollars in Afghanistan's central high lands, a local newspaper reported Saturday.
Daily Outlook quoted the minister, who had recently visited the above provinces, as saying the coal mine reservoir discovered in Yakawlang district of Bamyan province could be more than 200 million tons.
He said that the iron mine discovered in the same district could have some 1 billion tons of the metal.
The mining of the entire underground treasury would be leased to private sectors in future, according to officials at the ministry.
Afghanistan has already leased its biggest copper mine in Logar province to the China Metallurgical Group Corp. months ago.
Meantime, a press release of the Afghan Foreign Ministry issued here Saturday said that Afghan Minister for Public Work Dr. Sohrab Ali Saffary and Italian ambassador to Afghanistan Ettore Francesco Sequi will sign an agreement for the rehabilitation of the second section of the Maidan Shar-Bamyan Road today.
Work on the 136-km road linking Kabul through Wardak province to the central Bamyan province began in 2006 with 151 million U.S. dollars financial support from Italy and is expected to be completed within the next three years.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Afghan play raises ghosts of brutal past
by Thibauld Malterre Sat Jul 12, 1:31 AM ET
BAMIYAN, Afghanistan (AFP) - Unsure, Sardar takes his head in his hands: should he undergo the operation that will enable him to express the horrors of Afghanistan's past 30 years at the risk of reviving unbearable pain?
Around the character of the patient in a hospital, props illustrate the bloodshed and destruction: bits of flesh that attract flies, guns, rolls of barbed wire, bottles filled with blood.
The one-man play, the first here that tackles the brutality of Afghanistan's recent past, was recently performed against the backdrop of massive empty niches that once held ancient statues of the Buddha, blown up by the Taliban in 2001 as "unIslamic."
It is the medium the UN mission and Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Council (AIHRC) think is the most effective to confront history and raise calls for justice, which they say are necessary for the country to heal.
"We had a lot of seminars, workshops and speeches before," local AIHRC official Abdul Ahad Farzam said.
"But we really want to address the people. A lot of them can't read, can't write ... so we got this idea to make a show, a theatre performance."
In Bamiyan, central Afghanistan, the audience of about 100 people, including relatives of victims, was transfixed.
Turbaned elders sat with their mouths hanging open; women in burqas stretched their necks to see better.
Called AH-7808, a reference to the period 1978 to 2008, the play focuses on Sardar's desire for the truth as he is confronted by voices of ghosts of victims of the violence.
The voice of a young girl blown up by a car bomb says, "Now I ponder who did this, Killed me with their bomber's kiss, Broke me so they might be free, Did they ask this price of me?"
A forgotten mujahedin killed fighting Soviet invaders, a Taliban from Kandahar in the south who dies in the north fighting for a commander who does not practise what he preaches -- they all ask only that their suffering be recognised so they can rest in peace.
If these voices resonate with the audience, it is likely because in them they recognise their loved ones whose photos are displayed around the makeshift theatre.
"People used us, we were made to kill our own brothers. There has been enough violence for political and ethnic reasons," said Mohammad Wakhil, 63, whose father, two brothers and two uncles were arrested in 1979 by the communist regime.
"I did not hear from them again but one day I saw on television pictures of a mass grave and I know they were forced into it," he said after the play.
As the stories of such atrocities are recounted by the "ghosts", Sardar bit by bit removes a white hood hiding his face, a hospital gown, ropes binding his hands.
His decision on whether to have the truth-expressing operation is not made clear, left to the opinions of the spectators.
During the interval and afterwards, the audience are asked for their impressions.
The actor is shown as tied up because "he is like a prisoner, the bonds speak to us of Sardar's internal pain," said one woman.
Others spoke of their own experiences.
One woman said when she was 15 she saw 10 people killed in front of her. She never found out why. And the memory still haunts her.
"We cannot get away from what we saw, the violence, the people who died are in our minds all the time," said another woman.
"We have to find a way to answer simple questions: who killed my family? Why? Who gave the order?"
Like most Afghans, the actor who plays Sardar also has his own story.
"When I saw the script I immediately asked to be able to play this role in memory of a friend with whom I was kidnapped as we were going to a wedding," he said after his performance.
"The armed men cut his throat and showed me his head before letting me go," he said.
UN official Norah Niland said accepting the past was a step towards moving on.
"You cannot undo the past but acknowledging what happened is a first step to put an end to an history of suffering and pain," she said.
"There are no models, and every country has to find its own way to deal with the problem," said Niland, referring to truth and reconciliation processes in South Africa, Northern Ireland and Cambodia.
Her sentiments are echoed by Musa Sultani, from the AIHRC.
Afghans cannot embrace their future with confidence unless they are freed from their past, she said.
"The victims must have their voices heard, claim justice and put pressure on the state to launch a national debate," Sultani added.
In Bamiyan, the show is over. There have been a handful of performances in Kabul and other cities across Afghanistan.
But whether they will help to meet Afghans' thirst for justice remains to be seen. Many of the warlords accused of atrocities in now in parliament, where they have voted in an amnesty law to protect themselves.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Taliban sow confusion on Pakistan- Afghan border
By Jonathon Burch and Zeeshan Haider Sat Jul 12, 5:54 AM ET
KABUL/ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - NATO-led peacekeepers in Afghanistan on Saturday blamed militants for a mortar attack two nights earlier that wounded Pakistani soldiers and Afghan police on either side of the border and led to a Pakistani protest.
"Insurgents simultaneously fired at targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan on the evening of July 10," said a statement from the International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters in Kabul.
ISAF said it had reports four Afghan police and eight Pakistanis were wounded in the two-way attack, and added it suspected the insurgents' aim was "to spark a border incident."
The clash occurred on the border near the Pakistani village of Angor Adda in the South Waziristan tribal region, a known sanctuary for al Qaeda and Taliban militants.
Angor Adda lies across the border from Bermal, a village near a U.S. base at Shikin in Afghanistan's Paktika province.
The peacekeepers said ISAF's retaliatory air and artillery strikes did not touch Pakistani territory.
"ISAF forces tracked the fire to two points within Afghanistan and returned fire with artillery and one GBU-13 bomb dropped from an F-15 aircraft," the statement said.
"All ISAF rounds were verified to have hit the origins of insurgent fire."
Pakistani troops had also returned fire after coming under a mortar attack that wounded six soldiers and two civilians, a Pakistani military spokesman said.
He did not say if U.S.-led coalition or Afghan forces fired mortars but added that a "strong protest" had been lodged with the headquarters of the coalition forces in Kabul on Friday.
The latest incident comes at a time of increased tension between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Also, there are growing fears in Pakistan, a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terrorism, that the United States is planning to mount operations inside its territory.
Afghan officials say there have been more attacks inside Afghanistan after the Pakistan military reached a de facto truce with militants based in Pakistan tribal areas.
The militants had unleashed a wave of attacks across Pakistan over the past year.
After coming to power in March the new Pakistani government led by the party of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto tried to quell the violence by using tribal intermediaries to hold a dialogue with Taliban factions.
Militant leaders suspect the Pakistan army is using the breathing space to prepare fresh offensives against them.
On Saturday, tribesmen in Razmak in North Waziristan fired at pilotless U.S. drone aircraft overflying their lands, but the drones were well out of range, according to a Pakistan intelligence official.
Tribesmen have reported increased sightings of the drones in recent months. Drone missile strikes have killed dozens of suspected militants in northwest Pakistan this year.
Last month, Pakistan was outraged when 11 soldiers were killed in a U.S. air strike ordered after coalition forces came under fire from militants in Pakistan's Mohmand tribal region.
(Writing by Simon Cameron-Moore; Editing by Jerry Norton)
Back to Top
Back to Top
NATO: Militants sparked border clash
By NAHAL TOOSI Associated Press Sat Jul 12, 6:53 AM ET
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A recent border clash that wounded several Pakistani and Afghan security personnel was sparked by insurgents in Afghanistan who fired at targets in both countries, apparently to stoke cross-border tensions, NATO said Saturday.
The alliance said it responded to the Thursday evening assault with artillery and a bomb, and had verified that its rounds had struck insurgent positions inside Afghanistan.
But the incident has prompted Pakistan to protest to NATO. On Saturday, Pakistan's army spokesman stuck to earlier statements implying that foreign or Afghan forces fired mortar rounds he said wounded eight Pakistani security forces and two civilians.
The clash came amid already high tensions between the neighboring nations, whose border areas have often been the scene of skirmishes between security forces as well as militants. It also occurred about a month after a high-profile border incident in which Pakistan said 11 of its soldiers died when U.S. aircraft bombed their post.
A NATO official said the alliance suspects insurgents deliberately tried to spark tension by aiming at targets on both sides of the long, poorly demarcated border.
"Because it was very close to the border, we verified that the origins of the fire was within Afghanistan," NATO spokesman Mark Laity said. "And once we got that, we fired on the two points of origin, and aircraft also were called in and put one bomb on target.
"Our assessment is that this was an attempt to create a border incident."
According to Pakistan's army, six mortar rounds appeared to have targeted a military post in Angore Adda in South Waziristan on Thursday, seriously wounding six Pakistani troops, lightly wounding two other troops and also injuring two civilians in a nearby market.
Pakistani forces immediately returned fire. The country also lodged a "strong protest" with NATO's International Security Assistance Force, Pakistan army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said. Details of the complaint were not immediately available.
Asked Saturday to respond to NATO's statement that militants were responsible for the incident and that NATO had not struck Pakistani positions, Abbas insisted that Pakistan still had its suspicions.
"It was a precision engagement which destroyed the post," Abbas said. "It doesn't make sense that anybody else was fighting."
NATO said it had reports that four Afghan border police were also wounded in the incident.
Afghan and Pakistani troops have skirmished repeatedly along the border over the years, despite urgings from U.S. officials that they improve their coordination.
The border areas are considered havens for Taliban and al-Qaida-linked militants who often travel between the two countries. Pakistan has been accused of not doing enough to crack down on militants operating on its side.
___
Associated Press Writer Jason Straziuso contributed to this report from Kabul, Afghanistan.
Back to Top
Back to Top
'It's impossible to conquer the Afghans'
The Globe and Mail PAUL KORING From Saturday's Globe and Mail July 12, 2008
MOSCOW-Head bowed, exhausted, the statue of a young soldier back from Afghanistan's killing fields is flanked by long, grim, lists of his dead comrades. It's a cautionary monument for Western politicians and generals who boldly boast they will succeed where the Soviets failed.
In Russia, a country chock full of heroic memorials to enormous military sacrifice, the uniquely dejected pose of the helmetless Afghan combat veteran in the Ural city of Yekaterinburg is a sobering reminder that great powers have an unhappy history of overreaching and then being driven ignominiously from Afghanistan.
“Canadians and Americans are learning the hard way. You have been there seven years and you have no prospect of early victory,” said Ruslan Aushev, a highly decorated combat veteran who served two tours, totalling nearly five years with the Soviet army in Afghanistan. “We knew by 1985 that we could not win,” he recalls. It then took Moscow four more years to extricate hundreds of thousands of troops from Afghanistan, while claiming victory on the way out. Afghanistan was plunged into civil war.
In Russia, there's a widespread view that the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan has failed to heed the lessons of history.
“You are just repeating our mistakes,” Mr. Aushev said in an elegant, memento-filled office close to the Russian Duma. While some Russians – perhaps many – take some satisfaction in watching the U.S.-led coalition struggle in Afghanistan, Mr. Aushev knows better than most the dangers of a defeated superpower leaving the wreckage of Afghanistan to violent and radicalized factions.
“Most Afghans still live in a feudal society, in villages far from the cities,” he said. “For them, there is no difference between being bombed by the Soviets and now being bombed by the Americans and it won't succeed.”
In the West, the bloody, decade-long Soviet war in Afghanistan is viewed as the last gasping failure of a blundering Communist giant, eventually defeated by the proud and fierce Afghan mujahedeen, armed and backed by billions of dollars worth of sophisticated U.S. weaponry, and jihadists from throughout the Islamic world. Tagged as the Soviet's Vietnam, the Afghan quagmire helped sink the USSR. But the view from Russia – tempered by experience and the passage of two decades that allowed some lessons to sink in – suggest the West may, too, have overestimated its welcome and its capacity to rebuild Afghanistan at the point of a gun.
“We could take any village, any town and drive the mujahedeen out,” Mr. Aushev said, recalling his two combat tours, first as an infantry battalion commander and later in charge of a full Soviet regiment – roughly the size of the Canadian contingent in Afghanistan. “But when we handed ground over to the Afghan army or police they would lose it in a week.”
If that formula for eventual defeat sounds eerily familiar, so does much of what Mr. Aushev and other Afghan veterans recall about their efforts in Afghanistan.
Mr. Aushev, 53, is no apologist for Russian military adventurism. In the post-Soviet era, he served as president of Ingushetia for eight years, and during the war in neighbouring Chechnya he decried incursions by Russian soldiers and even threatened to sue the Defence Ministry. An able soldier – the youngest to reach the four-star rank of lieutenant-general in the Russian army – Mr. Aushev now heads an international organization for veterans. And he is no stranger to dealing with extremists. He helped broker the release of more than two dozen hostages during the bloody Beslan school siege by Islamic terrorists in 2004.
“The Taliban may not be able to win militarily but they can't be defeated and sooner or later the Western alliance will be forced with pullout,” he warned. Support for the insurgents will grow the longer the foreign armies remain in Afghanistan, he said. Although the Soviets deployed more than 100,000 soldiers across Afghanistan – roughly double the number of U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops currently deployed – and trained an Afghan army three times the size of Kabul's current security forces, it was never enough, Mr. Aushev said.
“If we wanted stability we would have needed 800,000 soldiers,” he said, echoing the estimates of some unheeded American generals who called for much larger occupation forces in Iraq.
But no matter how many soldiers are sent (and Washington is expected to significantly increase its deployments to Afghanistan next year as the long-awaited drawdown in Iraq frees up some units), Mr. Aushev said, there can be no military solution.
“There will have to be an accord with the Taliban, because at least 50 per cent of the Afghan population supports them,” he said.
The Soviet Union invaded in 1979, setting off a decade-long effort to occupy and pacify Afghanistan.
Former sergeant Igor Grigorevich, 46, now stands watch over a tiny, seldom-visited museum, tucked away on the ground floor of a hulking building on Moscow's outskirts. Unlike the Great Patriotic War, as Russians refer to the Second World War, there is little about the Afghan war to remember proudly. Instead there are deep scars, both on the national psyche and among hundreds of thousands of largely ignored veterans.
“It's impossible to conquer the Afghans Alexander the Great couldn't do it, the British couldn't do it, we couldn't do it and the Americans won't do it no one can,” said Mr. Grigorevich, still trim and determined not to let the war be forgotten. The museum began largely as a volunteer effort by veterans, although the government now provides some funding.
The exhibits are striking. If the Soviet army looks vaguely dated, the pictures of Afghan villagers would be instantly familiar to Canadian soldiers now serving in Afghanistan. So, too, would the lumbering four-engined military transports with honour guards solemnly carrying flag-draped coffins into the waiting holds on Kandahar air field. The Russians called those flights “Black Tulips.”
But there are also poignant reminders of the brutality of a lopsided war that pits the military of a modern superpower against insurgents. Photos show bombed-out villages, a crayon drawing by a young Afghan boy depicts helicopter gunships unleashing a torrent of death and destruction. In another corner is a mock-up of a mujahedeen fighter shouldering a U.S.-made Stinger surface-to-air missile that wreaked havoc with Soviet air power and helped tip the balance to the jihadists.
Russian veterans say the huge effort by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to arm and support the mujahedeen from bases in Pakistan was crucial to the eventual Soviet defeat.
But even without the active backing of a hostile superpower, the current insurgency has new tactics and new funding that the Russians never faced. Suicide bombers and sophisticated roadside explosives were unknown to Russian occupation forces.
For all the broad similarities between the Soviet efforts to pacify Afghanistan in the 1980s and the current U.S.-led campaign, there are also significant differences. U.S. and NATO troops, including Canada's, are in Afghanistan at the request of a democratically elected government headed by President Hamid Karzai. Although dismissed by critics as the “mayor of Kabul” because of his government's limited reach beyond the capital, Mr. Karzai nevertheless represents the first Afghan leader elected in a free and fair national election.
There are other lessons still being learned from the Russian experience in Afghanistan. A lost war or a war that has lost public support leaves a different set of scars on its veterans, says Zurab Kekelidze, deputy director of the Serbsky psychiatric centre in Moscow. “The Afghan Syndrome,” he says, afflicts many of the thousands of Russian veterans, and, he predicts, Canadian and other Western soldiers will similarly suffer.
“If a society sees a war as a good thing then that's a form of therapy that helps,” he said at his clinic. Soldiers readjust to society after all the horrors and stresses of battle.
“But if a war is unpopular or is seen as lost or pointless, then the situation is reversed and returning soldiers are forced to try and find some justification for what they have done,” he added. The Americans suffered it in Vietnam, the Soviets faced it after Afghanistan and Canadians may have to deal with the problem if the public stops backing the current war, he said.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Taliban kill 15 Pakistani soldiers in ambush
Reuters / July 12, 2008 By Sami Paracha
KOHAT, Pakistan - Taliban militants killed at least 15 paramilitary soldiers in an ambush in northwestern Pakistan on Saturday, officials said.
The militants attacked a convoy of paramilitary troops as it was heading towards the volatile town of Hangu, 40 km (25 miles) west of the garrison town of Kohat.
"At least 15 soldiers including an officer have been killed in the attack," a senior government official in Hangu told Reuters.
A military official said up to 12 soldiers were killed.
A Taliban spokesman said one of their fighters was killed.
Tension has been running high in and around Hangu since Thursday when militants took 11 paramilitary soldiers and government workers hostage to press for the release of their seven men arrested earlier.
Militants have threatened to kill the hostages if their comrades were not freed.
Violence had subsided in Pakistan's northwest on the Afghan border, where militants are very active, after a new coalition formed following February elections and led by the party of slain former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto opened talks with the militants through tribal interlocutors.
But the lull seems to be over and militants have stepped up their activities in the northwest after their top leader Baitullah Mehsud suspended talks last month.
Authorities named Mehsud in a wave of suicide attacks across the country over the past one year, including the one that killed Bhutto.
Mehsud has denied his involvement in Bhutto's murder.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Prophet's cloak can't shelter Kandahar from terror
One of Islam's holiest relics was once a rallying point for the Taliban. Now their insurgency is putting its guardian in harm's way
The Globe and Mail GRAEME SMITH gsmith@globeandmail.com July 11, 2008
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN-At the heart of Kandahar's dirty labyrinth of streets stands a clean square and a lavishly decorated building housing a religious artifact that's key to understanding why this city has suffered the worst of the insurgency.
For more than two centuries, the legendary cloak of the Prophet Mohammed - one of Islam's most treasured symbols - has rested here in a locked silver box, itself protected by two wooden chests.
The keys are held by a grey-bearded man named Mullah Masood Akhundzada, and these days he's afraid for his life.
His family has held the sacred responsibility of protecting the cloak in its shrine ever since Afghanistan's founder, Ahmed Shah Durrani, brought the shimmering garment from Central Asia in 1768.
In all the years since, Mr. Akhundzada said, serving as Keeper of the Cloak has never been so dangerous.
"We never had problems," he said. "Only now, under this government, people are attacking us."
He inherited the job last year when his brother, Sayed Imam Akhundzada, was gunned down during an evening walk through a market near the shrine. He almost suffered the same fate when a suicide bomber narrowly missed him this spring.
The attacks are part of a Taliban campaign to kill the most prominent figures in Kandahar city who support the central government. The most recent victim was a member of parliament shot dead near his house last week.
The Taliban have been using similar tactics elsewhere in Afghanistan, but the insurgents appear to be making their greatest effort in Kandahar.
As of July 6, security consultant Sami Kovanen of Vigilant Strategic Services Afghanistan had counted 527 insurgent attacks this year in Kandahar province.
That's vastly more than in any other province in the country; the two other most violent provinces were Kunar, with 316 attacks, and Helmand with 311.
Despite the official importance of the capital city, Kabul province has suffered only 77 insurgent strikes this year, according to VSSA.
Military planners often say that Kandahar has a more prominent place on the insurgents' target list because the city served as the Taliban's former seat of government.
Kandahar also holds a deeper symbolic importance in Afghanistan, however, and arguably the city's most powerful icon is the mysterious cloak inside the ornate blue-tiled shrine protected by Mr. Akhundzada.
Legends vary about how Ahmed Shah Durrani took the cloak away from Bokhara, a city in what is now Uzbekistan. One favourite tale in Kandahar is that he asked to borrow the sacred garment from its keepers, who refused. The Afghan conqueror replied by pointing to a large stone and promising that he would never allow the cloak to stray far from that rock. Reassured by the promise, the protectors released the cloak - and were likely horrified when the Durrani king ordered the stone removed as well, transporting both of them back to Kandahar. The stone is said to still sit near the cloak's resting place.
The silver box that protects the garment has remained sealed for decades at a time, revealed only during the most important occasions.
Mr. Akhundzada's grandfather displayed the cloak during a plague in the early part of the last century. "They prayed, and the disease disappeared," he said.
His father opened the box again for King Mohammed Zahir Shah, Afghanistan's last monarch, who apparently changed his mind at the last minute and decided it wasn't necessary to look at the sacred artifact.
One of Mr. Akhundzada's brothers, Qari Shawali, was serving as the cloak's keeper during its most famous moment in recent history.
In 1996, Mullah Mohammed Omar was struggling to lead his new Taliban movement north to capture Kabul. To solidify his support, he took the cloak out of its shrine and displayed it to a large crowd.
An assembly of religious leaders declared the Taliban leader "Commander of the Faithful" and 500 cows were slaughtered to mark the occasion, Mr. Akhundzada said.
Locals believe the cloak gave good fortune to the Taliban, as they took Kabul the same year.
The silver box then remained closed until Gul Agha Shirzai seized power in Kandahar with a team of U.S. Special Forces in 2001, and was declared governor. As the international community started building a new government in Afghanistan, Mr. Shirzai decided he wanted a private viewing of the cloak. Only a few senior officials attended.
"My brother took out the cloak and Gul Agha kissed it," Mr. Akhundzada said. "I also touched it."
He paused, remembering with great solemnity the last time anybody saw the cloak.
"It's hard to describe," he said. "It's very soft, like silk. You cannot say what colour it is, because many people see different colours. It was made with hair from the camels in Paradise.
"It's a gift from heaven."
Back to Top
Back to Top
ISI hand in Kabul attack, says India Army chief
Dawn - International By Our Correspondent July 11, 2008
NEW DELHI-A pattern of angry exchanges is discernible between India and Pakistan over the separate yet related theatres of violence in Kashmir and Afghanistan. India’s Army Chief Gen Deepak Kapoor was quoted on Friday as adding his voice to widespread speculation here that Pakistan’s ISI spy agency was somehow involved in the Kabul attack on New Delhi’s embassy.
On Friday, an Indian foreign ministry spokesman reacted angrily to Islamabad’s recent comments on the human rights situation in Kashmir. He accused Pakistan of interference in New Delhi’s internal affairs.
In a somewhat delayed response to the statement by Pakistan’s foreign ministry of July 5, in which it had criticised recent human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir, including use of force against demonstrators, which injured resistance leader Shabbir Shah, an Indian foreign ministry spokesman told Islamabad not to vitiate the atmosphere between the two countries.
“We have seen the Press Release of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Government of Pakistan on July 5, commenting gratuitously on a demonstration in Srinagar in the Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir,” the Indian spokesman said.
“The statement constitutes gross interference in the internal affairs of India. GOP spokesmen should refrain from vitiating the atmosphere by such remarks.” Incidentally, both the spokesmen took the caution of clarifying that they were responding to media questions to explain their respective responses. Meanwhile, quoting Gen Kapoor, the Times of India said the “resurgent Taliban-ISI combine” could be behind the attack on the Indian embassy.
The possibility of ISI being involved in the ‘’well-planned and pre-meditated’’ suicide bombing on the Indian mission could not be ruled out, Gen Kapoor was quoted as saying at a function here on Thursday.
‘’Obviously, it was the work of elements inimical to India’s interests. We all should be able to make out who would be inimical to our interests in Kabul and our embassy there,’’ the army chief said.
Back to Top
Back to Top
They lost limbs serving Canada, now Afghan translators hope to live there
The Canadian Press, Afghanistan 12/07/2008
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan-They lost their limbs serving Canada, and now they're asking to be allowed into the country.
They are among the scores of young Afghan men who have been maimed or killed while working as interpreters for the international armies fighting in their homeland. They have been shot at, blown up, tortured and threatened.
In at least one case, several interpreters' bodies were strung up in a public square and left to rot there for weeks as a lesson to anyone else thinking of helping the foreigners.
Hasham is one of these young men. One who survived.
Sporting a boyish smile and a late adolescent's peach fuzz, he describes how his future in Afghanistan vanished when a roadside bomb tore off his left leg.
Hasham dragged himself across the carpet in his living quarters Friday, pulled on his only shoe, and hopped up to retrieve a document stored in a safe place by the door.
It is a letter from Canadian soldier Maj. Mike Lake, lauding him for his bravery and loyalty.
Hasham proudly hands over the letter and asks a Canadian journalist to use it to get him into Canada.
When told it's not that simple to immigrate to Canada - there are forms, fees, criteria, and paperwork - he breathes an exasperated sigh.
He keeps hearing the same excuses. There appears to be much bureaucracy in Canada. In his country, a simple phone call and perhaps a small bribe to a well-connected person usually gets the job done.
"I told them - I don't want compensation (for my lost leg)," he says.
"Just take me to Canada."
Being a so-called "terp" is so risky, Canadian soldiers say, they were puzzled when one recently showed up for work wearing a pair of sunglasses and a jubilant grin. They asked why he was smiling.
He replied that he'd lost his eye, and happily declared that the injury had earned him a transfer to a safer post inside the base.
Canadian soldiers are encouraging their Afghan colleagues to start a union, saying it would protect them against things like arbitrary dismissal or delays in getting insurance payments when they're injured.
But Hasham replies that his only desire now is to live in Canada, either in Saskatchewan or in that "French part" of the country, Quebec.
He knows very little about the country he served for eight months before a homemade bomb blew up his convoy. But he got to know soldiers from those two provinces and grew especially fond of them.
Since the accident in April, Hasham has remained cloistered in a tiny, carpeted room with a half-dozen other men, in the interpreters' living compound next to the military base at Kandahar Airfield.
His mother has no idea about the injury and keeps calling to ask why he won't visit the family home near Kandahar city.
Hasham always has a new excuse: always another mission, always some new patrol out in yet another far-flung region, always an excuse to avoid going home.
"I lie to my mother," he says.
"I say I'm safe It's not good for me to go home - for my neighbours to see me (without a leg)."
Someone might tell the Taliban about the one-legged boy in the neighbourhood who must have been working with the foreigners. He fears they might then harm him or his family.
He still gets his $600-a-month paycheque, but like many other "terps" injured here, he has been forced to wait for compensation for his lost limb.
At least the salary is good. He says 14 relatives can live on his income, a common scenario in this country where a comparatively fat foreign salary feeds entire families.
The Afghan-born founder of the private company that employs interpreters here - U.S.-based IMS Services - says his employees make extraordinary money for Afghans.
He concedes that the local insurance provider sometimes moves a little too slowly to process claims when they're injured, especially because so many family members rely on his employees' income.
Sonny Achakzai's company employs 1,200 interpreters based out of Kandahar, and a number of the "terps" are his own Afghan relatives. He started off as one of the interpreters for U.S. forces in 2001, and he says the job can be heartbreaking.
"They see their peers killed," Achakzai said in an interview from Los Angeles.
"But they say, 'I'm willing to risk my life so that I can feed my family."'
The man they call Junior still supports his children with the money he earns at the Canadian provincial reconstruction camp.
The $8,000 insurance payment he received two years ago - far more than most others get - has been a tremendous help.
But it won't bring his legs back.
Junior was once a forestry worker for the Afghan department of agriculture. He worries that once the Canadians leave his country, he will have no future here.
Now Junior wears a pair of plastic prosthetic legs a few hours a day, but he needs to take them off most of the time because they don't fit very well and they hurt.
He's been asking for two years to come to Canada.
"I'm not a complete man anymore," he says.
"I've got to find a safe place I would have gone to Canada two years ago, the very first day I was injured."
The interpreters here say their colleagues who work with the Americans brag about the fast-track immigration program for exceptional employees.
Junior shares a personal anecdote to illustrate why he's so desperate to leave his country:
In most places on Earth, losing two limbs might earn you some sympathy.
In Afghanistan, it helps identify you as an easy target.
Even after a rocket-propelled grenade slammed into the G-wagon he was riding in, Junior has continued receiving menacing phone calls from anonymous men.
He says one recently told him: "God is mad at you, and you'll go to hell. Stop working with the foreigners, come with us, and God will be happy with you."
To which Junior says he replied: "God's not happy with me? How do you know? You talked to him?"
Canadian soldiers hear these complaints about immigration, and especially about the sporadic disbursement of benefits like injury pay.
Several have urged the "terps" to start a union.
"I told them how easily they could do it," said Cpl. Jason Villeneuve.
"If they just didn't show up for work one day, we'd be (screwed) But they're too scared to do anything."
Another soldier has also been pushing the interpreters to seek additional rights, and says a union would be a good start.
In the meantime, Cpl. Tim Laidler says, he hopes the Canadian government finds a way to help injured employees like Hasham.
"I think Canada's morally responsible," said the B.C. native.
"I'm sure if most Canadians heard about this, they'd want that man to be compensated."
Back to Top
Back to Top
Pakistani Minister: Afghanistan Shares Blame for Border Unrest
By David Gollust State Department Voice of America / 11 July 2008
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said Friday Afghanistan bears a heavy share of blame for unrest along their mutual border. The Pakistani official held talks on security and other issues with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. VOA's David Gollust reports from the State Department.
The Pakistani foreign minister's visit, a prelude to White House talks later this month between President Bush and Pakistan's new prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, came amid rising concern about the border situation.
U.S. officials, including senior military officers, have been blaming Pakistan for rising violence, including a growing toll of U.S. casualties fighting with Taliban forces in Afghanistan.
But in an appearance at Washington's Brookings Institution, following a meeting with Secretary Rice, Foreign Minister Qureshi defended Pakistan's performance on the border, saying it has deployed 100,000 troops to the area and set up some 1,200 checkpoints.
He said he is ready to concede that some fringe-element militants from Pakistan have contributed to some of the violence, but that is largely, in his words, not Pakistan's doing.
He said poor governance, warlordism, drug trafficking and factionalism on the Afghan side are major factors in the upsurge, which he said can only be tackled collectively:
"It's easy to pass the buck [lay blame]," he said. "We don't now want to go into a blame game, because we feel we have a common enemy. We feel we need a common approach. This war, this fight against extremism has to be fought and won collectively at the global level."
The New York Times quoted U.S. military and intelligence officials this week as saying that an increasing number of foreign fighters are entering Pakistan, some on commercial flights from the Gulf, to join militants in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.
Qureshi told the Brookings audience that Pakistan now has what he termed a fairly watertight, though not foolproof, controls on airport entries, of which Pakistan's friends and allies are well aware. He said steps are also being taken to curtail land transits.
But he also stressed the difficulty of policing the rugged Afghan border, crossed every day by 40-thousand civilians and a like number of vehicles, and, he said his government is pressing Afghanistan to enact tighter controls, including so-called biometric identity documents.
Rice and Qureshi met privately for about an hour, and officials here said they covered security issues and Afghanistan, Pakistan-India relations, and the effect of soaring energy and food prices on Pakistan.
State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack said an increase in the civilian part of the largely security-related U.S. aid program for Pakistan is under consideration, though he offered no details.
Qureshi said one of the priorities of the new civilian-led government in Islamabad is to try to remove what he called a trust deficit between India and Pakistan, including on their Kashmir dispute, for which he conceded there are no quick fixes.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Afghanistan's 'sons of the soil' rise up
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Online / July 12, 2008
KARACHI - The resilient Taliban have proved unshakeable across Afghanistan over the past few months, making the chances of a coalition military victory against the popular tide of the insurgency in the majority Pashtun belt increasingly slim.
The alternative, though, of negotiating with radical Taliban leaders is not acceptable to the Western political leadership.
This stalemate suits Pakistan perfectly as it gives Islamabad the opportunity to once again step in to take a leading role in shaping the course of events in its neighboring country.
Pakistan's General Headquarters in Rawalpindi are thrilled with the Taliban's sweeping military successes which have reduced President Hamid Karzai's American-backed government to a figurehead decorating the presidential palace of Kabul; he and his functionaries dare not even cross the street to take evening tea at the Serena Hotel.
June (28 US combat deaths) was the deadliest month for coalition troops since they invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 and fatalities have increased steadily since 2004, when 58 soldiers were killed that year. The total more than doubled to 130 killed in 2005, 191 in 2006 and 232 in 2007. One hundred and twenty-seven have died so far this year.
Pakistan's planners now see their objective as isolating radicals within the Taliban and cultivating tribal, rustic, even simplistic, "Taliban boys" - just as they did in the mid-1990s in the leadup to the Taliban taking control of the country in 1996. It is envisaged that this new "acceptable" tribal-inspired Taliban leadership will displace Taliban and al-Qaeda radicalism.
This process has already begun in Pakistan's tribal areas.
A leading Pakistani Taliban leader, Haji Nazeer from South Waziristan, who runs the largest Pakistani Taliban network against coalition troops in Afghanistan, recently convened a large meeting at which it was resolved to once again drive out radical Uzbeks from South Waziristan. This happened once before, early last year.
In particular, Nazeer will take action against the Uzbeks' main backer, Pakistani Taliban hardliner Baitullah Mehsud, if he tries to intervene. Nazeer openly shows his loyalty towards the Pakistani security forces and has reached out to other powerful Pakistani Taliban leaders, including Moulvi Faqir from Bajaur Agency, Shah Khalid from Mohmand Agency and Haji Namdar in Khyber Agency. Nazeer also announced the appointment of the powerful commander of North Waziristan, Hafiz Gul Bahadur, as the head of the Pakistani Taliban for all Pakistan.
The bulk of the Pakistani Taliban has always been pro-Pakistan and opposed to radical forces like Baitullah Mehsud and his foreign allies, but this is the first time they have set up a formal organization and appointed an amir (chief) as a direct challenge to the radicals.
At the core of their beliefs is a stress on traditional tribal values and following the tribal agenda of supporting the Afghan resistance against Western troops, rather than any global agenda such as attacks on Europe or the United States.
Soon after the announcement of the amir, two prominent Afghan Taliban commanders from eastern Afghanistan gave their support to the new Pakistani Taliban network. They are Moulvi Abdul Kabeer, a former Taliban governor in the province of Nangarhar before the US invasion in 2001, and commander Sadr-uddin. To date, the most important Afghan commander in the eastern region, Maulana Jalaluddin Haqqani, has remained neutral, perhaps because of his close ties with Pakistan and also with the radical camp.
Earlier, the Hezb-e-Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, another pro-Pakistan commander in Afghanistan, claimed several successful operations in the northeastern Kapisa and Wardak provinces - just a few score kilometers from Kabul. This is another significant development as it gives a boost to that segment of the insurgency which is more local than global.
This is the new picture emerging in eastern Afghanistan. If these groups, with Pakistan's support, can join hands with the Kandahari clans of the Taliban from the southwest, which already form a non-radical tribal resistance, it would give Islamabad the opportunity to make a proposal to Washington.
That is, the process of jirgas (tribal councils) should be restarted, this time only with the sons-of the-soil Taliban, to get them to lay down their arms and negotiate a new political role before the Afghan presidential elections next year.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Kabul: Indian Embassy to resume issuing visa
Indo-Asian News Service Saturday, July 12, 2008 (New Delhi)
Unfazed by the deadly July 7 suicide attack outside its premises, the Indian mission in Kabul has swung into business as it resumes issuing visas to hordes of Afghans, for many of them come to Delhi for medical treatment.
''We are starting our dealings with the public on Saturday. The Indian mission will start issuing visas from Sunday,'' India's Ambassador to Afghanistan Jayant Prasad said.
''Nothing can deter us from doing our work in Afghanistan. India is in the heart of every Afghan and they know India will not quit,'' a proud Prasad said while recalling the inspiring story of how the Indian mission bounced back to life within less than two days after the attack by restoring all communication links.
''Many of these visa seekers could be people coming to India for medical treatment,'' the envoy said while alluding to the growing reputation of India as a hub for high-quality, low-cost medical services.
A car packed with explosives blew up outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul. It was the first ever terror attack on an Indian mission abroad that killed 54 people, including two diplomats and two security personnel.
Saying that the embassy had further tightened security cover, the Indian envoy underlined that if the motive of the attack was to deter India from carrying on with reconstruction of Afghanistan, it would not happen.
''India is in the heart of every Afghan. Nothing can scare us,'' Prasad underlined, while alluding to a wide spectrum of projects ranging from roads and bridges to power and infrastructure in which around 3,700 Indians are engaged in the violence-torn country.
''As an ambassador of India, I am well protected. There is however no answer to a suicide bomber. It's a professional hazard,'' the envoy said when asked whether he feared a threat on his life.
After receiving an intelligence alert in June about a likely attack, the mission took a slew of measures designed to upgrade security that included the setting up of blast-proof hexa barrier - a thick wire mesh-and-mud barrier covering the embassy on all sides.
''Due to these blast-proof barriers, some 30 Afghan visa seekers who were inside the embassy close to the visa window on Monday escaped unscathed,'' the envoy said.
''Most of these visa seekers were Afghan nationals coming to India for medical treatment,'' he said.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Obama wants Bin Laden executed
July 11, 2008
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said in interview excerpts released Friday that Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden should be executed, if he is ever captured alive.
The Illinois Senator told CNN that the accused mastermind of the September 11 attacks in 2001 should face the full weight of US and global justice.
"I am not a cheerleader for the death penalty," Obama said.
"I think it has to be reserved for only the most heinous crimes, but I certainly think plotting and engineering the death of 3,000 Americans justifies such an approach."
"I think this is a big hypothetical, though -- let's catch him first," he said.
"We have failed to seriously go after Al-Qaeda over the last five years because of the distraction of Iraq, I think we are now seeing the consequences of that in Afghanistan."
In a debate during the Republican presidential primary season, Obama's general election rival Senator John McCain also vowed to bring bin Laden to justice, and follow him to the "Gates of Hell."
Obama's tough talk came after he accused the Bush administration of diverting resources from the war in Afghanistan launched after the 2001 attacks to fight what he saw as an unnecessary war in Iraq.
He has vowed to start pulling US troops out of Iraq at the rate of one or two brigades a month, and sending more soldiers to Afghanistan, if he is elected president in November.
Obama is expected to visit Afghanistan and Iraq within the coming weeks, though full details have not been released for security reasons.
Back to Top
Back to Top
'It's impossible to conquer the Afghans'
Soviet army veterans who served in Afghanistan in the 1980s warn current forces are ignoring history, 'repeating our mistakes'
PAUL KORING The Globe and Mail (Canada) July 12, 2008
MOSCOW -- Head bowed, exhausted, the statue of a young soldier back from Afghanistan's killing fields is flanked by long, grim, lists of his dead comrades. It's a cautionary monument for Western politicians and generals who boldly boast they will succeed where the Soviets failed.
In Russia, a country chock full of heroic memorials to enormous military sacrifice, the uniquely dejected pose of the helmetless Afghan combat veteran in the Ural city of Yekaterinburg is a sobering reminder that great powers have an unhappy history of overreaching and then being driven ignominiously from Afghanistan.
"Canadians and Americans are learning the hard way. You have been there seven years and you have no prospect of early victory," said Ruslan Aushev, a highly decorated combat veteran who served two tours, totalling nearly five years with the Soviet army in Afghanistan. "We knew by 1985 that we could not win," he recalls. It then took Moscow four more years to extricate hundreds of thousands of troops from Afghanistan, while claiming victory on the way out. Afghanistan was plunged into civil war.
In Russia, there's a widespread view that the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan has failed to heed the lessons of history.
"You are just repeating our mistakes," Mr. Aushev said in an elegant, memento-filled office close to the Russian Duma. While some Russians - perhaps many - take some satisfaction in watching the U.S.-led coalition struggle in Afghanistan, Mr. Aushev knows better than most the dangers of a defeated superpower leaving the wreckage of Afghanistan to violent and radicalized factions.
"Most Afghans still live in a feudal society, in villages far from the cities," he said. "For them, there is no difference between being bombed by the Soviets and now being bombed by the Americans ... and it won't succeed."
In the West, the bloody, decade-long Soviet war in Afghanistan is viewed as the last gasping failure of a blundering Communist giant, eventually defeated by the proud and fierce Afghan mujahedeen, armed and backed by billions of dollars worth of sophisticated U.S. weaponry, and jihadists from throughout the Islamic world. Tagged as the Soviet's Vietnam, the Afghan quagmire helped sink the USSR. But the view from Russia - tempered by experience and the passage of two decades that allowed some lessons to sink in - suggest the West may, too, have overestimated its welcome and its capacity to rebuild Afghanistan at the point of a gun.
"We could take any village, any town and drive the mujahedeen out," Mr. Aushev said, recalling his two combat tours, first as an infantry battalion commander and later in charge of a full Soviet regiment - roughly the size of the Canadian contingent in Afghanistan. "But when we handed ground over to the Afghan army or police they would lose it in a week."
If that formula for eventual defeat sounds eerily familiar, so does much of what Mr. Aushev and other Afghan veterans recall about their efforts in Afghanistan.
Mr. Aushev, 53, is no apologist for Russian military adventurism. In the post-Soviet era, he served as president of Ingushetia for eight years, and during the war in neighbouring Chechnya he decried incursions by Russian soldiers and even threatened to sue the Defence Ministry. An able soldier - the youngest to reach the four-star rank of lieutenant-general in the Russian army - Mr. Aushev now heads an international organization for veterans. And he is no stranger to dealing with extremists. He helped broker the release of more than two dozen hostages during the bloody Beslan school siege by Islamic terrorists in 2004.
"The Taliban may not be able to win militarily but they can't be defeated and sooner or later the Western alliance will be forced with pullout," he warned. Support for the insurgents will grow the longer the foreign armies remain in Afghanistan, he said. Although the Soviets deployed more than 100,000 soldiers across Afghanistan - roughly double the number of U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops currently deployed - and trained an Afghan army three times the size of Kabul's current security forces, it was never enough, Mr. Aushev said.
"If we wanted stability we would have needed 800,000 soldiers," he said, echoing the estimates of some unheeded American generals who called for much larger occupation forces in Iraq.
But no matter how many soldiers are sent (and Washington is expected to significantly increase its deployments to Afghanistan next year as the long-awaited drawdown in Iraq frees up some units), Mr. Aushev said, there can be no military solution.
"There will have to be an accord with the Taliban, because at least 50 per cent of the Afghan population supports them," he said.
The Soviet Union invaded in 1979, setting off a decade-long effort to occupy and pacify Afghanistan.
Former sergeant Igor Grigorevich, 46, now stands watch over a tiny, seldom-visited museum, tucked away on the ground floor of a hulking building on Moscow's outskirts. Unlike the Great Patriotic War, as Russians refer to the Second World War, there is little about the Afghan war to remember proudly. Instead there are deep scars, both on the national psyche and among hundreds of thousands of largely ignored veterans.
"It's impossible to conquer the Afghans ... Alexander the Great couldn't do it, the British couldn't do it, we couldn't do it and the Americans won't do it ... no one can," said Mr. Grigorevich, still trim and determined not to let the war be forgotten. The museum began largely as a volunteer effort by veterans, although the government now provides some funding.
The exhibits are striking. If the Soviet army looks vaguely dated, the pictures of Afghan villagers would be instantly familiar to Canadian soldiers now serving in Afghanistan. So, too, would the lumbering four-engined military transports with honour guards solemnly carrying flag-draped coffins into the waiting holds on Kandahar air field. The Russians called those flights "Black Tulips."
But there are also poignant reminders of the brutality of a lopsided war that pits the military of a modern superpower against insurgents. Photos show bombed-out villages, a crayon drawing by a young Afghan boy depicts helicopter gunships unleashing a torrent of death and destruction. In another corner is a mock-up of a mujahedeen fighter shouldering a U.S.-made Stinger surface-to-air missile that wreaked havoc with Soviet air power and helped tip the balance to the jihadists.
Russian veterans say the huge effort by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to arm and support the mujahedeen from bases in Pakistan was crucial to the eventual Soviet defeat.
But even without the active backing of a hostile superpower, the current insurgency has new tactics and new funding that the Russians never faced. Suicide bombers and sophisticated roadside explosives were unknown to Russian occupation forces.
For all the broad similarities between the Soviet efforts to pacify Afghanistan in the 1980s and the current U.S.-led campaign, there are also significant differences. U.S. and NATO troops, including Canada's, are in Afghanistan at the request of a democratically elected government headed by President Hamid Karzai. Although dismissed by critics as the "mayor of Kabul" because of his government's limited reach beyond the capital, Mr. Karzai nevertheless represents the first Afghan leader elected in a free and fair national election.
There are other lessons still being learned from the Russian experience in Afghanistan. A lost war or a war that has lost public support leaves a different set of scars on its veterans, says Zurab Kekelidze, deputy director of the Serbsky psychiatric centre in Moscow. "The Afghan Syndrome," he says, afflicts many of the thousands of Russian veterans, and, he predicts, Canadian and other Western soldiers will similarly suffer.
"If a society sees a war as a good thing ... then that's a form of therapy that helps," he said at his clinic. Soldiers readjust to society after all the horrors and stresses of battle.
"But if a war is unpopular or is seen as lost or pointless, then the situation is reversed and returning soldiers are forced to try and find some justification for what they have done," he added. The Americans suffered it in Vietnam, the Soviets faced it after Afghanistan and Canadians may have to deal with the problem if the public stops backing the current war, he said.
*****
Invaders of Afghanistan
Many foreign forces have attempted to conquer Afghanistan and its predecessor states. Few have succeeded. Here are some examples of those who tried.
Darius the Great
In the late sixth century BC, much of the country was absorbed into the Persian empire of Darius the Great. However, plagued by constant uprisings, the Persians never established effective control.
Alexander the Great
In the third century BC, Alexander the Great invaded. The harsh, mountainous terrain and brutal weather were only part of the challenge. The Afghans themselves were no less formidable. Constant revolts undermined whatever glory he could claim.
Genghis Khan
In 1220, the Islamic lands of Central Asia were overrun by the armies of this Mongol invader. But even Genghis Khan failed to destroy the strength of Islam there. By the end of the 13th century, his descendants were themselves Muslims.
Britain
There were three major interventions by the British Army between 1838 and 1919. Each one ultimately failed.
Soviet Union
In 1979, the Soviets rolled in about 115,000 troops. The Afghans responded with an extended guerrilla war, and in 1989 the Soviets withdrew.
Sources: The Claremont Institute, encyclopedia.com, CNN, espritdecorps.ca, channel4.com, BBC, NYT
Back to Top
Back to Top
Turkmenistan to develop oil & gas deposits in Afghanistan
ASHGABAT, July 11 (Itar-Tass) -- Turkmenistan’s participation in the geological surveys and development of oil and gas fields in Afghanistan’s bordering districts was in the focus of the first meeting of the Turkmen-Afghan intergovernmental commission for trade, economic and technical cooperation.
Turkmen Minister of Economy and Development Gurbanmyrad Gurbanmyradov and Afghan Economic Minister Mohammad Jalil Shams headed delegations of their countries at Friday’s meeting.
The participants in the meeting highlighted interaction in the fuel and energy sphere, the press service of the Turkmen government said.
Turkmenistan, which is delivering electricity to Afghanistan at privileged prices, plans to expand its power grids towards Afghanistan, the press service said.
The participants in the meeting discussed the increase of electricity deliveries to the Afghan city of Herat. Three investment projects with total worth of 9.8 million U.S. dollars are aimed at the purpose. They envisage the reconstruction of the power grid in the Turgundy settlement in the Herat province, the construction of electric transmission lines in the Balh province and on the route from Serhetabat to Herat.
The Afghan Ministry of Energy and Water is the ordering customer of the above-mentioned facilities.
Besides, the participants in the meeting considered prospects for the conjunction of the Turkmen and Afghan railways.
In particular, Turkmenistan offered to fund the construction of a railway stretch from Atamurat to the border with Afghanistan.
The interlocutors spoke in favour of closer contacts in agriculture, education and public health.
The members of the commission called on to increase the number of Afghan students in higher education establishments of Turkmenistan and supported further free-of-charge medical aid to the population of Afghan bordering districts.
Back to Top
Disclaimer:
This news site is mostly a compilation of publicly accessible articles
on the Web in the form of a link or saved news item. The news articles
and commentaries/editorials are protected under international copyright
laws. All credit goes to the original respective source(s).