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NATO allies pledge help to Canada in Afghanistan
Sat Jul 26, 8:54 AM ET
KABUL (Reuters) - NATO countries have agreed to send more troops to the volatile south of Afghanistan, Canada's foreign minister said on Saturday, and another 200 Canadian troops could also be deployed.
Obama thanks Sarkozy for Afghan troops
National Post Stephen Collinson Friday, July 25, 2008
PARIS-Barack Obama travelled to Paris Friday to tell President Nicolas Sarkozy that Americans have an "enormous fondness" for the French and to thank him for sending more troops to Afghanistan.
NATO: 4 civilians killed in Afghanistan
By NAHAL TOOSI Associated Press Sat Jul 26, 4:57 AM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - NATO forces on Saturday fired on a vehicle that wouldn't stop at a checkpoint in Afghanistan's volatile south, killing four civilians and wounding three others, the alliance said.
Afghanistan president accused of protecting drug smugglers
President Hamid Karzai is actively obstructing Afghanistan's anti-drugs campaign by protecting key smugglers, a former US official has claimed.
Pakistan draws a bead on Baitullah
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Online / July 26, 2008
KARACHI - He is reclusive like Taliban leader Mullah Omar and popular like al-Qaeda's Osama bin Laden, and he pledges his allegiance to both.
Power Rising, Taliban Besiege Pakistani Shiite
The New York Times - Home By JANE PERLEZ and PIR ZUBAIR SHAH July 26, 2008
PESHAWAR, Pakistan-It was once known as the Parrot's Beak, a strategic jut of Pakistan that the American-backed mujahedeen used to carry out raids on the Russians just over the border into Afghanistan. That was during the cold war.
Taliban factions may be using British forces to assassinate rival commanders
The Independent (UK) By Kim Sengupta Friday, 25 July 2008
The missile strike took place just after midnight, nine miles north of Musa Qala in Helmand. Abdul Rasaq and three of his senior lieutenants had been picked out in the middle of a field.
Where heroin rules, kingpins walk free
Corruption, poor policing handicap nation
By Kim Barker Chicago Tribune July 26, 2008
KABUL, Afghanistan — Mohammad Ibrahim was a typical defendant in Afghanistan's drug court—a poor Pashtun farmer, caught smuggling about 55 pounds of opium in a woman's bag to his house in the southern
EU appoints new representative for Afghanistan
[IANS] -- Brussels, July 25 : The European Council has appointed Italy's ambassador to Kabul Ettore Francesco Sequi as the new European Union (EU) special representative (EUSR) for Afghanistan.
NATO allies pledge help to Canada in Afghanistan
Sat Jul 26, 8:54 AM ET
KABUL (Reuters) - NATO countries have agreed to send more troops to the volatile south of Afghanistan, Canada's foreign minister said on Saturday, and another 200 Canadian troops could also be deployed.
Canada has some 2,500 soldiers in Afghanistan, most of them stationed in the southern province of Kandahar where they have suffered one of the worst casualty rates fighting a resilient Taliban insurgency.
"We've been talking with our NATO allies and in fact we do now have commitments to increase the number of troops particularly in the Kandahar region," Canadian Foreign Minister David Emerson told a news conference in Kabul.
"We're really more comforted that the troop support is being increased in an appropriate way," he said.
Canadian soldiers first came to Afghanistan in late 2001 as part of a U.S.-led Afghan mission to overthrow the hardline Taliban. In 2006, Canadian troops took over operations in Kandahar, the Taliban's former de-facto capital.
Faced with some of the fiercest fighting in Afghanistan, Canada has criticized other countries for refusing to send troops to the south, where the insurgency is strongest.
Asked if Canada was going to increase its own contingent in Afghanistan, Emerson said it could send some 200 soldiers.
"Canada does have 2,500 troops here in Afghanistan and that number could expand to 2,700 as more equipment arrives," he said.
"We are really talking about a significant increase in the contribution from other countries and that contribution has been forthcoming," he said.
Emerson, on his first trip to Afghanistan since taking office in May, said he had visited "his team" in Kandahar and Kabul to ensure they were well organized.
Asked if more troops were the only solution in Afghanistan, Emerson said there needed to be a more "complete reconciliation."
"But it is going to take some military capacity and military activity to get Afghanistan to the point where a more comprehensive, a more permanent solution can take effect," he said.
(Reporting by Jonathon Burch; Editing by Mary Gabriel)
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Obama thanks Sarkozy for Afghan troops
National Post Stephen Collinson Friday, July 25, 2008
PARIS-Barack Obama travelled to Paris Friday to tell President Nicolas Sarkozy that Americans have an "enormous fondness" for the French and to thank him for sending more troops to Afghanistan.
The Democratic White House hopeful effusively praised the rightwing French leader at a joint news conference at the Elysee Palace, despite perceptions that an affinity for France can damage US presidential candidates.
"He has been a great leader on this, and the American people greatly appreciate President Sarkozy's approach to the relationship," Obama said, on the penultimate day of a Europe and Middle East campaign tour.
"I think the average American has enormous fondness for the French people," said Obama, despite recent rows, especially over staunch French opposition to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Sarkozy returned the compliment, and joked about the fact that both he and Obama were the sons of immigrants to their respective countries.
He said that during the hour-long talk they held Friday they had found "a great convergence of views."
Obama's tour - he was set to leave late Friday for the last leg in London - is aimed at burnishing his foreign policy credentials ahead of November elections in which the 46-year-old Democrat will face the 71-year-old Republican John MCain.
He has been to Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan and Germany, where on Thursday he received a rock star welcome from 200,000 cheering fans for a speech calling for the world to tear down walls of division and hate.
He said in Paris he was "grateful for the French troop presence that already exists (in Afghanistan) and for President Sarkozy's willingness to send additional troops."
"I understand the difficult politics of this in France and I understand the difficult politics throughout Europe and that's why I think President Sarkozy's stand is so courageous," he said.
France recently committed 700 extra troops to the NATO force.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force has steadily grown to about 52,000 soldiers. They are drawn from 40 nations, mostly the United States which also heads a separate coalition of about 20,000 troops.
The United States led the invasion that ousted the extremist Taliban from government in late 2001.
On Thursday Obama met German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who had signalled clearly a day before that she would resist any pressure to send more troops to Afghanistan to join a NATO-led force battling the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
The US presidential campaign has riveted France, where many are eager for a change from the administration of George W. Bush and where polls mirror those across Europe to show Obama is the candidate most people want to win.
Le Monde newspaper's front-page headline stated Friday that "Europe is under the charm of Barack Obama."
The election a year ago of the pro-American Sarkozy greatly improved US-French relations.
Repairing relations between the United States and Europe - strained over the Iraq war - was a theme of Obama's Berlin speech, where he said that "the walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand."
"The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down," he said, echoing former US president Ronald Reagan's 1987 call to tear down the Berlin Wall.
But the Berlin speech was short on specifics, and Obama's foes will likely accuse him of empty rhetoric.
McCain, a Vietnam veteran and former prisoner of war who has long been an influential voice on foreign policy and defence, took a swipe at his rival on Thursday, visiting a German sausage restaurant in Ohio.
He said he would love to give a speech in Berlin, but only as president.
Obama is the favourite to win the election, with the latest poll from Fox News on Thursday showing that 51 percent of Americans believe he will triumph, with only 27 percent betting on McCain.
Obama was due to meet in London Saturday with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, opposition Conservative leader David Cameron and former premier Tony Blair, before flying back to the United States. Back to Top
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NATO: 4 civilians killed in Afghanistan
By NAHAL TOOSI Associated Press Sat Jul 26, 4:57 AM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - NATO forces on Saturday fired on a vehicle that wouldn't stop at a checkpoint in Afghanistan's volatile south, killing four civilians and wounding three others, the alliance said.
Civilian casualties has been a sore point between Afghanistan's government and international forces that operate here.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has implored NATO and U.S.-led coalition troops to avoid killing civilians, whose deaths undermine support for his already weak central government.
The latest deaths occurred in Helmand province in the south, the hub of the resurgent Taliban militant movement.
NATO said the vehicle was directed to stop but drove on. NATO forces then fired warning shots away from the vehicle but were "forced to fire at it when it refused to stop, fearing an insurgent attack," an alliance statement said.
NATO medical personnel tended to the wounded civilians, including taking them by helicopter to a hospital. The bodies of the dead were taken to their village by two civilians who were not hurt during the encounter.
NATO said it "deeply regrets this unnecessary incident caused by the reckless actions of the vehicle driver."
Also, the U.S.-led coalition said its troops had killed an insurgent while hunting for a militant.
The troops were searching compounds in Kapisa province northeast of Kabul on Friday when they encountered a militant who threatened them, a coalition statement said. It did not say if the militant killed was the one they sought.
Separately, police killed a district Taliban commander in northern Takhar province, on Friday, the Interior Ministry said. Mullah Osman was killed after militants attacked a police checkpoint near a coal mine, a ministry's statement said.
Afghanistan faces intensifying militancy nearly seven years after the U.S.-led invasion ousted the hard-line Islamic Taliban movement from power.
More than 2,700 people — most of them militants — have died in insurgency-related violence this year, according to an Associated Press tally of official figures. <br> Back to Top
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Afghanistan president accused of protecting drug smugglers
President Hamid Karzai is actively obstructing Afghanistan's anti-drugs campaign by protecting key smugglers, a former US official has claimed.
Telegraph.co.uk, United Kingdom By David Blair, Diplomatic Editor 25 Jul 2008
Thomas Schweich, who served as the State Department's most senior anti-drugs in official in Afghanistan until last month, said that Mr Karzai's overriding concern was to hold power. This had led him to protect 20 government officials, all linked to drug trafficking.
"The attorney general, who was just fired, told me he had a list of 20 corrupt officials who he was not allowed to prosecute," said Mr Schweich. "He [Mr Karzai] perceives that there are certain people he cannot crack down on and that it is better to tolerate a certain level of corruption than to take an aggressive stand and lose power."
Afghanistan is the world's largest heroin producer by far. This year's poppy crop covers an area of 200,000 hectares, according to Mr Schweich, making it the "biggest narco-crop in history".
He told the BBC that Mr Karzai was manipulating his Western allies and "playing us like a fiddle". Mr Schweich said: "The US would spend billions of dollars on infrastructure development; the US and its allies would fight the Taliban; Karzai's friends could get richer off the drug trade; he could blame the West for his problems; and in 2009 he would be elected to a new term."
Mr Karzai has repeatedly denied that his allies are linked to the drugs trade. He says that Afghanistan under his leadership has taken stronger steps against the traffickers than ever before.
Taliban insurgents fighting Nato troops in southern and eastern Afghanistan are believed to fund their campaign from the proceeds of the drugs trade. Relations between Mr Karzai, who faces re-election next year, and his Western allies have grown increasingly strained. Back to Top
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Pakistan draws a bead on Baitullah
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Online / July 26, 2008
KARACHI - He is reclusive like Taliban leader Mullah Omar and popular like al-Qaeda's Osama bin Laden, and he pledges his allegiance to both.
This is Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, whom the Pakistani security agencies have tried their best to engage, but he remains defiant, so much so that he is even suspected of being an agent for India's Research and Analysis intelligence agency.
Baitullah, who operates in the South Waziristan tribal area on the border with Afghanistan, has frequently fallen out with the Afghan Taliban for directing his jihadis against the Pakistani security forces rather than sending them to Afghanistan.
Initially, this pleased American and European intelligence agencies as he turned the tide from the Afghan battlefield to Pakistan. But now Baitullah is viewed with extreme suspicion as he has proved to be a man who always achieves what he sets out to do, and jihadis from around the world are flooding into his camps to be trained for global jihad. This in turn has allayed the fears of the Afghan Taliban, who realize they will be ensured a smooth supply of fighters to Afghanistan.
For these reasons, Baitullah is now a marked man.
Over the past few months, Pakistani security agencies and coalition leaders from Afghanistan have shared intelligence in an attempt to track down Baitullah and pinpoint where he gets his resources, but he remains elusive.
All the same, this has not diminished his effectiveness.
Last week, for instance, security forces were sent to the Hangu district of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) after the government announced it was reneging on peace deals and launching an all-out offensive against militants in NWFP.
Mehsud called a meeting in South Waziristan of all powerful commanders from the Pakistani tribal agencies and announced that the minute any attack was mounted anywhere against militants, offensives would be launched against the Pakistani security forces in the tribal areas as well as on the federal capital, Islamabad, and on the leadership and allies of the leading party in the ruling coalition, the Pakistan People's Party.
Further, President Pervez Musharraf and his associates and anyone connected with the storming in Islamabad last year of the radical Lal Masjid (Red Mosque), which was pro-Taliban, would also be targeted.
Subsequently, the Pakistani security agencies advised the government to immediately withdraw the forces. The reasoning was that Pakistan could withstand pressure from the United States to act against militants, but it could not win a showdown with Baitullah. A high-level meeting presided over by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani agreed.
The problem now is to hunt down Baitullah, who is also wanted in connection with the assassination last year of former premier Benazir Bhutto and other attacks.
Using Baitullah's differences with some regional commanders - Baitullah comes from the Mehsud, one of the four sub-tribes of the Waziri - Pakistan tried to erect a web of opposition around him, but none survived. The Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) also tried to sow seeds of enmity against Baitullah, without success.
Haji Omar, once a powerful chief of the Taliban in South Waziristan and also a Wazir, tried to challenge Baitullah's command, but he now lives in exile in North Waziristan, without forces or resources.
Haji Nazeer, another Wazir, who runs the biggest Pakistani Taliban fighting network in Afghanistan, also tried to confront Baitullah, at the behest of the security forces, but he failed. Last month, Baitullah drove out all tribes related to Haji Nazeer from South Waziristan.
Now that Baitullah is unchallenged in South Waziristan, he aims to broaden his network. He has raised his presence in neighboring North Waziristan and the biggest network of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Haqqani faction, has no choice but to side with Baitullah.
The Swat Valley's Mullah Fazlullah has also announced Baitullah as his chief mentor, and after wiping out the ISI-backed Shah group from Mohmand Agency, Baitullah's men are calling the shots in Orakzai Agency, Mohamand Agency and Darra Adam Khail in NWFP.
With each consolidation of Baitullah's power, Islamabad, along with its Western allies, becomes all the more convinced that he has to be eliminated, otherwise there can never be any sustained military operations against militants in the tribal areas. His demise would also lead to the disintegration of the Taliban's and al-Qaeda's networks in the tribal areas, leaving only weakened stand-alone outfits.
Baitullah is well aware that he is now public enemy number one. A senior Pakistani affiliate of al-Qaeda, now close to Baitullah, told Asia Times Online, "It is not Baitullah Mehsud's style to hide when people sniff around him. He will open the floodgates of offensives and if there is a conspiracy between Islamabad and the political and military leadership, they will taste Baitullah's response."
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. Back to Top
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Power Rising, Taliban Besiege Pakistani Shiites
The New York Times - Home By JANE PERLEZ and PIR ZUBAIR SHAH July 26, 2008
PESHAWAR, Pakistan-It was once known as the Parrot's Beak, a strategic jut of Pakistan that the American-backed mujahedeen used to carry out raids on the Russians just over the border into Afghanistan. That was during the cold war.
Now the area, around the town of Parachinar, is near the center of the new kind of struggle. The Taliban have inflamed and exploited a long-running sectarian conflict that has left the town under siege.
The Taliban, which have solidified control across Pakistan's tribal zone and are seeking new staging grounds to attack American soldiers in Afghanistan, have sided with fellow Sunni Muslims against an enclave of Shiites settled in Parachinar for centuries. The population of about 55,000 is short of food. The fruit crop is rotting, residents say, and the cost of a 66-pound bag of flour has skyrocketed to $100.
And, in a mini-conflict that yet again demonstrates the growing influence of the Taliban and the Pakistan government's lack of control over this highly sensitive border area, young and old, wounded and able-bodied, have become refugees in their own land.
Thousands of displaced Shiites from Parachinar are scattered among relatives in Peshawar, capital of North-West Frontier Province, which abuts the tribal areas, and in hotels and shelters where images of Iranian religious leaders decorate the halls.
Last month, a Pakistani government relief convoy loaded with food and medicines that had been sent to break the siege was attacked by the Taliban at the village of Pir Qayyum. Many of the 22 vehicles were burned and 12 drivers were killed by the Taliban, according to government officials here and Shiites.
And little seems to be hindering the Taliban since the army, six months ago, agreed to a peace deal with the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, and has remained in its barracks.
Groups of Taliban affiliated with Mr. Mehsud, who according to the Bush administration is supported by Al Qaeda, now control wide swaths of the tribal areas, from Waziristan in the south to Bajur in the north.
From some parts of the tribal areas, like Waziristan and Mohmand, the Taliban have stepped up their operations into Afghanistan against NATO and American soldiers, cross-border attacks that have resulted in rising casualties for coalition forces over the last two months, the Bush administration said.
In Kurram, the general area where Parachinar is located, the Taliban are a relatively new phenomenon, exploiting the generations-old sectarian conflict as a way of keeping the government out of the strategically important piece of territory, the senior government official in Kurram, Azam Khan, who serves as the political agent and who organized the June convoy, said in an interview.
But Shiites say the Taliban are doing more than just keeping the government at bay. The Shiites say that because they are stopping the militants from entering Afghanistan, the Taliban are attacking them.
The situation has attracted the attention of the leading Shiite figure of Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who has encouraged all Shiites in Pakistan to do what they can to help their brethren in Parachinar, said Sheik Mohammed Shifah Alnajafi, the deputy representative of Ayatollah Sistani in Pakistan, and the vice principal of a Shiite seminary in the capital, Islamabad.
About 80 percent of Pakistan's overwhelmingly Muslim population is Sunni, and about 20 percent Shiite. In Kurram as a whole, the two sects are almost evenly divided, with Parachinar almost entirely Shiite, according to figures from the secretariat of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, the body that loosely oversees the tribal region.
The origins of the siege reach back to April 2007, when sectarian violence between Shiites and Sunnis flared over provocative remarks made by a Sunni of Wahhabi beliefs against historical Shiite figures, said Muhammad Amin Shaheedi, the director of the Islamic Research Council in Islamabad, and a leader of the Shiite community in Pakistan.
But unlike previous bouts of sectarian violence that were settled by mediation after a few days, the tensions mounted, exacerbated by the Taliban, who sided with some of the Sunni, he said.
Then, last Nov. 16, the tensions exploded in a day of extraordinary violence in Parachinar and surrounding villages, including mortar fire between Sunni mosques and Shiite mosques, said M. B. Bangash, a Shiite businessman from Parachinar who has taken refuge in Peshawar.
In contrast to other parts of the tribal areas, the Pakistani Army has had a garrison in Parachinar for decades, but it failed to stop the violence, he said. “The government is indifferent,” Mr. Bangash said.
Some of the moderate Sunni families in Parachinar, who had often helped Shiites in conflicts, were attacked in the November fighting by extremist Shiites and were forced to flee, according to Mr. Khan, a well-regarded political agent who was appointed last month to the area in an effort by the government to reduce tensions. This left the general Shiite population feeling more vulnerable to the Taliban, he said.
But the ambush of the convoy last month proved the power of the Taliban, the displaced Shiites in Peshawar said.
A driver of one of the trucks who survived, Asif Hussain, described being captured at Pir Qayyum, taken to a Taliban training camp in the village of Shasho, interrogated and then released after convincing his captors that he was not Shiite, but Sunni.
“At the camp, the Taliban killed eight other drivers because they were Shia,” said Mr. Hussain, 33, in a telephone interview from Parachinar.
An official of the Pakistan Peoples Party from Parachinar, Mirza Jihadi, confirmed the existence of the Shasho camp, which, he said, is at a place where Afghan refugees used to live and is now controlled by loyalists of Mr. Mehsud, the head of the Pakistani Taliban.
The displaced in Peshawar told stories of growing hardship at home, and they complained bitterly of the failure of the government to help.
“I want to go home but the government does not provide any transportation,” said Mohib Ali, 45, at a hotel here, as he nursed a bandaged right arm that was wounded, he said, in fighting.
He had spent the previous day at the Peshawar airport hoping to board a military helicopter that he had been told would take civilians back to Parachinar. But instead, he said, it filled up with soldiers returning after leave, and a few favored others with good contacts.
The army garrison in the town had done little to help, and had failed to organize major food supplies, said Haji Gulab Hussain, a retired government official who leads a Shiite tribal council.
“The lower-ranking soldiers are ready for any action,” he said. “But the army is supporting the Taliban. There are no orders.” During the November violence, he said, “The army did nothing.”
Parachinar has prided itself on the best education in the tribal areas since the British colonial era, so the closing of schools since the violence began is a special blow, some of the displaced said. Teachers were too afraid to travel, they said.
The one hospital in Parachinar was left with only a few nurses. Basic medicines, including anesthesia equipment and oxygen, were depleted, according to a medic reached by telephone.
Killings have demoralized the population. In the village of Bilyamin, 22 miles south of Parachinar, two students walking to their matriculation exams were shot dead by the Taliban, Mr. Bangash said.
Some solace was coming from Afghanistan, the refugees said. A schoolboy, Ashfaq Hussain, 12, arrived in Peshawar on Tuesday after a two-day journey by car through Afghanistan to enroll at Islamia Collegiate School, a prestigious school here.
“We can go through Afghanistan without a visa, it's a help,” said his father, Sabir Hussain.
But his son's travel to Peshawar by car via Afghanistan cost the equivalent of $50 over two days, instead of the usual $3 by bus in about five hours, he said.
Much of the vegetable crop of potatoes and tomatoes that is normally sold to markets in the heart of Pakistan was now being sent to Kabul, Mr. Bangash said. More perishable fruits were wasted.
After the disaster of the June convoy, Mr. Khan, the political agent, said he had a new plan to try to persuade moderate tribesmen, both Sunni and Shiite, who were now weary of the violence, to allow the opening of the 45-mile road that runs from the town of Thal along a deep, wide valley up to Parachinar.
“It's been an intense year of warfare,” he said. “Both sides are fed up.”
In Islamabad, Mr. Jihadi said the Interior Ministry had promised on Wednesday to resume flights by the government airline, Pakistan International Airways, to the airstrip in Parachinar, which had been abandoned long ago.
To try to quash the Taliban, the ministry would urge the local tribes to form small armies, known as lashkar, he said. The ministry was also offering local people financial rewards, he said, if they killed a Taliban leader.
But whether the army would take a role in the efforts to find a solution appeared to remain an open question. Back to Top
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Taliban factions may be using British forces to assassinate rival commanders
The Independent (UK) By Kim Sengupta Friday, 25 July 2008
The missile strike took place just after midnight, nine miles north of Musa Qala in Helmand. Abdul Rasaq and three of his senior lieutenants had been picked out in the middle of a field. They were already dead as the Nato warplanes that had carried out the precision attack roared away.
Rasaq, also known as Mullah Sheikh, was the third insurgent leader killed in three weeks, while another had surrendered to authorities in Pakistan over the weekend. The past 18 months had also seen the deaths of three other commanders including Mullah Dadullah, who had led insurgent forces in Helmand.
The British and Americans have presented the assassinations as examples of how their policy of "decapitating" the enemy leadership is working. But according to security sources, there is also evidence that factions within the Taliban are using Western forces to eliminate rivals in a new version of the "Great Game" being played out in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The "hits" on the Taliban leadership have almost all been based on initial intelligence supplied from within the insurgency, although details of the movements of some senior insurgents have also been gleaned from intercepted telephone calls. Some of the information has come from the Afghan security service, NDS, and some from Pakistani officials, while the British have held secret talks with elements of the Taliban – despite official denials.
The tempo of targeted attacks on the Taliban leadership has dramatically increased in the past month. Eight days before the killing of Mullah Sheikh, another senior leader, Bishmullah Khan, was shot dead by commandos on the outskirts of Nowzad. Three weeks previously, Mullah Sadiqullah, a prolific bomb-maker, was killed by a Hellfire missile fired from an Apache helicopter gunship.
One senior Taliban figure connected to all three men was Mullah Rahim, described as the insurgent leader in Helmand. He is said to have been a mentor to Mullah Sheikh, picked Bismullah as his chief lieutenant and had delegated explosives to Mullah Sadiqullah. On Sunday, just hours after Mullah Sheikh had been killed, Mullah Rahim gave himself up to authorities in Pakistan. One senior Western official, who deals with both Nato and Afghan forces on security matters, said: "Not all of the intelligence we are getting is being given for altruistic reasons. The Taliban movement is pretty amorphous and we are aware that different groupings appear to be passing on information. There appears to be a power struggle going on in the insurgent leadership across the [Pakistan] border and we are also aware that certain official bodies have their own agendas and that is reflected in what they tell us."
Another defence source said: "Whatever the ulterior motive... the fact is that we are getting rid of some pretty bad people."
In May last year Mullah Dadullah, the Taliban commander in Afghanistan, was shot dead by a SBS team between Sangin and Nahri Sarraj districts of Helmand. Senior aides of the Kandahar governor Assadullah Khalid, who ordered the body of the one-legged 40-year-old to be displayed, said that information on his movements had come from within the Taliban.
One officer with knowledge of the operation said there was suspicion that false information had been given after British troops failed to find Dadullah's body following the firefight. But his remains were discovered along with a group of Taliban survivors who were trying to carry it away.
Five months ago Mullah Dadullah's brother, Mansoor Dadullah, who is said to have held secret talks with the West about the possibility of changing sides, was critically wounded and captured by Pakistani security forces.
He had inherited the command of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan from his brother, but he is said to have held subsequent meetings with Western diplomats, acting on behalf of the British, to defect with 2,000 of his men. It was these talks, which the government of Hamid Karzai insisted were unauthorised, that led to the expulsion of Michael Semple, the acting head of the European Union mission to Afghanistan (who has worked as a British diplomat in Pakistan), and Mervyn Patterson, a senior UN official.
Just before the diplomats were thrown out, a Taliban spokesman said that Dadullah had been dismissed from his command for "disobeying orders" and activities "against the Taliban's rules" at the orders of the movement's spiritual leader, Mullah Omar.
Elements of the Pakistani security forces are known to have close ties with the Taliban and Western diplomatic sources say that Dadullah may have been eliminated because he had become a liability for the Islamist group and also as a warning to other leaders who may contemplate negotiating with the West. It also showed, said the officials, just how ruthless both sides can be in the new "Great Game". Back to Top
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Where heroin rules, kingpins walk free
Corruption, poor policing handicap nation
By Kim Barker Chicago Tribune July 26, 2008
KABUL, Afghanistan — Mohammad Ibrahim was a typical defendant in Afghanistan's drug court—a poor Pashtun farmer, caught smuggling about 55 pounds of opium in a woman's bag to his house in the southern militant hot spot of Kandahar.
He said he didn't know who paid for the poppies to be grown on his field, nor who moved them out of Afghanistan. He didn't know Dari, the Afghan language spoken in the court. There were no witnesses, no evidence.
"Ibrahim, don't you think that trafficking in drugs is a crime?" Judge Uzra Hassenzoi asked through a translator.
"Everyone is growing it in my area, and everyone else is selling it for them," said Ibrahim, standing in pinstriped prison pajamas before the three judges. "If everyone is doing it, then everyone is a smuggler."
Last year, Afghan farmers cultivated poppies on a record 477,000 acres, an area more than three times the size of Chicago and enough to supply 93 percent of the world's opium, which is used to make heroin. But the farmers are not as worrying to many here as the apparent lack of enforcement against major drug traffickers, who allegedly include government officials and even Taliban-led militants.
Having taken off after the U.S.-led ousting of the Taliban in 2002, the drug trade is now estimated at more than $4 billion a year in Afghanistan. But though some officials have publicly insisted they have lists of major drug lords tied to the Afghan government, no major official has been prosecuted or even arrested for links to the drug trade. Not a single drug kingpin has been put away.
Some are scared
Corruption and rudimentary investigative techniques have hampered the war against drugs here. So most defendants are like Ibrahim—drivers or farmers or people paid $6 to work for 24 hours in a lab.
Judges in drug court say they are frustrated by the constant parade of small-time smugglers in their one courtroom and worried about their safety. The judges say they receive calls from members of parliament, even from officials in the presidential palace, interfering with cases, demanding the release of certain defendants. Some offer bribes.
Afghan authorities who once vowed to hand out lists of officials who smuggled drugs no longer talk about those officials. Some are scared.
"This is no longer an illegal business in Afghanistan," said one Afghan official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was afraid. "This is business."
In March, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime urged the Afghan government to crack down on major smugglers—some linked to government officials—and said drug lords and corrupt government officials operated with impunity.
Last week, Thomas Schweich, who until June was one of the State Department's top counternarcotics officials, also accused Afghan President Hamid Karzai of protecting drug lords for political reasons. In an article in Sunday's New York Times magazine, published online late Wednesday, Schweich wrote that "narco-corruption went to the top of the Afghan government."
On Thursday, Karzai dismissed the allegations and said his government was serious about fighting drugs, adding it would take more than a year or two. In Washington, the U.S. State Department reiterated its support for him.
"There is no doubt that we have smugglers in Afghanistan, but the big smugglers are international smugglers outside Afghanistan," Karzai told reporters. "We have put hundreds of people in prisons in Afghanistan for drug smuggling. We are doing our best."
In the past two years, about 1,550 smugglers have been convicted by the central drug court, designed to funnel most drug cases nationwide into Kabul and cut down on potential judicial subversion. Only 463 of those convictions are final, having been approved by the Supreme Court.
Of those, 10 smugglers worked for the government, mostly as police, according to the prosecutor's office. The highest-ranked smuggler was a district police commander in northern Takhar province. None of these officials carried the amount of drugs that would indicate they were major traffickers.
"It's very difficult to say which smugglers are in the government," Hassenzoi said. "I don't know names. But I believe there are people in the government, and that is why we can't stop the smuggling. These people in the government are driving cars without license plates and with dark windows. Nobody knows who they are. Nobody can stop them."
Even major busts of non-government smugglers don't necessarily lead anywhere. In the nation's biggest bust, a powerful trafficker known as "White Ismail"—for the color of heroin—was caught by police with 345 pounds of heroin in his house, which would have a U.S. street value of roughly $15 million.
An appeals court sentenced White Ismail to 19 years. But no one could find him, and he most likely fled the country.
'Painful levels' of corruption
Here, there are no Afghan wiretaps, no surveillance tapes and no controlled buys, although the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has helped with certain cases and will soon increase its efforts in Afghanistan.
Some Western officials say the war on drugs in Afghanistan, while in its infancy, is getting better. The number of poppy-free provinces is expected to increase this year, and the number of acres cultivated is expected to decrease. At least 62 drug labs have been raided this year, compared with 34 in all of 2007.
"There is a more concerted effort to find, arrest and prosecute drug traffickers," said one Western official, adding that the effort depends on getting better evidence. But he also acknowledged that there are now "painful levels of official corruption" and the future could be a race between clean officials and corrupt ones.
That race is one of the biggest challenges the country faces, many Afghans say. If Afghans believe their leaders are corrupt and involved with the drug trade, they will be less likely to support the government, which has received extensive aid and support from the U.S. and other Western nations because of Afghanistan's central role in fighting Islamic radicals in the region.
A poster hanging near the judges' chambers at drug court proclaims: "Corruption. Your no counts." Officials privately accuse each other of involvement in the drug trade, and it's impossible to tell who is telling the truth.
Mohammad Alim Hanif, a respected judge and the head of the drug appeals court, grabbed a case from his desk and waved the list of evidence collected by police from a drug lab, everything from seven big gas cylinders to three Iranian blankets.
"But nothing about heroin," Hanif said. "Do you think a lab can be raided without heroin?"
After he called police, they admitted finding 13 pounds of heroin—a small amount here. Hanif groaned.
"Why did they forget to mention the heroin? It's simple. They got money. They got more heroin. Or they wanted to keep it. There's nothing else." Back to Top
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German Minister Says Afghan Security Worse, Promises Support
Deutsche Welle July 26, 2008
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Saturday, July 26, that violence in Afghanistan had worsened this year and promised more German support for the building and reform of the Afghan police and military.
Aggression in the south of the country by Taliban insurgents has increased, Steinmeier said at a logistics school for the Afghan army, built by Germany in Kabul. The training of soldiers and police in Afghanistan must therefore be strengthened, he said.
"The international community and Germany are standing steadfastly on your side," said the German minister, who met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai the previous night.
In addition to the logistics aid, Steinmeier promised 6 million euros ($9.4 million) for 2008 to help prepare for the Afghan presidential elections, saying the elections were important for the long-term stability of the country.
Karzai thanked Steinmeier for continued German support, saying "Germany was a good friend of Afghanistan."
Steinmeier also expressed concern about Pakistan and the impact of that country's domestic situation on Afghanistan.
'Fighting season'
Mark Laity, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) spokesman in Afghanistan, confirmed Steinmeier's impression that security was worse.
"We are currently in the middle of the fighting season," he said, pointing out that between 40 to 50 violent incidents of varying intensity were being registered in Afghanistan daily. These ranged
from single shots at NATO-led forces convoys to attacks with heavy explosives. Some 90 percent of these incidents happen in the south and east of the country.
By comparison, in the relatively calm north, where German troops are stationed, between one and two incidents are recorded each week. "Seventy percent of all incidents occur in 10 percent of the Afghan districts," said Laity.
Laity also criticized Pakistan, saying that insurgents come into Afghanistan through a nearly "open" border from Pakistan.
Some 200 Afghan soldiers are currently being trained at the logistics center in Kabul. The courses include vehicle and supply maintenance and driving lessons.
Stepping up presence
With 3,500 troops in the Afghanistan, Germany is the third-largest contributor to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) there. Berlin plans to increase the number to 4,500 this autumn.
Steinmeier, who had arrived earlier in the day on a surprise visit expected to last several days, met with the head of the European police mission in Afghanistan (EUPOL), German Brigadier-General Juergen Scholz, late Friday.
The EU wants to double the number of EUPOL instructors and advisors from 200 to 400. This would further strengthen EUPOL's influence, Scholz said. In all, the mission is on the right path, he said, pointing out that EUPOL was the only European organization active in the entire country.
Scholz however added that the Afghan police still had a long way to go before it would be able to carry out its duties independently. Its 75,000 to 85,000 officers suffer from a negative image with the general population. And a street policeman earns an estimated $100 a month, he said.
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EU appoints new representative for Afghanistan
[IANS] -- Brussels, July 25 : The European Council has appointed Italy's ambassador to Kabul Ettore Francesco Sequi as the new European Union (EU) special representative (EUSR) for Afghanistan.
Sequi is to succeed Francesc Vendrell, who acted as the EUSR since June 2002. The EU has had a special representative for Afghanistan since December 2001.
Sequi's mandate, which starts Sep 1, includes establishing close contact with the Afghan government, international and regional organisations, as well as local representatives of the UN.
He would also keep close contact with neighbouring countries.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana welcomed his appointment Thursday here, saying, "Sequi's role will be to take forward the implementation of the EU policy in Afghanistan."
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