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McCain: Use Iraq strategies in Afghanistan
By DEVLIN BARRETT Associated Press / July 15, 2008
ALBUQUERQUE - John McCain says the troop increase strategies used in Iraq should also be applied to Afghanistan, and that he knows more than Barack Obama about "how to win wars."
Pakistan Says Afghanistan Promoting 'Artificial Crisis' Through Terror Accusations
By Barry Newhouse Voice of America (VOA)
Islamabad 15 July 2008-Pakistan is rejecting allegations that its intelligence agencies and armed forces have been behind a recent string of attacks across Afghanistan. VOA's Barry Newhouse reports from Islamabad that Afghan officials say
19 insurgents killed in Afghanistan
By AMIR SHAH Associated Press / July 15, 2008
KABUL, Afghanistan - Seven insurgents were killed in a military operation near where militants this week breached a U.S. outpost in eastern Afghanistan, the Afghan Defense Ministry said Tuesday.
Pakistan tribesmen say NATO forces mass on Afghan border
July 15, 2008
MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (AFP) - Pakistani tribal elders Tuesday raised the alarm over a build-up of hundreds of NATO-led troops on the Afghan side of the border, but the military downplayed fears of any intrusion.
Gunmen kidnap two Turkish nationals in Afghanistan
Tue Jul 15, 3:41 AM ET
HERAT, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Unknown gunmen kidnapped two Turkish nationals working on construction project in western Afghanistan on Monday, a senior police official said.
Afghanistan: Taliban release photos of beheaded 'prostitutes' on Internet
Kabul, 15 July (AKI) - The Taliban are believed to have released photos of two beheaded Afghan women on al-Qaeda-linked websites on the Internet on Tuesday.
Democrat would boost Afghanistan troops
Financial Times, UK By Andrew Ward July 15 2008
Barack Obama has pledged to send at least 7,000 more US troops to Afghanistan if elected president in response to mounting concern about worsening violence in the country.
Taleban set up 'Pakistan courts'
By M Ilyas Khan BBC News, Islamabad Tuesday, 15 July 2008
Taleban militants in Pakistan's north-western Mohmand tribal area have set up permanent Islamic courts, they say.
Afghanistan to boycott meetings with Pakistan
Dawn (Pakistan) July 15, 2008
KABUL-Afghanistan said on Monday it would boycott a series of upcoming meetings with Pakistan unless “bilateral trust” was restored after attacks it blamed on its neighbour’s intelligence and military.
The cabinet decision was announced soon after President Hamid Karzai directly accused Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI, of a role in a series of deadly attacks, including the bombing of the Indian embassy last week.“
Karzai opposes US use of Afghan soil against Iran
Sayed Salahuddin
KABUL, July 14 (Reuters) - Afghanistan opposes U.S. use of its territory for launching a possible attack against neighbouring Iran, President Hamid Karzai said in an interview broadcast on Monday.
Getting tourists to Afghanistan's 'Grand Canyon'
By Alastair Leithead BBC News, Band-e Amir Tuesday, 15 July 2008
It takes eight bone-shaking hours on a dirt track road to reach Afghanistan's first national park from the capital, but the beauty and serenity is worth crossing the world for.
Interrogation video shows Khadr crying, pulling hair
Jorge Barrera and Steven Edwards Canwest News Service Tuesday, July 15, 2008
There is a drone of a ventilation fan as Omar Khadr sits alone in an interrogation room somewhere in the bowels of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and he begins to sob.
Taliban attack exploited weakness
US defenses not fully in place Boston.com - World By Carlotta Gall and Eric Schmitt New York Times News Service July 15, 2008
KABUL, Afghanistan -The Taliban insurgents who attacked a remote American-run outpost near the Pakistan border on Sunday numbered nearly 200 fighters, almost three times the size of the allied force, and some breached the NATO
Five weddings and many funerals
Asia Times By Tom Engelhardt 07/14/2008
It was a tribal affair. Against a picture-perfect sunset, before a beige-colored cross and an altar made of the very Texas limestone that was also used to build her family's "ranch", veil-less in an Oscar de la Renta gown, the 26-year-old bride said her vows
Greater threat as J&K jihadis bond with Taliban
The Times of India - Pakistan TIMES NEWS NETWORK & AGENCIES 15 Jul 2008
RAWALPINDI-The threat from Taliban and al-Qaida terrorists to India may have deepened with reports coming in about 300 jihadi fighters, including some from Kashmiri groups, coming together for a secret gathering in the city that serves
Pakistan: America needs us too
Aljazeera.net, Qatar Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Pakistan's foreign minister, met Al Jazeera's Ghida Fakhry on a recent trip to Washington.
Wishful thinking does not help in Afghanistan
The Globe and Mail - Opinions From Tuesday's Globe and Mail July 14, 2008
General Walter Natynczyk, the Chief of the Defence Staff, has asked journalists to believe that violence in Kandahar has barely increased in the past few years, contradicting recent statistics showing that insurgent attacks may have as
Are Canadians getting the truth about Afghanistan?
Globe and Mail, Canada JEFFREY SIMPSON From Tuesday's Globe and Mail July 14, 2008
Prime Minister Stephen Harper was correct last week when he said about Afghanistan: “We have serious challenges there, and we simply must make progress on governance and security in the next 12 to 24 months.
'Taliban want Ghazni as gateway to Kabul'
Written by www.quqnoos.com Monday, 14 July 2008
Militant attacks prove Taliban are planning to attack capital, official says
(PAN) The governor of the southern province of Ghazni has said Taliban fighters from the south and south-east are trying to use the province as the frontline in their bid to capture Kabul.
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McCain: Use Iraq strategies in Afghanistan
By DEVLIN BARRETT Associated Press / July 15, 2008
ALBUQUERQUE - John McCain says the troop increase strategies used in Iraq should also be applied to Afghanistan, and that he knows more than Barack Obama about "how to win wars."
McCain has told a town hall crowd in Albuquerque, N.M., that the U.S. military effort in Iraq is working. He argues a similar approach — more troops, more counterinsurgency programs, and more coherent military organization would arrest the growing violence in Afghanistan.
The Republican nominee-to-be charges his Democratic opponent, Obama, is offering misguided military plans for the region before he's even set foot in the country.
McCain says more U.S. troops should be sent to Afghanistan, particularly the southern part of the country where the Taliban is strongest.
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Pakistan Says Afghanistan Promoting 'Artificial Crisis' Through Terror Accusations
By Barry Newhouse Voice of America (VOA)
Islamabad 15 July 2008-Pakistan is rejecting allegations that its intelligence agencies and armed forces have been behind a recent string of attacks across Afghanistan. VOA's Barry Newhouse reports from Islamabad that Afghan officials say they have proof of Pakistan's involvement, but they will not publicly disclose it.
Afghanistan's Cabinet has accused Pakistani agents of hundreds of attacks, including plotting the assassination attempt against President Hamid Karzai in April, masterminding an elaborate prison break in Kandahar in June, and bombing the Indian embassy in Kabul this month.
Afghan officials say they had hoped Pakistan's civilian government would reign in the intelligence agencies from interfering in Afghan affairs, but instead, officials said the agencies activities have intensified in recent months.
Presidential spokesman Humayun Hamidzada told reporters in Kabul Tuesday that they have proof of Pakistani involvement in the attacks, but Afghan officials will only disclose it to their counterparts if the Pakistanis are interested in addressing the problem.
"We do want good relations with Pakistan," he said. "We do want to resolve our issue through talks, cooperation and collaboration. Now the ball is in the Pakistani court and we would like to see them act in good faith and show that they are sincere."
Pakistan's Foreign Ministry Tuesday rejected what it called "baseless allegations" against its intelligence agencies. A ministry statement said Afghanistan is creating what it called an "artificial crisis" in relations.
Afghanistan has suspended three upcoming meetings with Pakistani officials, including a meeting later this month to discuss border security.
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19 insurgents killed in Afghanistan
By AMIR SHAH Associated Press / July 15, 2008
KABUL, Afghanistan - Seven insurgents were killed in a military operation near where militants this week breached a U.S. outpost in eastern Afghanistan, the Afghan Defense Ministry said Tuesday.
Separately, Afghan troops killed 12 insurgents west of the capital, Kabul, the ministry said in a statement.
The Taliban-led rebellion appears to be intensifying despite the largest presence of foreign forces in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion that ousted the hard-line regime in 2001.
More than 2,500 people — mostly militants — have reportedly died in insurgency-related violence this year, according to an Associated Press tally of figures from Afghan and Western officials.
In the eastern operation Monday, troops killed seven insurgents and nabbed an "Arab terrorist" in the area of Wanat village in Nuristan province where nine American soldiers died in a militant attack over the weekend, the Defense Ministry said.
Its statement gave no further details and did not say whether foreign forces supported the Afghan army. NATO and U.S. military officials were not immediately available for comment.
U.S. troops, meanwhile, disarmed the district police force and briefly detained the district chief and police chief for questioning at the U.S. base, said Omar Sameh, a spokesman for district chief. Both were released within 24 hours, he said. Sameh did not say what the chiefs were questioned about.
Sunday's assault was the deadliest against the U.S. military in three years and deepened doubts about its ability to contain Islamic militants and keep locals on their side, amid reports that residents had advance knowledge of the attack and some local tribesmen joined the assault.
Some 200 militants with machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars attacked the U.S. outpost in Wanat, just three days after it was established near the Pakistan border.
An unknown number of militants got inside the outpost but were beaten back after hours of fighting.
Cooperation in the war on terror among Pakistan, Afghanistan and U.S. and NATO forces has been strained by accusations that Taliban, al-Qaida and other militants enjoy sanctuary on Pakistani soil.
Afghanistan on Monday alleged Pakistan's intelligence service and army are behind the bloody Taliban-led insurgency, calling its security forces the "world's biggest producers of terrorism and extremism."
Pakistan rejected the allegations Tuesday and accused Afghanistan of causing an "artificial crisis" in relations.
Meanwhile, Afghan troops clashed with militants in central Wardak province on Monday, leaving 12 militants dead and four Afghan soldiers wounded, the Defense Ministry said.
The militants were suspected of planting roadside bombs in a recent spate of attacks on the main highway passing through the province, the ministry said.
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Pakistan tribesmen say NATO forces mass on Afghan border
July 15, 2008
MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (AFP) - Pakistani tribal elders Tuesday raised the alarm over a build-up of hundreds of NATO-led troops on the Afghan side of the border, but the military downplayed fears of any intrusion.
The gathering of foreign troops came as Islamabad was under growing pressure from the United States to curb cross-border attacks by Taliban militants, with the US military chief flying into Pakistan at the weekend for urgent talks.
"We have heard there is a build-up of foreign troops," said Malik Mohammad Afzal Khan Darpakhel, a local tribal leader in North Waziristan who is not affiliated with the Taliban.
"We want to warn them that three million tribesmen will rise against them if they try to move in," Darpakhel told a news conference held by five elders in Miranshah, the main town in the region.
Intelligence sources said some 300 NATO soldiers equipped with tanks, armoured vehicles and heavy weaponry have been moved very close to Lwara Mundi, a border village in North Waziristan.
The village is also close to Camp Tillman, a US forward operating base in Afghanistan's Paktika province named after American footballer-turned soldier Pat Tillman, who was killed by friendly fire in 2004.
"They have not crossed into Pakistan but this is the first time that such a large number of foreign troops have come so close to the border," Darpakhel said.
A Pakistani military spokesman denied there was any unusual troop movement on the border. The spokesman said the NATO forces may be gathering for an operation on the Afghan side.
"There may be some operational movement of these forces in Afghanistan," the spokesman said.
Later US President George W.Bush said at a White House press conference that he was "troubled" by Islamic extremists moving from Pakistan to Afghanistan but said the new Pakistani government understands the danger.
He said there was "no question" that extremists are moving across the border.
"That's troubling to us. It's troubling to Afghanistan. And it should be troubling to Pakistan," he said. "We share a common enemy."
"I certainly hope that the (Pakistani) government understands the dangers of extremists moving in their country. I think they do," Bush said.
A spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan said there was no question of troops entering Pakistan.
"Our mandate stops at the border," spokesman Captain Mike Finney said.
There was some "extra activity" on the border with troops searching for surviving insurgents after Sunday's attack that killed nine US troops, he said.
But Pakistani tribal elders vowed to support the army in case of any incursion.
"We will protect every inch of our territory and we will support our army in fighting these foreign forces," said Darpakhel.
"We urge the tribesmen to clean up their weapons and be ready for jihad if foreign forces enter our area."
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Gunmen kidnap two Turkish nationals in Afghanistan
Tue Jul 15, 3:41 AM ET
HERAT, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Unknown gunmen kidnapped two Turkish nationals working on construction project in western Afghanistan on Monday, a senior police official said.
Kidnapping has become a lucrative business in Afghanistan, where dozens of locals and foreigners have been abducted by criminals or Taliban-linked militants.
"The Turkish engineers were working on a project in the town of Islam Qala, bordering Iran, where they were kidnapped from the vehicle yesterday afternoon," regional Police Chief Abdul Rahoof Ahmadi said.
"We found the vehicle and their passports inside the car ... The kidnappers might have taken them on foot somewhere," he said.
Islam Qala is on the main border crossing with Iran, a place where there is little Taliban activity. Criminals, however, have carried out kidnappings in the past and handed over their captives to the Taliban in return for money.
Neither the Taliban nor any other armed group claimed responsibility for the latest abduction.
Ousted from power in 2001, Taliban insurgents have been behind a number of kidnappings in Afghanistan. Some have been killed, but most of the victims have been released unharmed.
The insurgents kidnapped 23 South Koreans last year, killing two and releasing the rest a more than a month later.
(Reporting by Sharafuddin Sharafiyaar; Writing by Hamid Shalizi; Editing by David Fox)
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Afghanistan: Taliban release photos of beheaded 'prostitutes' on Internet
Kabul, 15 July (AKI) - The Taliban are believed to have released photos of two beheaded Afghan women on al-Qaeda-linked websites on the Internet on Tuesday.
The women were allegedly decapitated two days ago in the Afghan province of Ghazni after the Taliban had accused them of being prostitutes whose clients included American soldiers and foreign contractors present in Afghanistan.
In the photos the two women are wearing burqas or head-to-ankle veils which cover the entire face.
In the first photo, the women are seen on their knees surrounded by Taliban fighters who are carrying weapons.
In the second image, the bodies of the women are instead seen lying on the ground, covered by their burqas and next to them are bags and their heads separated from the bodies.
In the second photo, some adults and a dozen children are seen looking at the two beheaded bodies, a sign that it could have been a public execution carried out as a warning to the local population.
A spokesperson for governor of the Afghan province of Ghazni revealed that the two women were killed two days ago, saying that the Taliban had killed two innocent people in a "undescribable and cruel" way.
However a spokesperson for the American military, Nathan Perry, denied the report soon after.
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Democrat would boost Afghanistan troops
Financial Times, UK By Andrew Ward July 15 2008
Barack Obama has pledged to send at least 7,000 more US troops to Afghanistan if elected president in response to mounting concern about worsening violence in the country.
The presumptive Democratic presidential candidate made the commitment after nine soldiers were killed on Sunday in the deadliest attack against US forces in Afghanistan for three years.
Mr Obama said he would send at least two more combat brigades to Afghanistan as part of plans to withdraw US forces from Iraq and refocus attention on the original battleground of the US "war on terror".
John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, said he too was prepared to send more troops to Afghanistan - but not at the expense of the US effort in Iraq.
Pressure is mounting on the US administration to bolster its forces further in Afghanistan to counter the resurgence by al-Qaeda and the Taliban, nearly seven years after the war began.
Monthly death tolls of US and Nato troops in Afghanistan surpassed US military deaths in Iraq in May and June, highlighting the div-erging fortunes of US operations in the two countries.
US commanders have been appealing for more troops in Afghanistan for months but US forces are stretched thin by their dual commitments in the region.
Speculation is mounting that the administration could accelerate the pace of its troop drawdown in Iraq, where violence is declining, to free up forces to send to Afghanistan. About 36,000 US troops are deployed in the country.
"We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more non-military assistance to accomplish the mission [in Afghanistan]," Mr Obama wrote in The New York Times yesterday.
"I would not hold our military, our resources and our foreign policy hostage to a misguided desire to maintain permanent bases in Iraq."
The Illinois senator said he would leave a residual force of undetermined size in Iraq to "perform limited missions", such as training Iraqi forces and going after remnants of al-Qaeda.
"Ending the war is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and al-Qaeda has a safe haven," he wrote.
"Iraq is not the central front in the war on terrorism, and it never has been."
Mr McCain said the US needed to do "whatever is necessary" to win the war in Afghanistan, "and that could entail more troops'. But he rejected Mr Obama's argument that Iraq was not also a central battleground against al-Qaeda.
"We are winning [in Iraq] and his proposals would jeopardise the fragility of the success we've achieved. And his refusal to acknowledge that success is remarkable," said the Arizona senator.
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Taleban set up 'Pakistan courts'
By M Ilyas Khan BBC News, Islamabad Tuesday, 15 July 2008
Taleban militants in Pakistan's north-western Mohmand tribal area have set up permanent Islamic courts, they say.
The districts have been divided into four judicial zones, each having two judges and a permanent court address.
The Taleban have up until now used mobile courts - with no permanent offices or judges - to settle criminal and financial disputes.
They say the permanent courts show the diminishing authority of the central and local governments.
The Taleban currently control large areas of Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) along the border with Afghanistan.
'Dozens of judgements'
"There will be eight judges, two for each zonal court, and there will be a top judge to whom appeals can be made," Dr Asad, a spokesman for the Mohmand Taleban, told the BBC News website.
An official of the Mohmand tribal administration confirmed the report, saying the courts were already functioning a day after the Taleban's announcement.
Meanwhile, the top spokesman for the Pakistani Taleban Movement (PTM), Maulvi Omar, has told the BBC Urdu service that permanent Taleban courts were already functioning in Bajaur district, Mohmand's northern neighbour.
"About 20 local religious scholars issue dozens of judgements each day in Bajaur, where we have the most organised judicial system in place," he said.
Public killings
In addition the PTM also runs a vast network of mobile courts in the rest of the Fata areas, he said.
The cases range from land transactions and loan disputes to family matters.
All this is embarrassing for the Pakistani government, especially because the Taleban have in the past carried out cruel punishments against people accused of moral turpitude, crime or spying.
Earlier this month, two Afghan nationals accused of spying for the US were publicly killed on the orders of a Taleban court in Bajaur.
Last month, a court in Orakzai ordered the public killing of half a dozen alleged bandits.
And in March, the Taleban killed a couple after they were allegedly found guilty of adultery by a court in Mohmand.
Meanwhile, Pakistani troops are engaged in a week-long face off with militants in the Hangu district of NWFP, on the border with Orakzai tribal region.
The militants say they are holding more than 20 government officials hostage, and would like to exchange them for four Taleban activists arrested by the police on 5 July from Doaba, a town near Hangu.
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Afghanistan to boycott meetings with Pakistan
Dawn (Pakistan) July 15, 2008
KABUL-Afghanistan said on Monday it would boycott a series of upcoming meetings with Pakistan unless “bilateral trust” was restored after attacks it blamed on its neighbour’s intelligence and military.
The cabinet decision was announced soon after President Hamid Karzai directly accused Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI, of a role in a series of deadly attacks, including the bombing of the Indian embassy last week.“
Pakistani agents were behind the killing of two women in Ghazni province and 24 people in a suicide bomb in Uruzgan province on Sunday, Karzai said.
“We will take revenge for these two sisters of ours very soon ... and we are telling the enemies of Afghanistan that we will protect the honour of this country,” he said.
The people of Afghanistan, the world, know very well that Pakistan’s intelligence agency and military have turned that country to the biggest exporter of terrorism and extremism to the world, particularly Afghanistan,” the cabinet said in a statement.
A cabinet meeting had decided Afghanistan was “compelled” to suspend its involvement in various bilateral and regional meetings due in Dubai, Islamabad and Kabul this month and in August, the statement said.
The reason was the “violence-seeking policies of ISI and military officials.” The suspension would hold unless “an atmosphere of bilateral trust is established,” it said.
“Every day all over our country, children, women, elders, teachers and Afghanistan’s international partners ... get killed at the hands of elements of this organisation, ISI,” the statement said.
It alleged that the ISI was responsible for “terrorist attacks” that included a suicide bombing against the Indian embassy in Kabul last week that killed 60 people and a failed assassination attempt on Karzai in April.
Other “destructive attacks are all indicators of ISI’s attempts to recapture and destroy our country,” the cabinet said.
Pakistan has firmly denied involvement in the Indian embassy attack and the wave of violence in Afghanistan, accusing Kabul of shelving its own responsibilities to fight extremist violence.—AFP
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Karzai opposes US use of Afghan soil against Iran
Sayed Salahuddin
KABUL, July 14 (Reuters) - Afghanistan opposes U.S. use of its territory for launching a possible attack against neighbouring Iran, President Hamid Karzai said in an interview broadcast on Monday.
Iran has threatened to target Israel and U.S. interests in the region in the event of an attack against the Islamic Republic which is locked in a dispute with the West over its nuclear programme.
Karzai said his government, which came to power after U.S.-led and Afghan forces overthrew the Taliban in 2001, had always tried to "keep the balance between the powers".
"We are attentive to the dangers," Karzai told Radio Liberty when asked about the possible repercussions of a conflict between Iran and the United States.
"Afghanistan should not become the battleground of differences of any country," he said in a wide-ranging interview. "Afghanistan does not want its soil to be used against any country and Afghanistan wants to be a friend of Iran as a neighbour which shares the same language and religion."
Karzai said his government had facilitated talks between Tehran and Washington, and had also served as a messenger between both in the past.
Washington, which has some 32,000 troops in Afghanistan and is the biggest aid donor to Kabul, has not ruled out military force against Iran.
Meanwhile, Karzai said foreign troops had ignored his repeated calls to coordinate operations with Afghan forces to avoid civilian casualties.
Nearly 700 Afghan civilians have been killed in the first six months of 2008, the United Nations says, 255 of them by Afghan and international forces.
"This in reality is a disaster ... many innocent people have been killed in the bombardment. For five years, routinely, I have been trying to prevent foreign forces from possibly harming our nation. Unfortunately, this effort has not had outcome I wanted, and as the nation expects," Karzai said.
Karzai brushed aside reports about a possible postponement of next year's presidential election due to rising violence.
He said Afghanistan favoured good ties with its other large neighbour, Pakistan, but said there were "elements in Pakistan's intelligence and Pakistan's army" who did not want a stable Afghanistan.
(Editing by Jeremy Laurence)
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Getting tourists to Afghanistan's 'Grand Canyon'
By Alastair Leithead BBC News, Band-e Amir Tuesday, 15 July 2008
It takes eight bone-shaking hours on a dirt track road to reach Afghanistan's first national park from the capital, but the beauty and serenity is worth crossing the world for.
Imagine the Grand Canyon flooded with deep sapphire lakes, bluer than the cloudless sky, with sheer golden cliffs plunging into turquoise shallows.
High above the Band-e Amir valley in Bamiyan province the Hindu Kush mountains glow an almost-pink, framing the beautiful long pools that overflow into gushing waterfalls.
It's a paradise, an oasis, in central Afghanistan - a bubble of security and peace in a country which is more used to war and instability.
'Better security'
Some tourists do make the tortuous journey and on Fridays the pedalo man with his brightly coloured swan-shaped boats usually has a very busy day.
Afghans travel out to Band-e Amir for picnics, a favourite family pastime at weekends and take a refreshing dip. The boats are a good way of seeing the sights for $8 an hour.
"Any improvements would help attract more visitors here," said Ismael Alaa, poring over the book where he notes down which boats have been hired.
"But particularly, we need better roads to bring in people and supplies - and better security, even though it's not bad here."
There are a few accommodation tents and trinket stores plonked near the car park - just a few tables set up to serve the tourist trade.
One or two places will even slaughter a lamb for lunch if they think the group is big enough to make it worth their while.
Attaqulla cooked our kebabs on a narrow metal barbecue, but his full time job is with the local department of tourism.
He explained the attraction of the new national park: "It's not an artificial lake, it's natural and really deep.
"Because of the way it's been formed, almost like it's been blocked at one end, people look at it as a miracle and come from all over the country to see it.
"But local people from Bamiyan believe the third caliph of Islam came here once, so they treat it as a religious site and come to pray at the shrine."
Standing high on the edge of the canyon the views are truly breathtaking, but the one thing missing is people.
There are very few visitors to the area, not least because of the roads, but also because of the deteriorating security situation in the surrounding provinces.
It's one of the most peaceful parts of Afghanistan, but the Governor, Habiba Serobi, the only female governor in the country, believes if more money isn't put into the area then the situation could worsen.
'Destroyed'
"Unfortunately the aid is always going to the more difficult areas where there are problems and conflict - that's where the international community puts more money," she said.
"They don't care about Bamiyan if it is safe and secure, but the danger is people will be angry and disappointed with the central government and the international community.
"So in the future the distance between the government and the people will be bigger and it will be a cause of problems."
There is a small military presence of troops from New Zealand in the province and there are some developments - a new town hall has just been finished and work has started on building new roads in the city.
But there is a lot of poverty and near to the mountain where the famous Buddhas once stood before they were destroyed by the Taleban in 2001, families are living in caves.
This beautiful and peaceful part of a violent country has huge potential to make Afghanistan a lot of money, but only when the majority of foreign visitors here aren't carrying guns and fighting an insurgency.
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Interrogation video shows Khadr crying, pulling hair
Jorge Barrera and Steven Edwards Canwest News Service Tuesday, July 15, 2008
There is a drone of a ventilation fan as Omar Khadr sits alone in an interrogation room somewhere in the bowels of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and he begins to sob.
Dressed in orange, then 16 years old, the Toronto-born terror suspect sobs, and sobs again. He seems to say "kill me," over and over again. Kill me."
This morning, lawyers for Mr. Khadr released this and other video segments of Canadian Security Intelligence Service agents interrogating Mr. Khadr. The segments are only part of four days of taped interviews from Feb. 13, 2003, that the lawyers plan to release later today in Edmonton.
The Supreme Court of Canada recently ordered the federal government to release the tapes and a series of related documents to the lawyers, who had launched successive actions to obtain the formerly confidential files.
The videos offer a rare glimpse of Canada's spies in action and their interrogation techniques.
Mr. Khadr's lawyers said the videos do not show Mr. Khadr being tortured or mistreated during the interrogations.
At times friendly, at times hostile, Mr. Khadr's three interrogators make it clear they don't buy his tear-drenched pleas. At one point, just before Mr. Khadr is left alone with the ventilation fan to sob, a female agent is heard saying, "Put your shirt back on."
Mr. Khadr had pulled off his shirt, leaving his shoulders and upper chest bare to show the wounds he said he received as a result of torture while at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. He had been transferred from Afghanistan to the U.S. naval base in Cuba the previous October.
"I can't move my arms," says Mr. Khadr, sobbing.
"They look like they are healing well to me," says the main interrogator. "I am not a doctor, but I think you are getting good medical care."
"No, I am not; you're not here. I lost my eyes. I lost my feet, everything," he appears to say.
"No, you still have your eyes and your feet are at the end of your legs," says the interrogator, after suggesting they take a break. "I understand this is stressful but, by using this strategy to talk to us, it is not going to be... helpful, we have a limited amount of time. We have heard this story before."
Moments later, Mr. Khadr, hand over face, says in a tear-weary voice, "You don't care about me."
The interrogator takes a friendly tone.
"That is not true. People do care about you," says the interrogator.
He again proposes that they take a break. The female agent tells him to put on his shirt and another agent turns on the fan.
"Put the fan on so you're cool," says another agent.
"Take a few minutes and relax a bit," says the main interrogator.
Critics have begun reacting to the video.
I certainly hope [the video] will raise the conscience of Canadians," Dennis Edney, Khadr's Edmonton lawyer told CBC News Tuesday. "He has suffered more than enough, he should be brought home.
"Canada knew full well the conditions that he was in. They should have asked questions about him being tortured."
"He had no lawyer, no contact with anyone -- this doesn't happen in Canada and it shouldn't have happened to this young man."
NDP human rights critic Wayne Marsden told CBC News that all the other child combatants have been taken out of Guantanamo. "There are provisions to bring him back. We should bring him back and rehabilitate him, don't blame him for the sins of his father."
"The question is what ministers were briefed on this interrogation?" For Canada to deny that he was being mistreated is "disgraceful at this point. It's quite clear that that is not the case," Mr. Marsden said.
The Supreme Court of Canada recently ordered the federal government to release the tapes and a series of related documents to the lawyers, who had launched successive actions to obtain the formerly confidential files.
Mr. Khadr's Pentagon-assigned military lawyer may use the tapes as part of the Canadian's defence. Mr. Khadr is scheduled to be tried before a U.S. military commission in early October on five war crimes charges, including the murder of a US soldier in a grenade attack during the 2002 firefight.
Notes U.S. officials wrote of the interrogations are included in some of the accompanying documents that were released by the lawyers separately last week.
The interrogations took place over four days from Feb. 13, 2003, at the U.S. naval base in Cuba following Mr. Khadr's transfer from detention in Afghanistan the previous October.
Sitting in a folding chair on the first day, Mr. Khadr ate a burger and drank a soda, according to one report, whose author said he could not hear what was being said.
Mr. Khadr "mumbled and had his head down" on the second day, the author said. The detainee also would "not look at his interviewers."
The author said when the Canadian officials asked Mr. Khadr why his demeanour had changed, he replied: "Promise you'll protect me from the Americans."
Mr. Khadr also said he had been tortured while detained in Afghanistan, the U.S. official wrote, and said everything he had told the Canadians the previous day "was a lie."
The Canadians asked Mr. Khadr if he'd spoken with anyone the previous night, and Mr. Khadr "denied anyone coached him," the U.S. official says. "He covered his eyes and began to cry heavily."
The U.S. official describes how Mr. Khadr removed his shirt, saying it was to show wounds on his back and shoulder. Mr. Khadr was shot and suffered shrapnel wounds during the firefight in Afghanistan.
"Mr. Khadr put his head back in his hands and cried heavily," said the official.
Mr. Khadr sat on a couch on the third day, the official writes. "He declined food that was offered to him."
The official said the Canadians asked Mr. Khadr about members of his family, among them his father, whom the U.S. has accused of being chief financier to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. Mr. Khadr's father was killed in an anti-terrorist raid in Pakistan in 2003.
On the fourth day the official says the Canadian interrogators "began to get more confrontational with Mr. Khadr, who "denied killing anyone."
"Mr. Khadr began to cry and was crying when the interrogators left," the official says.
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Taliban attack exploited weakness
US defenses not fully in place Boston.com - World By Carlotta Gall and Eric Schmitt New York Times News Service July 15, 2008
KABUL, Afghanistan -The Taliban insurgents who attacked a remote American-run outpost near the Pakistan border on Sunday numbered nearly 200 fighters, almost three times the size of the allied force, and some breached the NATO compound in a coordinated assault that took the defenders by surprise, Western officials said yesterday.
The attackers were driven back in a pitched four-hour battle, and they appeared to suffer scores of dead and wounded of their own, but the toll they inflicted was sobering. The base and a nearby observation post were held by just 45 American troops and 25 Afghan soldiers, two senior allied officials said, asking for anonymity while an investigation is underway.
With nine Americans dead and at least 15 injured, that means that one in five of the American defenders was killed and nearly half the remainder were wounded. Four Afghan soldiers were also wounded.
American and Afghan forces started building the makeshift base last week, and its defenses were not fully in place, one of the senior allied officials said. In some places, troops were using their vehicles as barriers against insurgents.
The militants apparently detected the vulnerability and moved quickly to exploit it in a predawn assault in which they attacked from two directions, American officials said.
It was the first time insurgents had partly breached any of the three dozen outposts that American and Afghan forces operate jointly across the country, according to a Western official who insisted on anonymity in providing details of the operation.
The surprise attack underscored the vulnerability of American forces in Afghanistan, which are increasingly stretched thin as they are dispatched to far-flung and often isolated mountainous outposts with their Afghan allies.
The United States now has about 32,000 troops in Afghanistan, about one-fifth the number in Iraq, even though Afghanistan is about 50 percent larger than Iraq.
American commanders and NATO military officials said the assault had also reflected boldness among insurgents who had benefited from new bases in neighboring Pakistan.
It underscored the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, where war casualties have jumped this year, and where American commanders have said repeatedly that their force is undermanned.
The fact that the base, on the western side of Kunar Province, was manned by just 70 soldiers was first reported Monday by The Los Angeles Times. The death toll amounted to the worst single loss for the American military in Afghanistan since June 2005 and one of the worst since the Taliban and their Qaeda associates were routed in late 2001.
American and Afghan soldiers inside the base were hit by flying fragments from bullets, grenades and mortars that insurgents fired from houses, shops, and a mosque in a village within a few hundred yards of the base, several officials said.
At the lightly fortified observation post nearby, American soldiers came under heavy fire from militants streaming through farmland under the cover of darkness. Most of the American casualties took place there, a senior American military official said.
American warplanes, attack helicopters, and long-range artillery were urgently summoned to help repel the militants.
But the insurgents made it so far that a few of their corpses were found inside the base's earthen barriers, and others were lying around it, Tamim Nuristani, a former governor in the region, said after talking to officials in the district.
The attack was unusually bold. Taliban guerrillas and other militants in Afghanistan rarely attack better-armed allied forces head on, preferring suicide bombs and hit-and-run ambushes against foot patrols and convoys. But they have made occasional attempts to overrun lightly manned or otherwise vulnerable outposts.
"Quite clearly they wanted to overrun the outpost," the Western official said of the insurgents. "It was a well-planned surprise attack."
The United States and Afghanistan have been establishing dozens of the military outposts, often in remote areas controlled by the Taliban or their allies. "We're looking at places to stop the flow of insurgents and establish relations with the local tribes," a senior American military official said.
Allied and American officials said the attack began at 4:30 a.m. Sunday. Fighters who had infiltrated the hamlet of Wanat overnight and ordered the villagers to leave opened fire on the outpost from the west and southwest.
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Five weddings and many funerals
Asia Times By Tom Engelhardt 07/14/2008
It was a tribal affair. Against a picture-perfect sunset, before a beige-colored cross and an altar made of the very Texas limestone that was also used to build her family's "ranch", veil-less in an Oscar de la Renta gown, the 26-year-old bride said her vows. More than 200 members of her extended family and friends were on hand, as well as the 14 women in her "house party", who were dressed "in seven different styles of knee-length dresses in seven different colors that match[ed] the palette of ... wildflowers - blues, greens, lavenders and pinky reds".
Afterwards, in a white tent set in a grove of trees and illuminated by strings of lights, the father of the bride, George W Bush, danced with his daughter to the strains of You Are So Beautiful. The media were kept at arm's length and the vows were private, but undoubtedly they included the phrase "till death do us part".
That was early May of this year. Less than two months later, halfway across the world, another tribal affair was underway. The age of the bride involved is unknown to us, as is her name. No reporters were clamoring to get to her section of the mountainous backcountry of Afghanistan near the Pakistani border. We know almost nothing about her circumstances, except that she was on her way to a nearby village, evidently early in the morning, among a party 70-90 strong, mostly women, "escorting the bride to meet her groom as local tradition dictates".
It was then that the American plane (or planes) arrived, ensuring that she would never say her vows. "They stopped in a narrow location for rest," said one witness about her house party, according to the BBC. "The plane came and bombed the area." The district governor, Haji Amishah Gul, told The Times of London, "So far there are 27 people, including women and children, who have been buried. Another 10 have been wounded. The attack happened at 6:30am. Just two of the dead are men, the rest are women and children. The bride is among the dead."
US military spokespeople flatly denied the story. They claimed that Taliban insurgents had been "clearly identified" among the group. "[T]his may just be normal, typical militant propaganda," said 1st Lieutenant Nathan Perry. Despite accounts of the wounded, including women and children, being brought to a local hospital, Captain Christian Patterson, coalition media officer, insisted, "It was not a wedding party, there were no women or children present. We have no reports of civilian casualties." The members of an Afghan inquiry, appointed by President Hamid Karzai, later found that, in all, 47 civilians had died, including 39 women and children, and nine others were wounded.
Here's another American take on what happened: "The US military has denied allegations that its forces killed dozens of people celebrating a marriage 'We took hostile fire and we returned fire,' said Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations He said there were no indications that the victims of the attack were part of a wedding party."
Oh, my mistake. Kimmitt was denying that a different wedding party had been obliterated - in the western Iraqi desert, near the Syrian border, in May 2004. In that case, the wedding feast was long over. The celebrations had ended and the guests were evidently in bed when the US jets arrived. More than 40 people died, including children, women, musicians and a well-known Iraqi wedding singer hired for the event. According to Rory McCarthy of the British Guardian, who interviewed some of the hospitalized survivors, 27 members of one extended family died when the jets arrived.
In response to reports on that 2004 killing, Major General James Mattis, commander of the 1st US Marine Division, asked the following question: "How many people go to the middle of the desert to hold a wedding 80 miles [128 kilometers] from the nearest civilization?" And, in an e-mail responding to questions from a New York Times reporter, Kimmitt later offered what was, by US military standards, little short of an admission: "Could there have been a celebration of some type going on? Certainly. Bad guys have celebrations. Could this have been a meeting among the foreign fighters and smugglers? That is a possibility. Could it have involved entertainment? Sure. However, a wedding party in a remote section of the desert along one of the rat lines, held in the early morning hours strains credulity."
The comments of Mattis and Kimmitt deserve, of course, to go directly into the annals of American military quotes, right next to that Vietnam-era classic: "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it."
But back to the subject of collateral ceremonial damage in Afghanistan. Consider this passage from a news report headlined, "No US Apology over Wedding Bombing," in the Guardian: Afghans claim the wedding guests, who were celebrating near Deh Rawud village, in the mountainous province of Oruzgan, north of Kandahar, had been firing into the air - a Pashtun wedding tradition - when American planes struck. But a US spokesman claimed yesterday that the shooting was "not consistent" with a wedding, saying that the planes had come under attack. "Normally when you think of celebratory fire ... it's random, it's sprayed, it's not directed at a specific target," said Colonel Roger King at the US airbase at Bagram. "In this instance, the people on board the aircraft felt that the weapons were tracking them and were [trying] to engage them." That was indeed Afghanistan - not in July 2006, however, but four Julys earlier, when at least 30 people in a wedding party were wiped out, most of them, again, reportedly women and children. Here's how Abdullah Abdullah, the Afghan foreign minister at the time, described that American air attack. It killed, he said, "a whole family of 25 people. No single person was left alive. This is the extent of the damage."
Oh, and let's not forget the ur-incident in wedding party destruction in Bush's wars. In late December 2001, a B-52 and two B-1B bombers, using precision-guided weapons, essentially wiped out a village in eastern Afghanistan (and then, in a second strike, took out Afghans digging in the rubble). At the time, it was claimed that Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders had been killed "in their sleep". It was also claimed that surface-to-air missiles had been fired at the American planes. A spokesman for the US Central Command issued a congratulatory statement after the attack occurred with this passage: "Follow-on reporting indicates that there was no collateral damage."
Except, of course, as Guardian correspondent Rory Carroll, then in Afghanistan, put it, "Bloodied children's shoes and skirts, bloodied school books, the scalp of a woman with braided grey hair, butter toffees in red wrappers, wedding decorations. The charred meat sticking to rubble in black lumps could have been Osama bin Laden's henchmen but survivors said it was the remains of farmers, their wives and children and wedding guests."
According to Time Magazine's Tim McGirk, out of 112 Afghans in the wedding party, only two women survived. In this case, it seems that the Americans were fed disinformation by an Afghan official out to settle scores and acted on it.
That makes four wedding parties blown away by US air power in Iraq and Afghanistan since the end of 2001. And there was probably at least one more. In May 2002, it was claimed that US helicopters wiped out a wedding party in the eastern Afghan province of Khost, killing 10 and wounding many more. An Agence France Presse report at the time concluded, "A wedding was in progress in the village when people fired into the air in traditional celebration and US helicopters flying over the area could have mistaken it for hostile fire. An aircraft later bombed the area for several hours." On this event, however, the documentation is far poorer.
All these "incidents" have some obvious features in common: the almost immediate claims by the US military, for instance, that those who have been hit were adversaries, not wedding parties; the ultimate dismissal of the killings as the usual "collateral damage" in wartime; and, above all, the striking fact that, for none of these slaughters of celebrating locals, did the US ever offer a genuine apology.
The mainstream media tend to pick up such stories as he said/she said affairs. Of course, "she" never actually "says" anything, being dead. But you get the idea. As with the most recent Afghan wedding-party slaughter, such pieces - generally wire service stories - are to be found deep inside American newspapers where only the news jockeys are reading. In fact, your basic wedding party wipe-out report is almost certain to share at least some space in the story with a mini-round-up of other kinds of recent death and mayhem in the region in question. The language in which such stories are written is generally humdrum and, in the military mode, death is sanitized (except in rare instances like Carroll's fine reports for the Guardian).
We Americans have only had one experience of death delivered from the air since World War II - the attacks of September 11, 2001. As no one is likely to forget, they shocked us to our core. And you know how those deaths were covered, right down to the special pages filled with bios of civilians who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the repeated invocations of the barbarism of al-Qaeda's killers (and barbarism it truly was).
These wedding parties, however, get no such treatment. Initially, they are automatically assumed to be malevolent - until the reports begin to filter in from the hospitals, the ruined villages and the graveyards, and, by then, it's usually too late for much press attention. When that does happen, their deaths are chalked up to an "errant bomb", or that celebratory gunfire, or no explanation is even offered.
Nothing barbaric lurks here, even though we can be sure that these civilians were hardly less surprised by the arrival of the attacking planes than were the victims of September 11. For their deaths, no word portraits are ever painted. No one in our world thinks to memorialize them, nor is there any cumulative record of their deaths. Whole extended families have been wiped out, while the dead and wounded run into the hundreds, and yet who remembers?
Here's the truth of it: In Bush's wars, the wedding singer dies, the bride does not get a chance to run away, and the event might be relabeled my big, fat, collateral damage wedding.
In the process, we have become a nation of wedding crashers, the uninvited guests who arrived under false pretenses, tore up the place, offered nary an apology, and refused to go home. It's a remarkable record, really, and catches the nature of the Bush administration's air war not on, but of and for terror in a particularly raw way. And yet, in this country, when the latest wedding party went down, no reporter seems even to have recalled our past history of wedding-party obliteration. So it goes.
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Verso, 2008), a collection of some of the best pieces from his site, has just been published.
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Greater threat as J&K jihadis bond with Taliban
The Times of India - Pakistan TIMES NEWS NETWORK & AGENCIES 15 Jul 2008
RAWALPINDI-The threat from Taliban and al-Qaida terrorists to India may have deepened with reports coming in about 300 jihadi fighters, including some from Kashmiri groups, coming together for a secret gathering in the city that serves as headquarters to the Pakistani army.
The groups, launched long ago with Pakistani army's support to fight in Kashmir, agreed in the June meeting to resolve their differences and commit more fighters to Afghanistan.
That India, heavily invested in Afghan reconstruction, along with the US is firmly in Taliban crosshairs on both sides of the Hindu Kush, was evident with the massive attack last week on the Indian Embassy in Kabul, which killed one diplomat, the defence attache and two ITBP guards.
On Sunday, Taliban terrorists launched their deadliest attack on US troops in three years, killing nine American soldiers in the northeastern province of Kunar.
"The message was that the jihad in Kashmir is still continuing but it is not the most important right now. Afghanistan is the fighting ground, against the Americans there," Toor Gul was quoted as saying, a leader of the militant group Hizb-ul Mujahedeen, as saying. He said the groups included the al-Qaida-linked Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba, banned by Pakistan and branded terrorists by the US.
Pakistan's Mohmand and Bajaur tribal areas are emerging as increasingly strong insurgent centers, according to Gul, the militant. His information was corroborated by Pakistani and western officials. Both those tribal areas are right next door to Afghanistan's Kunar province. "Before there were special, hidden places for training. But now they are all over Bajaur and Mohmand," he said. "Even in houses there is training going on."
The US military says militant attacks in eastern Afghanistan have increased 40% this year over 2007. "The trend of being equated as targets with Americans is very dangerous. We are now being seen by Taliban and al-Qaida forces as two countries coming together to fight them," said a senior security expert with the Indian government. "This may result in more attacks on soft Indian targets, both in India and Afghanistan," he said.
Pakistani military and European intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the June meeting and said it was the second such gathering this year. A senior military official described the inability to prevent the meetings as "an intelligence failure." Despite growing pressure on Pakistan to quell Islamic militancy, jihadi groups within its borders are in fact increasing their cooperation to attack American and Nato forces in Afghanistan, according to interviews with a wide range of militants, intelligence officials and military officers.
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Pakistan: America needs us too
Aljazeera.net, Qatar Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Pakistan's foreign minister, met Al Jazeera's Ghida Fakhry on a recent trip to Washington.
He discussed his country's increasingly strained relations with neighbouring Afghanistan, ties with the US and the potential UN investigation into the killing of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
Ghida Fakhry: There have been mounting tensions in Pakistan's tribal regions. A convoy was attacked and 15 Pakistani military personnel were killed. The Taliban in Pakistan say that they want you to release some of their men that were detained a few days ago by Pakistani authorities – are you willing to negotiate with them? What is the position of your government?
Shah Mahmood Qureshi: Our position has been consistent that we will not negotiate with terrorists. The negotiations that we've had in the past and that we're having right now are with tribal elders.
The idea is to wean them away from the extremist element. But we will not negotiate with terrorists.
The incident that you are referring to today negates many pundits here in Washington who've been predicting that the Pakistani army and Pakistan's new democratic government has gone soft on terrorists. Here Pakistani soldiers have lost lives and we are carrying on the fight against extremism and terrorism.
Since you have come to power in February you have struck agreements with Taliban leaders in Pakistan while the US and Afghanistan have both sharply criticised those policies saying that in essence, it gives Taliban fighters the latitude to cross the border into Pakistan. They have a point, do they not?
They have a point, but we have a point as well. Our point is that the military option is not the only option. Our strategy has to be a more comprehensive strategy. That is why our strategy is a multi-pronged strategy. We believe in political engagement. We believe in socio-economic development and when necessary, we would use force as well.
You call it political engagement, some may call it appeasement. The top Taliban leader, Bitola Moussoud, has suspended talks with the government and this policy seems to have failed. Is it time to shift strategies?
It is not appeasement. You are talking to a position of strength and when they would violate the agreement we will take action.
But have they not already violated the agreement? Have they not crossed the border many times? The fighters from the Taliban?
Every border crossing is not a hostile border crossing. Please understand there are about 40,000 border crossings on a daily basis.
There are about 20,000 vehicles that go to and from Afghanistan on a daily basis. Every person crossing the border is not linked to terrorists. They are normal people, tribes, divided families. Let's not forget there are over two million Afghans living in Pakistan.
The US says the government is giving them safe haven. Is that a fair way of looking at it?
We are not giving them a safe haven. That's not the idea. We are trying to bifurcate between that population living in the tribal area that wants a peaceful life, and that segment of the population that have taken up arms for a purpose, and are extremists.
So what we are saying is don't lump everyone together. Everybody living in the tribal areas is not a terrorist and you have got to distinguish between the terrorists and the ordinary citizens that want a better future.
There has been a close relationship between President Pervez Musharraf and the US since 9/11. Now it seems to be a little more complicated. Last month, 11 Pakistani soldiers were killed in a US air raid in Afghanistan and more recently there was an incident in which eight Pakistani soldiers where killed. When does it become too much?
They [the US] are of the view that it was not by design. That is why we have set up a joint investigation team that's investigating into the matter in order to find out what exactly happened.
Is this a breach of your sovereignty? Have you told your counterpart Condoleezza Rice that you are unhappy with what is going on? That you need an apology?
We are certainly unhappy with the intrusions. We do not want Pakistani soil and sovereignty to be violated. Yes. And we have categorically said that.
Is the US treating you as a respected partner?
The US needs us as much as we need the US. It's a common war, it's a common fight. We have a common enemy and we have a common approach in dealing with that. So in any relationship the element of respect has to be there.
How concerned are you that as the US election draws into its active phase that there may be what's called a "hot pursuit", that there may be some kind of military action taken by the US to go into Pakistan and go after al-Qaeda elements?
The pressure is going to be there and the rhetoric is going to be there. But if they want a long-term ally then they have to be sensitive to our opinion as well.
But the US also seems to be losing patience with your inability to take action. To rein in those militants, make sure they don't cross into Afghanistan and destabilise the situation there. The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mike Mullen, recently said that you are not doing enough.
I think they should also recognise the successes that we have made. They should also realise the people that we have apprehended. Serious high-value targets that we have reprehended.
We have got al-Qaeda on the run. To a great extent we have broken many networks in Pakistan and we have banned many organisations in Pakistan.
What they need to concentrate on, in my opinion, is Afghanistan.
Why Afghanistan?
The internal situation in Afghanistan is being overlooked and the impact it is having on the cross-border movement has to be considered.
I say that having met a lot of people in Paris. They were there discussing Afghanistan, pledging for Afghanistan. I was there the other day for the [UN] Security Council where there was a debate taking place on Afghanistan.
So the concerns of an internal problem, an internal crisis within Afghanistan should not be, cannot be overlooked.
In Afghanistan, that is precisely the point they make, that it is down to Pakistan and the kind of agreements it has reached with some of these tribal leaders as you call them, that allows them so easily to cross the border and disrupt the situation there.
Let's presume that's correct for the sake of discussion. This intrusion can affect the south. It cannot affect the north, the west, and the east. You have seen a 25 per cent increase in those areas that were peaceful earlier on. And that cannot be blamed on Pakistan.
It is very easy to pass the buck. It has to be ownership. What we are not shy of is, if there is a failing on our part we are willing to look at things and improve upon our strategy.
Afghanistan should acknowledge that there have been serious failings on their side and they need to improve an effort, they need to improve the Afghan government on their side.
What do you think is the reason behind this recent spike in tensions between the two of you?
Afghanistan is about to hold elections. You have to satisfy the local population and the government in Afghanistan will be accounted for. And they are looking, perhaps, for scapegoats.
Why not try to facilitate a dialogue between the Taliban and the Afghan government, if you have the contacts?
We have no contacts with them. We have a hands-off policy. There's been speculation for some years that Osama bin Laden may be in Pakistan. Your government has often denied this claim, but how can you be sure that he is not in your country [the US]?
If he is not in Pakistan, where would he be? He would be in Afghanistan?
The whole world wants to know where he is.
Can you say with certainty that he is not in Pakistan?
I cannot say with certainty, but I will say that if we have sufficient information, the government of Pakistan will take action.
So what does that say about the US inability to have that actionable intelligence, are they trying hard enough to find Osama bin Laden, or is he some kind of convenient tool perhaps for the so-called war on terrorism?
I cannot answer that.
It seems that the UN commission looking into Benazir Bhutto's killing will go ahead. How hopeful are you that this will actually make any difference, that the perpetrators of this crime will actually be brought to justice?
That's our desire and we do our utmost to give all possible support to the mission so they come to some sort of a conclusion and we can bring people to justice.
Do you actually think this will happen? You can take what happened in Lebanon in the wake of the assassination of the former prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri. Four years on, and three commissioners later, very little has been done. Why do you think a commission mandated by the secretary-general can make a difference?
We have learnt from that experience and the way we are designing our investigation reflects that.
Going to the UN, doesn't that undercut your national principles, your sovereignty, because in a way you are giving the message that your own judiciary is unable to look into this issue?
No, the point is that it is the decision of the people. It is a decision that has been expressed by a unanimous resolution of parliament.
Each and every political party, government and opposition have supported this resolution because the people of Pakistan want a body which is neutral, impartial, and has credibility for this investigation.
You share a long border with Iran, which tested missiles recently. How concerned are you with this? Are you concerned at all about Iran's nuclear programme?
The test that took place the other day has no implications for Pakistan. It's a test that's carried out time and again.
We want Iran to act responsibly. Iran has been saying that their right to peaceful use of nuclear technology should not be denied because they are signatories to the NPT, and we recognise that right. But we would dissuade Iran and would urge them to show concern to international concerns.
Do you think Iran is a threat to regional security?
No, we do not think that, but there are some who do and we want Iran to address their concerns.
Are you concerned that the US or Israel may strike at Iran's nuclear facilities?
I hope not because if they do it will destabilise the entire region and things can spin out of control.
What would be your reaction, would it affect your military co-operation with the US?
I hope we do not have to think that far.
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Wishful thinking does not help in Afghanistan
The Globe and Mail - Opinions From Tuesday's Globe and Mail July 14, 2008
General Walter Natynczyk, the Chief of the Defence Staff, has asked journalists to believe that violence in Kandahar has barely increased in the past few years, contradicting recent statistics showing that insurgent attacks may have as much as doubled from last year. Since he became the Chief of the Defence Staff, this is his first specific comment on the Taliban insurgency. It is not a good start.
While Gen. Natynczyk's statement may be true as applied to the first few days of July, it is evidently false when one takes a longer view. According to data collected by a respected security consultant in Afghanistan, there have been as many as 532 attacks as of July 6, 77 per cent more than the 300 incidents in the same period last year.
As the chief officer of Canada's military, Gen. Natynczyk does his soldiers and other Canadians a disservice when he understates the challenges the Canadian forces face in Kandahar. When pressed to acknowledge that the security situation has worsened, he instead claimed that Canada's control of the countryside has strengthened, that the insurgents are growing weaker and that residents of Kandahar have returned to “their normal pattern of life.” These claims are tenuous at best. Unfortunately, Gen. Natynczyk gives the impression that he prefers a rosy outlook to the uncomfortable truth and that he believes Canadians prefer it, too.
Gen. Natynczyk's predecessor, former chief of the defence staff General Rick Hillier, was respected for rarely obscuring the truth, even when Canadians did not want to hear it. His candour was most evident in his contradiction of the Speech from the Throne in November, when he said it would take more than twice as long as the government estimated for Afghanistan to be able to meet its own security needs. While Gen. Hillier occasionally overreached into the political realm, as in his call in February for MPs to pass a motion expressing support for Canadian troops, his blunt honesty won him trust.
Gen. Natynczyk was not obliged to speak about the increasing violence in Kandahar. Nor must he go as far out of his way as Rick Hillier to position himself as a straight-shooter. But when he chooses to offer assessments, they should be frank. He not only risks his reputation by appearing to distort the facts, but he could also contribute to an underestimation of the real risk to Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan, on the part of both the government and the public.
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Are Canadians getting the truth about Afghanistan?
Globe and Mail, Canada JEFFREY SIMPSON From Tuesday's Globe and Mail July 14, 2008
Prime Minister Stephen Harper was correct last week when he said about Afghanistan: “We have serious challenges there, and we simply must make progress on governance and security in the next 12 to 24 months. We have got to get the situation moving in the right direction.”
The implication was clear, and accurate: The “situation” is not moving in the “right direction.”
Robert Gates, the U.S. Defence Secretary, agreed. “We have clearly seen an increase in violence in Afghanistan,” he said.
With Mr. Harper and Mr. Gates essentially saying the same thing, why is Canada's new Chief of the Defence Staff, General Walter Natynczyk, insisting that increases in violence in Afghanistan have been “insignificant.”
It is one thing to do a Hillier-esque rah-rah to rally the troops and feed the goat of the “we love the military” media in Canada, it's another to deform reality. In March, the Manley report demanded “practical, verifiable criteria” for assessing security in Afghanistan. Nothing has apparently changed.
Canadians are still getting spin, but the spin is getting further removed from the reality being reported by every other source of information, including some Canadian media, U.S. military and diplomatic sources, European observers, the Senlis Council, writers such as Ahmed Rashid, informed academics who spend time in Afghanistan, and think tanks monitoring the Afghanistan situation.
The weekend Gen. Natynczyk offered his assessment from Afghanistan, nine Americans died in a highly co-ordinated Taliban attack on a base near the Pakistan border. That same weekend, newspaper reports suggested the United States was going to draw down forces from Iraq more rapidly than had been anticipated, so that it could deploy more to Afghanistan. The United States had previously committed an additional 3,500 troops. Reports now suggest the figure might be 10,000.
A series of factors are worsening the Afghanistan situation, no matter what the outgoing and incoming Canadian defence chiefs argue.
Within Pakistan, the Taliban and its al-Qaeda allies are well established, especially in the border areas. The new Pakistani government seems to lack the power or the will to do anything about them.
Islamic madrassas and other recruiting havens are providing a steady stream of terror recruits for action in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Money from the drug trade and jihadi supporters in such places as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States provide money to pay families who lose an offspring in the war against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Almost everyone with even some knowledge of Pakistan believes elements within the country's security forces support the jihadis. Last week's bomb explosion at the Indian embassy in Kabul illustrated again the old struggle between India and Pakistan for influence in Afghanistan.
The opium trade is flourishing. NATO seems helpless to stop it, thereby giving insurgents access to ready cash.
Drying up financial resources, sealing borders and isolating insurgents from the local population are three fundamental rules of counterinsurgency warfare. NATO hasn't got a grip on any of them. Unless it does get a grip, there is no chance of winning – however winning is defined – in Afghanistan.
Similarly, NATO has far too few soldiers for such a bleak and bewildering country. Kandahar, alone, is the size of New Brunswick. Canada is deploying there about 2,300 people, of whom 800 to 1,000 can actually fight. It was a telling comment on the state of the military that when it became apparent these numbers were too few, the cry went up not for more of our own forces but for troops from another country. That country turned out to be the United States.
Afghanistan is a country within which many elements can be fairly described as post-medieval. The code of conduct of the Pashtun, the tribal group of the South, is so foreign to Western thinking that every occupier who has encountered the code struggled to understand it.
So, too, with what passes for the governance of a country whose tribal rivalries, customs and mores go back to the mists of time. What we consider corruption is normal practice for tribal chieftains, who distribute some of the largesse to their followers and use the rest to secure their position and the security of their group against “others.”
Mr. Harper was right to say the situation needs to be turned around, but he did not suggest how. It would be instructive to know what he might have in mind.
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'Taliban want Ghazni as gateway to Kabul'
Written by www.quqnoos.com Monday, 14 July 2008
Militant attacks prove Taliban are planning to attack capital, official says
(PAN) The governor of the southern province of Ghazni has said Taliban fighters from the south and south-east are trying to use the province as the frontline in their bid to capture Kabul.
Dr Osman Osmani, the province’s third governor this year, said an increase in militant activity in his region was a sign that Taliban commanders wanted to make the province a gateway for their fighters to move into Kabul via.
Osmani said he had received reports that militants from the south and south-east had gathered in Ghazni to step up the insurgency.
Ghazni shares its border with seven other provinces, which are among some of the most dangerous in the country.
The Taliban have increased their attacks in Ghazni and have expanded their operations to the outskirts of the city, Osmani said.
The news comes the day after the Taliban executed two women accused of running a prostitution racket for NATO soldiers in Ghazni.
On Sunday, militants said the women were killed for aiding police, but a video tape released on Monday shows fighters claiming the two were executed for providing prostitutes to soldiers working for NATO's Provincial Reconstruction Team.
Security around the city has been tightened: a 100-strong special security force made up of Afghan soldiers and policemen is on stand-by if militants threaten to attack the city, the governor said.
Osmani said he was reforming local administration by ridding it of corruption in an attempt to reduce public dissatisfaction with the government.
"Three district chiefs have been replaced during my job here in the past three weeks," said Osmani.
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