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Pakistan's talks see more militancy in Afghanistan: NATO force
KABUL (AFP) - Pakistan's talks with extremists have resulted in a 40 percent rise in rebel activity in Afghanistan, the NATO force said Wednesday, as authorities reported a British soldier had been killed.
More foreign fighters join Taliban in Afghanistan
By Jon Hemming July 30, 2008
KABUL (Reuters) - More foreign fighters are joining the ranks of Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan as militants increasingly cross the border from Pakistan to attack Afghan and Western troops
30 killed as fighting escalates in Pakistan valley
By RIAZ KHAN, Associated Press Writer
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Pakistani troops battled Islamic militants in a valley near the Afghan border Wednesday, killing 25 insurgents and losing five soldiers as escalating combat threatened the new government's
CIA official confronts Pakistan over ties to border militants
By Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt The International Herald Tribune Wednesday, July 30, 2008
WASHINGTON: A top Central Intelligence Agency official traveled secretly to Islamabad this month to confront Pakistan's most senior officials with new information about ties between the country's
Afghans say time for Pakistani action on militants
Tue Jul 29, 9:14 PM ET
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan said on Tuesday that after the Pakistani prime minister made a commitment to U.S. President George W. Bush to secure the border with Afghanistan, it was now time for Pakistan to take action.
FACTBOX-Security developments in Afghanistan, July 30
July 30 (Reuters) - Following are security developments in Afghanistan reported until 1030 GMT on Wednesday:
Pakistan army 'kills militants'
Wednesday, 30 July 2008 BBC News
Five Pakistani troops and 25 militants have died in fighting in the north-western Swat region, the military says.
Good cop, bad cop: Pakistan reels
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Online / July 30, 2008
KARACHI - Ever since Pakistan signed onto the United States' "war on terror" in 2001, Washington has adopted a carrot-and-stick approach in an attempt to prod its often reluctant partner.
Obama and the Taliban
By Mark LeVine Asia Times Online / July 30, 2008
Among its many goals, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's historic July 24 speech in Berlin sought to demonstrate the senator's command of the world stage, particularly with regard to creating
Afghan response 'underwhelming'
Wednesday, 30 July 2008 BBC News
Australia's defence minister has criticised some Nato member states for their "underwhelming" response to Afghanistan's ongoing problems.
Afghanistan: Attacks hit WFP school feeding programme in south
CHAGHCHARAN, 30 July 2008 (IRIN) - The UN World Food Programme's (WFP's) food-for-education programme has been adversely affected by recent attacks on aid convoys: Some 300,000 primary school
Drilling in Afghanistan
The New York Times - Editorials & Opinion By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN July 30, 2008
Sometimes in politics, particularly in campaigns, parties get wedded to slogans — so wedded that no one stops to think about what they’re saying, whether the reality has changed and what the implications would
Afghanistan: UN aims to have Bamiyan city mine-free by October
New York, 30 July (AKI) - The United Nations Mine Action Centre for Afghanistan (UNMACA) has announced plans to clear a total of 1,800,000 square metres of land in the historic city of Bamiyan
Kidnapped Afghan businessman found
Daily Times (Pakistan) / July 30, 2008
PESHAWAR: Khasadaar force Jamrud, Khyber Agency recovered an Afghan businessman kidnapped for US$2 million ransom after exchange of fire with his captors late on Monday, political authorities have said.
On Al Qaeda, Good News and Bad News
New York Times, United States By Mike Nizza July 29, 2008
In more than 200 pages, a RAND study released today takes issue with the Bush administration’s “war on terror,” from its focus on military force to the very title of the effort.
India, Afghanistan to jointly fight terrorism
New Delhi, July 29, IRNA
In the wake of recent terror attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul, the two countries today put up a united face and resolved to jointly fight the "enemies of peace".
Struggle ahead for Afghanistan
Boston Globe - Editors By Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould July 30, 2008
WHEN THE next president enters the Oval Office in January, he will face the toughest foreign policy decisions of any president since Franklin Roosevelt. But the toughest of all will involve the struggle for Afghanistan.
Taliban's war of words undermines Afghanistan's nation building
A successful propaganda campaign has weakened public support for the Afghan government and its international backers, according to a new report from the International Crisis Group.
Christian Science Monitor, MA By Aunohita Mojumdar Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor July 29, 2008 edition
Kabul, Afghanistan-Arbitrary detentions by United States forces
Afghanistan welcomes commitment to border security
Radio Australia - News 30/07/2008
Afghanistan's government says it's time for Pakistan to take action after its prime minister made a commitment to US President George W. Bush to secure the border with Afghanistan.
ECC set to approve new oil pricing formula:
Govt to impose duty on diesel export to Afghanistan
By Sajid Chaudhry and Zafar Bhutta Daily Times (Pakistan) / July 30, 2008
ISLAMABAD: The government is likely to impose a regulatory duty of 35 percent on the export of diesel for NATO forces in Afghanistan in the meeting of the Economic Co-ordination Committee (ECC)
Gunmen burn school in Kunduz
Written by www.quqnoos.com Tuesday, 29 July 2008
Elementary school burnt down in Chahar Dara in Kunduz
Unknown gunmen put fire to a school in Chahar Dara district of Kunduz province.
ISI sends 3000 terrorists to stop Afghan construction
Written by www.quqnoos.com Tuesday, 29 July 2008
Afghan NDS says Pakistani intelligence sent terrorists to stop Gardez-Khost highway
Dam water levels decrease by 65%
Written by www.quqnoos.com Tuesday, 29 July 2008
Lack of rainfall leads to sever reduction of water supply across Afghanistan
104 Afghans released from Pakistani jails
Written by www.quqnoos.com Tuesday, 29 July 2008
Pakistani authorities release Afghans from Baluchistan jails and hand over to Afghanistan
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Pakistan's talks see more militancy in Afghanistan: NATO force
KABUL (AFP) - Pakistan's talks with extremists have resulted in a 40 percent rise in rebel activity in Afghanistan, the NATO force said Wednesday, as authorities reported a British soldier had been killed.
Two Afghan soldiers and about a dozen Taliban have also died in new unrest, officials said, as part of a spike in insurgency-linked violence in recent weeks.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said warmer weather had played some part in the rise in conflict.
"There is also evidence that the activities increased by some 40 percent since ... tribal areas became unregulated following the negotiations between the Pakistan government and Baitullah Mehsud," Captain Mike Finney said.
Mehsud is the shadowy leader of Taliban-based militants in Pakistan's tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan. He has vowed to continue "jihad" in Afghanistan even while pursuing peace talks with Islamabad.
Finney told a press conference that it was up to the international community to put pressure on Islamabad to root out the cause of the unrest, a reference to Taliban and Al-Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan.
"In terms of fighting the cause, that is for the international community to put pressure on those who can do something about it," he said. "But the ISAF mandate is very clear, and that goes as far as the border."
More foreign militants were in Afghanistan, defence ministry spokesman Mohammad Zahir Azimi told the same media briefing. They were identified through documents found on them and due to the languages they spoke, he said.
Insurgents were also changing tactics from targeting security forces to focusing on infrastructure.
"In the past, the attacks were mostly on Afghan and foreign forces. Now we see they target vital and basic infrastructure," Azimi said.
The military had reports of militants planning to attack power plants and dams, and they were already striking highways and construction projects, he added.
Meanwhile, Britain's Ministry of Defence announced that a British soldier had died after being struck in an explosion on Tuesday in southern Helmand Province.
Three other British soldiers were killed in the past week in Helmand, a stronghold of insurgents with the Taliban, which was in government between 1996 and 2001 before being ousted in US-led invasion.
Helmand is also Afghanistan's main opium-producing centre, and officials say the drugs trade is financing some of the insurgency as well as feeding rampant government corruption.
The Afghan defence ministry said Wednesday that soldiers had killed 10 militants in Helmand province's Musa Qala area.
A US-led coalition forces' air strike on militant positions in the east had killed three more, the ministry said in a statement, while a "number" of militants died in an operation in the central province of Ghazni.
Two Afghan soldiers also died in combat in the past 24 hours, it said.
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More foreign fighters join Taliban in Afghanistan
By Jon Hemming July 30, 2008
KABUL (Reuters) - More foreign fighters are joining the ranks of Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan as militants increasingly cross the border from Pakistan to attack Afghan and Western troops, the Afghan Defense Ministry said on Wednesday.
Afghanistan has kept up a barrage of criticism against neighbor Pakistan in the last three months, accusing Pakistani agents of being behind a string of high-profile attacks and allowing militants sanctuary along the long and porous border.
"The presence of foreign fighters is increasing, and increasingly the operations of the terrorists are led by foreigners," Defense Ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zaher Azimi told a news conference.
Afghan, NATO and U.S.-led coalition forces are struggling to contain a sharp surge in violence as the traditional summer fighting season gets into full swing.
Already more U.S. troops were killed in Afghanistan in May and June than in Iraq, where there are some four times more American soldiers.
July, usually the peak month for fighting, could well be the worse month yet for violence since U.S.-led and Afghan forces toppled the Taliban in 2001. Security analysts predict the number of violent incidents could top 1,000 for the first time.
As well as more violence, Afghan and foreign troops are reporting a greater sophistication in Taliban tactics such as multiple roadside bombs and complex ambushes, factors indicating more training and possibly the presence of foreigners.
TALIBAN LEADERS TARGETED
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. joint chiefs of staff, said this month there were indications that al Qaeda was switching its focus from Iraq back to Afghanistan.
Violence has increased by 40 percent in the last two months compared to last year, NATO says, partly due to the improved weather, but also due to ceasefires between troops and militants in Pakistan's border tribal belt.
Afghanistan believes foreign funding for the Taliban is channeled through Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) agency, Azimi said.
Money for the insurgency comes through donors in Gulf countries and a tax on Afghanistan's booming drug trade, security analysts say.
Afghan security forces have launched a series of operations along the main highway that loops around the south of Afghanistan, killing around 100 militants in the last two weeks, Azimi said.
Meanwhile, Afghan and international troops have killed 20 senior militant leaders, including one from al Qaeda, in the last month and captured another seven, he said.
Western troops in Afghanistan have concentrated on targeting the Taliban leadership in an effort to degrade the insurgent fighting ability.
(Editing by David Fox)
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30 killed as fighting escalates in Pakistan valley
By RIAZ KHAN, Associated Press Writer
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Pakistani troops battled Islamic militants in a valley near the Afghan border Wednesday, killing 25 insurgents and losing five soldiers as escalating combat threatened the new government's policy of offering peace to pro-Taliban groups.
Authorities said security forces also chased off another band of extremists from a town elsewhere in the Swat Valley, a day after militants captured at least 25 police officers and paramilitary troops and clashes killed two soldiers and two militants.
The military, meanwhile, rejected new claims that Pakistan's main intelligence service has ties with Islamic hard-liners allied with the Taliban and al-Qaida.
Under U.S. pressure to crack down on militant sanctuaries along the border, Pakistan's 4-month-old government has sought to reach peace deals with fundamentalist Islamic groups in the northwestern tribal areas but increasing violence is raising questions about that approach.
Wednesday's clash in Swat began when militants attacked a security post about 12 miles from Mingora, the valley's main town, the army spokesman, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, said. He said troops repelled the attack, killing 25 militants and wounding many more, while five soldiers, including two officers, also died.
Another group of about 70 militants tried to seize the market area of the town of Matta, but fled when reinforcements reached the police station, Abbas said.
"The situation in Swat is that curfew has been imposed and security forces have been given orders to take strict action wherever militants or miscreants are involved in such actions," he said.
It was not possible to independently confirm the casualty toll because the army refused to let journalists travel to the area.
An aide to Muslim cleric Mullah Fazlullah, Swat's main militant leader, disputed the army's version. Muslim Khan told The Associated Press that only five pro-Taliban militants died in the battle and claimed the insurgents killed more than 30 soldiers.
"The morale of our Taliban is high and security forces are retreating in several areas," Khan said.
An around-the-clock curfew was imposed in the Swat Valley after Tuesday's fighting.
Civilians scurried to buy food Wednesday when the curfew was lifted for an hour during the afternoon. Some people headed to safer areas.
Qazi Shaukat, a 44-year-old shopkeeper in Mingora, said the escalation in violence had killed his business and made life hard for his family.
"We are thinking about leaving this place permanently. But what can I do? My children go to school and college here. How would I get them admitted to some other place?" he said.
Followers of Fazlullah, who rallies support using a pirate FM radio station, seized parts of the valley last year before an army offensive drove them back.
The cleric struck a peace deal with the provincial government in May that provided for the release of prisoners and concessions on militants' demands for the use of Islamic law, but the two sides have traded accusations that the other is violating the terms.
Army and government officials refused to comment Wednesday on whether the Swat agreement was dead, and Fazlullah's spokesman stopped short of disowning it.
"If the government doesn't announce a formal end to this deal, neither will we," Khan said.
Ikram Sehgal, a Pakistani defense analyst, said the flare-up bore out warnings that militants in Swat entered into the cease-fire deal only to buy time to regroup.
He predicted peace negotiations in all the tribal areas along the Afghan frontier would quickly break down, partly because of the growing links between militant groups.
While the government's approach has reduced the number of suicide attacks in Pakistan, NATO complains that the talks and truces have allowed militant groups to step up attacks in Afghanistan.
Pakistan also faces accusations — most vocally from the Afghan government — that its Inter-Services Intelligence agency continues to support Taliban militants even though the previous military government of President Pervez Musharraf allied with Washington after the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S.
A U.S. counterterrorism official in Washington said Wednesday that the Bush administration suspects rogue elements in the ISI are helping militants stage attacks in Afghanistan from strongholds in Pakistan's tribal areas.
The official, who insisted on anonymity because it was sensitive matter involving a critical U.S. ally, outlined the U.S. suspicions while confirming a New York Times report that a top CIA official confronted Pakistani officials with evidence that ISI agents have ties with a network led by Jalaluddin Haqqani, a key figure in the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan.
Abbas confirmed that Stephen R. Kappes, the CIA's deputy director, had accompanied Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in meetings with Pakistani generals this month.
Abbas said he did not know if the CIA official presented any information on alleged links between the ISI and militants. But he insisted such allegations are "unfounded and baseless."
"ISI has contributed the maximum in fighting the war on terror for the coalition, particularly for the United States," Abbas said.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack declined to comment specifically on the story. He said there was "every indication" Pakistan's government is committed to confronting extremists.
___
Associated Press writers Sadaqat Jan, Asif Shahzad and Stephen Graham in Islamabad and Pamela Hess in Washington contributed to this report.
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CIA official confronts Pakistan over ties to border militants
By Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt The International Herald Tribune Wednesday, July 30, 2008
WASHINGTON: A top Central Intelligence Agency official traveled secretly to Islamabad this month to confront Pakistan's most senior officials with new information about ties between the country's powerful spy service and militants operating in Pakistan's tribal areas, according to American military and intelligence officials.
The CIA emissary presented evidence showing that members of the spy service had deepened their ties with some militant groups who were responsible for a surge of violence in Afghanistan, possibly including the suicide bombing this month of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, the officials said.
The decision to confront Pakistan with what the officials described as a new CIA assessment of the spy service's activities seemed to be the bluntest American warning to Pakistan about the ties between the spy service and Islamic militants since shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The CIA assessment specifically points to links between members of the spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, and the militant network led by Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani, which American officials believe maintains close ties to senior figures of Al Qaeda in Pakistan's tribal areas.
The CIA has depended heavily on the ISI for information about militants in Pakistan, despite longstanding concerns about divided loyalties within the Pakistani spy service, which had close relations with the Taliban in Afghanistan before the Sept. 11 attacks.
That ISI officers have maintained important ties to anti-American militants has been the subject of previous news reports. But the CIA and the Bush administration have generally sought to avoid criticism of Pakistan, which they regard as a crucial ally in the fight against terrorism.
The visit to Pakistan by the CIA official, Stephen Kappes, the deputy director, was described by several American military and intelligence officials in interviews in recent days. Some of those who were interviewed made clear that they welcomed the decision by the CIA to take a harder line toward the ISI's dealings with militant groups.
Pakistan's prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, is currently in Washington meeting with Bush administration officials. A White House spokesman, Gordon Johndroe, would not say whether Bush had raised the issue during his meeting Monday with Gilani.
In an interview broadcast Tuesday on the American public television program "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," Gilani said he rejected as "not believable" any assertions of the ISI's links to the militants. "We would not allow that," he said.
The Haqqani network and other militants who operate in the tribal areas along the Afghan border are said by American intelligence officials to be responsible for increasingly deadly complex attacks inside Afghanistan, and to have helped Al Qaeda establish a haven in the tribal areas.
Lieutenant General Martin Dempsey, the acting commander of American forces in Southwest Asia, made an unannounced visit to the tribal areas on Monday, a further reflection of American concern.
The ISI has for decades maintained contacts with various militant groups in the tribal areas and elsewhere, both for gathering intelligence and as proxies to exert influence on neighboring India and Afghanistan.
It is unclear whether the CIA officials have concluded that contacts between the ISI and militant groups are blessed at the highest levels of Pakistan's spy service and military, or are carried out by rogue elements of Pakistan's security apparatus.
With Pakistan's new civilian government struggling to assert control over the country's spy service, there are concerns in Washington that the ISI might become even more powerful than when President Pervez Musharraf controlled the military and the government.
Last weekend, Pakistani military and intelligence officials thwarted an attempt by the government in Islamabad to put the ISI more directly under civilian control.
Kappes made his secret visit to Pakistan on July 12, joining Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for meetings with senior Pakistani civilian and military leaders.
"It was a very pointed message saying, 'Look, we know there's a connection, not just with Haqqani but also with other bad guys and ISI, and we think you could do more and we want you to do more about it'," one senior American official said.
The official was briefed on the meetings; like others who agreed to talk about it, he spoke on condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic delicacy of Kappes's message.
The meetings took place days after a suicide bomber attacked the Indian Embassy in Kabul, killing dozens. Afghanistan's government has publicly blamed the ISI for having a hand in the attack, an accusation American officials have not corroborated.
The decision to have Kappes deliver the message about the spy service was an unusual one, and could be a sign that the relationship between the CIA and ISI, which has long been marked by mutual suspicion as well as mutual dependence, may be deteriorating.
The trip is reminiscent of a secret visit that the top two American intelligence officials made to Pakistan in January. Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, and Michael Hayden, the CIA director - sought to press Musharraf to allow the CIA greater latitude to operate in the tribal territories.
It was the ISI, backed by millions of covert dollars from the CIA, that ran arms to guerrillas fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s. It is now American troops who are dying in Afghanistan, and intelligence officials believe those longstanding ties between Pakistani spies and militants might be part of an effort to destabilize Afghanistan.
Spokesmen for the White House and CIA declined to comment about the visit by Kappes or about the agency's assessment. A spokesman for Mullen, Captain John Kirby, declined to comment on the meetings, saying "the chairman desires to keep these meetings private and therefore it would be inappropriate to discuss any details."
Mullen and Kappes met in Islamabad with several high-ranking Pakistani officials. They included Gilani; Musharraf; General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the army chief of staff and former ISI director; and Lieutenant General Nadeem Taj, the current ISI director.
One American counterterrorism official said there was no evidence of the Pakistan government's direct support of Al Qaeda. He said, however, there were "genuine and longstanding concerns about Pakistan's ties to the Haqqani network, which of course has links to Al Qaeda."
American commanders in Afghanistan have in recent months sounded an increasingly shrill alarm about the threat posed by Haqqani's network.
Earlier this year, American military officials pressed the U.S. ambassador in Pakistan, Anne Patterson, to get Pakistani troops to strike Haqqani network targets in the tribal areas.
General Dan McNeill, the senior NATO commander in Afghanistan until last month, frequently discussed the ISI's contacts with militant groups with Kayani, Pakistan's military chief.
During his visit to the tribal areas on Monday, General Dempsey met with top Pakistani commanders in Miramshah, the capital of North Waziristan, where Pakistan's 11th Army Corps and Frontier Corps paramilitary force have a headquarters, to discuss security in the region, Pakistani officials said.
North Waziristan, the most lawless of the tribal areas, is a hub of Al Qaeda and other foreign fighters, and the base of operations for the Haqqani network.
On Tuesday, Pakistani security forces raided an abandoned seminary owned by Haqqani, Pakistani officials said. No arrests were made.
Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan.
New fighting in Swat valley
Fierce fighting erupted Wednesday between militants and Pakistani troops in a restive valley, reportedly killing dozens and undermining the new government's disputed strategy of offering peace deals to pro-Taliban insurgents, The Associated Press reported from Peshawar.
The army announced an indefinite, round-the-clock curfew throughout the northwestern valley of Swat, a day after militants there abducted at least 25 police and paramilitary troops.
The army said security forces, backed by helicopter gunships and armored vehicles, had been exchanging fire with militants since early Wednesday morning.
Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, the umbrella group for the country's main militant groups, threatened Wednesday to mount attacks across Pakistan because of the renewed military action in Swat.
"We will start operations in the entire country, in the entire province," the group's spokesman, Maulvi Umar, said. "We consider this an action against all Taliban."
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Afghans say time for Pakistani action on militants
Tue Jul 29, 9:14 PM ET
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan said on Tuesday that after the Pakistani prime minister made a commitment to U.S. President George W. Bush to secure the border with Afghanistan, it was now time for Pakistan to take action.
Relations between Afghanistan and its neighbor Pakistan have sharply deteriorated in recent months with Afghan officials repeatedly accusing Pakistani agents of secretly backing Taliban insurgents fighting Afghan and foreign troops on Afghan soil.
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani sought to reassure Bush of his government's commitment to securing the border with Afghanistan during a visit to Washington on Monday.
"We talked about the need for us to make sure that the Afghan border is secure as best as possible," Bush told reporters after the White House talks. "Pakistan has made a very strong commitment to that."
The Afghan government welcomed Bush's comments.
"We are very pleased to see the statement coming from President Bush on expressing the need for increased Pakistani activity in the border areas so they stop the cross-border infiltration," Afghan presidential spokesman Humayun Hamidzada told a news conference in the Afghan capital, Kabul.
The Afghan government has told the United States and NATO allies that "the source of the terrorism in Afghanistan goes back to the sanctuaries inside Pakistan territory," Hamidzada said.
But, he said, "unfortunately we have seen a lot of talk from the Pakistani side and less action, we are hoping that they will walk the talk, it is a time to implement."
Pakistan's new civilian government has turned to talks with militants in its tribal border region in order to defuse violence that has killed hundreds of Pakistanis in the last year.
GILANI DEFENDS NEGOTIATIONS, ISI
But Afghan and NATO leaders say the talks have eased pressure on the militants allowing them to send more insurgents into Afghanistan where attacks along the eastern border are up by some 40 percent this year.
Gilani told PBS television in Washington on Tuesday that critics "misunderstood" the nature of the negotiations.
"We have never made any agreements with the militants," he told The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer in an interview.
"We only have a political dialogue with non-militants who surrender the arms, who decommission themselves," Gilani said.
Afghan officials also accuse Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency of being behind a string of attacks including the suicide bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul this month which killed 58 people and an April assassination bid against President Hamid Karzai.
Pakistan denies the Afghan charges and says the Kabul government is trying to divert attention from its own failure to quell the Taliban insurgency.
Gilani defended the ISI as a "great institution" and said reports some members of the agency were sympathetic to the militants are "not believable."
"We would not allow that ... because the ISI is directly working under the Prime Minister," he told PBS.
(Additional reporting by Paul Eckert in Washington)
(Reporting by Hamid Shalizi, Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
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FACTBOX-Security developments in Afghanistan, July 30
July 30 (Reuters) - Following are security developments in Afghanistan reported until 1030 GMT on Wednesday:
HELMAND - A British soldier died of injuries sustained on Tuesday in a blast in the southern province of Helmand, Britain's defence ministry said on Wednesday.
LOGAR - Taliban insurgents killed three policemen and seized their vehicle in an ambush in Logar, south of Kabul, a provincial official said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the incident.
GHAZNI - A number of Taliban fighters were killed in two separate overnight clashes with Afghan forces in Ghazni, southwest of Kabul, a provincial official said. U.S.-led troops used air strikes in the engagements, but details on casualties were not immediately available, the interior ministry in Kabul said.
KABUL - A small bomb went off in a residential area in the western outskirts of Kabul on Wednesday, but caused no casualties or damage, the ministry said, adding the target was not clear.
PAKTIA - Three insurgents were killed in a counterattack by Afghan army troops in southeastern Paktia on Tuesday after the militants fired rockets on a military base, the defence ministry said on Wednesday, adding there were no casualties from the rocket attack.
HELMAND - Ten insurgents were killed during a cleaning up operation by Afghan troops in Helmand on Tuesday, the ministry said. It said two soldiers were killed and six more wounded in other encounters since Tuesday. (Compiled by Sayed Salahuddin; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
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Pakistan army 'kills militants'
Wednesday, 30 July 2008 BBC News
Five Pakistani troops and 25 militants have died in fighting in the north-western Swat region, the military says.
The militants confirm the clashes but say only five of their fighters died. Elsewhere, militants killed a woman who they said had spied for the US.
The Swat clashes come after three officials were killed and up to 25 security personnel kidnapped.
The violence has delivered a serious blow to a peace deal signed with the militants in Swat two months ago.
'Heavy losses'
Parts of the valley have been placed under curfew after the latest clashes, officials say.
A military spokesman told reporters in Swat that the security forces fought a gun battle with the pro-Taleban militants after they attacked a security patrol near Matta, a militant stronghold in the district.
"We have inflicted heavy losses on the militants. We have the video footage of the bodies of the militants killed in the fighting," a military spokesman in Swat told Reuters news agency.
"Five of our brave soldiers have been martyred."
A spokesman for the militants, Muslim Khan, however, told the BBC Urdu service that the troops had fired first, killing five militants. Three others were injured, he said.
He also said the militants had destroyed the remaining portion of a government-owned hotel they had partly destroyed last month.
The hotel was in the country's only ski resort, located in the Malam Jabba area of Swat which has been under Taleban control since late last year.
The spokesman also said that the militants had destroyed an abandoned army rest house and a girls' school in the Malam Jabba area.
Officials in Mingora, the headquarters of Swat district, said they had received some reports of destruction in the area, but could not confirm them immediately.
Correspondents say the security situation in Swat has been deteriorating despite a peace agreement between the government and pro-Taleban cleric Maulana Fazlullah.
Woman killed
In the tribal region of North Waziristan, pro-Taleban militants shot dead a woman whom they accused of spying for the United States, officials said.
The body of Gulzada Bibi was found with three bullet wounds in the chest about 35km (22 miles) west of Miranshah, the main town in the area.
"A note pinned to her body said she belonged to Afghanistan's Paktia province and was caught with a satellite phone she had been using to spy for the US," a local man told Reuters.
The militants have killed scores of people they said were spies, but targeting a woman in this way is rare.
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Good cop, bad cop: Pakistan reels
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Online / July 30, 2008
KARACHI - Ever since Pakistan signed onto the United States' "war on terror" in 2001, Washington has adopted a carrot-and-stick approach in an attempt to prod its often reluctant partner.
In the process, US-led forces are losing the war in Afghanistan, and Islamabad has lost its writ over parts of the country, especially in the tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan.
Yet the game continues. Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani is in Washington this week for talks with President George W Bush on, among other issues, reform of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, which is widely perceived in the US as having a mind of its own when it comes to tackling the Taliban and militancy.
At the same time, the acting commander of the US Central Command, Lieutenant General Martin E Dempsey, was sent to Pakistan's military headquarters in Rawalpindi to supervise the handover of four F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan Air Chief Marshal Tanvir Mahmood Ahmed as part of the US's military aid to Pakistan for its support in the "war on terror".
Yet even as this ceremony was taking place, Pakistan said an unmanned US Predator drone had fired four missiles at a suspected militant base in Pakistan's South Waziristan tribal area. Six people were said to have been killed in the attack on a madrassa (seminary), including a suspected al-Qaeda operative, Mursi al-Sayid Umar.
According to some reports, Umar, an Egyptian, was a chemical and biological weapons expert with a US State Department bounty of US$5 million on his head.
US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen warned recently during a visit to Pakistan that if Pakistan did not deliver in the battle against militants, American forces would take matters into their own hands.
The attack on the seminary was in Taliban commander Haji Nazeer's area. Haji Nazeer is a rival of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud and considered to be close to the Pakistani security forces. In January 2007, he led a massacre of Uzbek militants who had settled in South Waziristan.
Pakistan claims that it has played its part in arresting many al-Qaeda operatives, and points out that none have been seized in Afghanistan. Yet fingers are still pointed at Pakistan, most recently by Afghan President Hamid Karzai. This often acrimonious blame-game has led to reduced cooperation on the part of Pakistan.
The gainers are the Taliban and al-Qaeda, who are increasingly cementing their position in the tribal areas.
On Sunday, the chief of the militants in Swat Valley, Mullah Fazlullah, held a press conference at which he pronounced that except for Peshawar Valley, the entire North-West Frontier Province is in the hands of the Taliban.
On Monday, the Taliban proved the point when they wiped out checkpoints of the security forces in Bajaur Agency and occupied a television booster of state-run PTV. The government's response was a call for the Taliban not to "misbehave" - the state apparatus is unable to mobilize its forces.
Storm in a port
While these developments unfold in the tribal areas, tensions are rising in the southern port city of Karachi, the financial capital of the country said to have the biggest Pashtun population in the world.
After 9 pm, armed Pashtu-speaking youths take to the streets of middle-class Gulshan-i-Iqbal and search vehicles. In the Pashtun slums of Banaras, any person wearing modern trousers and shirts is beaten up. Political leaders in the city, including elected representatives of the Muttehida Quami Movement (MQM), call it "Talibanization".
MQM member parliament Dr Farooq Sattar said in an interview, "Elements who were forced out from the Waziristans and other tribal areas took refuge in Karachi, where they settled on empty land, mostly at the northern and southern entry routes of the city. The city is virtually under siege from these elements."
A senior official from the Ministry of Interior commented, "They are not 100% Taliban, but ethnic Pashtuns who have increased their activity in the city and they have received ammunition from North-West Frontier Province. A big clash is imminent in the coming days between the non-Pashtun residents of the city and ethnic Pashtuns. This is not Talibanization but an organized bid to take over the resources of the city."
The MQM, however, insists that the majority of the people in these Pashtun areas are directly connected with the Taliban. It is claimed they raise resources for the Taliban and plan to create chaos in the city to weaken the state writ.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief.
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Obama and the Taliban
By Mark LeVine Asia Times Online / July 30, 2008
Among its many goals, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's historic July 24 speech in Berlin sought to demonstrate the senator's command of the world stage, particularly with regard to creating a united front with Europe against global terrorism. Given the largely positive reception it has received, he likely achieved this goal.
But beneath the lofty rhetoric, Obama's strategy for prosecuting the "war on terror" is based on questionable, and potentially flawed premises - one shared with his Republican opponent Senator John McCain - which would likely impede the ability of either administration to achieve "victory" against Muslim extremism.
In his speech, Obama declared that "America can't [win in Afghanistan] alone ... The Afghan people need our troops and your troops; our support and your support to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda, to develop their economy, and to help them rebuild their nation. We have too much at stake to turn back now."
The linkage between al-Qaeda and the Taliban has been made so often since 2001 that the terms have become almost interchangeable, as if they represent the same overall movement or phenomenon. Indeed, the Taliban regime that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 through 2001 harbored and supported Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, enabling the attacks of September 11, 2001.
But their cooperation then (and now) does not mean they can be fought along similar lines. Obama's close association of the two groups, which mirrors George W Bush administration policy, simplifies a far more complex reality, against which a strategy based primarily on force and violence will likely fail.
While sharing a similar ideology to a certain extent, personnel, al-Qaeda and the Taliban are fundamentally distinct entities. Al-Qaeda is a deterritorialized, stateless organization that claims universal jurisdiction to wage violent, terroristic jihad against whomever its leaders declare to be Islam's external and internal enemies.
However hazy al-Qaeda's ideology (at least to the uninitiated), bin Laden's organization of al-Qaeda was based on the advanced and well-defined principles of corporate management he studied as a student of economics and public administration, and afterwards working in his family's transnational construction empire. Even smarter was bin Laden's grasp of al-Qaeda's value as a brand in the era of globalization, one which could - and ultimately did - survive and even thrive as a decentralized coalition of various militant groups who shared little besides the jihadi component at the core of the group's "brand identity".
For its part, the Taliban is essentially a territorially rooted and "largely ethno-national phenomenon," as the International Crisis Group describes it. It emerged as a coherent force in the early to mid-1990s, with the support of the Pakistani security services, as a loosely aligned movement of Pashtun Afghans, many of whom had studied at religious schools - madrassas - in or sponsored by Pakistan, or had fought against the Soviets during the latter's occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980s.
The Taliban's rapid rise to power owed not merely to the movement's radically conservative ideology. It also stemmed from its support among Afghanistan's politically and economically marginalized Pashtun majority, along with its much-publicized war against the large-scale corruption that had long plagued Afghanistan's political system and economy. Even many Afghans who opposed its harsh cultural and moral policies accepted that the Salifization of a previously more open and tolerant Afghan Islam was a price worth paying - at least temporarily - for the increased security and reduced corruption that initially accompanied the movement's rise to power.
But once in power the Taliban state, or "Islamic Emirate" declared in 1996, proved an abysmal failure. The movement's leaders and rank and file alike proved uninterested and unable to govern, and spent far more time enforcing moral prescriptions of questionable Islamic legitimacy and harboring extremists from around the Muslim world than building the national institutions and infrastructure Afghanistan so badly needed after a decade of brutal war.
When the US invaded and overthrew the Taliban regime in 2001, the "Taliban" again became a rather shadowy and hard to define - and therefore fight - entity. Judged by its continued strong presence across the Pashtun regions of Afghanistan and into Pakistan's neighboring (and Pashtun-dominated) North-West Frontier Province, the movement continues to appeal to the most marginalized sectors of the two societies.
In this context, it is troubling that Obama, and most of the US foreign policy establishment with him, chooses to describe the Taliban as if it were a clearly defined, purely terrorist organization with little support among Afghans, which can be targeted and fought with a fair degree of confidence by US, and Obama hopes, increasingly European forces.
Such a view, which has also been applied to Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon, is equally inaccurate in all three cases. This lack of understanding helps explain why all three movements have remained so difficult to defeat by far superior military forces.
If the United States and its allies are to continue the war against the Taliban well into the next decade (or at least administration), it would behoove Obama, and his Republican counterpart, to explain exactly who are the "Taliban" they plan to fight even more fiercely than before. Is there a hierarchical structure with a clear leadership and chain of command that can be identified and targeted? Is every religiously conservative Pashtun who is fighting against the US occupation a "Taliban" and therefore a legitimate military target"? What about the far larger number of Afghans who merely support them; are they "enemy combatants"? Are the 78 Afghan civilians killed during the month of July acceptable "collateral damage" in such a fight?
As important, does the US and its allies have the right according to the United Nations Charter and international law to capture, detain and even kill Afghans merely because they are suspected of subscribing to political or religious beliefs that resemble those of the Taliban, or even have fought with them?
These questions might seem pedantic given the commonly perceived urgency of fighting Islamic extremism. But if we consider that (according to the UN) as many as 90% of American detainees have never been involved in anything resembling terrorist activity, the importance of such questions becomes apparent. Moreover, the same slipshod logic that has governed American detention policies has also governed the use of torture, secret renditions and other policies that clearly violate internationally recognized standards of human rights and justice, and in so doing further frustrate the successful prosecution of the "war against terror".
It is equally hard to imagine how the military and civilian strategists planning the ongoing war can design appropriate policies for dealing with the root causes of the continued popularity of the Taliban without being able to answer these fundamental questions accurately.
The good news is that while we may not know exactly who is part of the Taliban, we do have a fairly good idea of what motivates the continuous stream of new recruits to its ranks. The British-based research group the Senlis Council released a report last month based on extensive research in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia, which argued that frustration with war and unemployment was underpinning the insurgency against Western forces [1].
Similarly, The International Crisis Group's just published report on Taliban propaganda [2], argues that the movement is a local product of the anti-Soviet jihad and the civil war that followed, and linked to transnational extremist groups for "mostly tactical rather than strategic reasons but divided over these links internally". It both lacks a coherent agenda, and survives by exploiting local tribal disputes.
In other words, addressing core economic development and political needs of the majority of Afghans, and their brethren across the Pakistani border, would go a long way towards "draining the swamp" that feeds the malaria of religious extremism. But such a political reclamation process will not succeed as long as America's leaders don't understand the basic, if harsh, rationality underlying the continued salience of the Taliban message: that the movement will remain rooted in Afghan society, and therefore impossible to defeat, unless and until the large-scale poverty, inequality, corruption and other endemic societal problems are addressed by the international community and the Afghan leadership.
In the meantime, among the most important shortcomings of the lack of a precise definition of whom the US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization are fighting in Afghanistan is how much more inefficient it has made the prosecution of the "war on terror". While thousands of people remain jailed for no reason and tens of thousands more have been killed, most of the admitted masterminds of the September 11 atrocities - a crime not just against the American people, but against humanity - remain at large.
It would be nice if Obama and McCain could enlighten Americans, Europeans and Afghans as to how they plan to rectify this problem without repeating the very mistakes that helped create and sustain the Taliban, and al-Qaeda, in the first place.
Notes
1. http://www.senliscouncil.net/modules/publications/iraq_angry_hearts
2. See Taliban Propaganda: Winning the War of Words
http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=5589&l=1
Mark LeVine, professor of history, UC Irvine, author of the newly released Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance, and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam (Random House).
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Afghan response 'underwhelming'
Wednesday, 30 July 2008 BBC News
Australia's defence minister has criticised some Nato member states for their "underwhelming" response to Afghanistan's ongoing problems.
In a televised speech, Joel Fitzgibbon expressed frustration at the refusal to commit extra troops by some nations - although he did not name the countries. Mr Fitzgibbon also indicated Australia might be willing to send advisers to Pakistan to help fight the Taleban.
Australia currently has about 1,000 troops in Afghanistan.
Mr Fitzgibbon said that if certain Nato countries were unwilling to contribute extra troops, they should at least contribute money to fund the expansion of the Afghan National Army.
And he suggested bolstering the fight against al-Qaeda, the Taleban and other militant groups such as Jemaah Islamiah by offering Pakistan support.
"We are committed to fight against those extremists and terrorists who are... making the world not safe," he said.
"We must arm the Pakistani army with the skills and means to conduct counter-insurgency campaigns and civil operations."
He said any deployment of military advisers would come only at the invitation of the Pakistan government.
The BBC's Nick Bryant, in Sydney, said Mr Fitzgibbon had delivered a very candid and frank assessment of the security situation in Afghanistan.
The offer of advisers to Pakistan is a major departure in Australian foreign policy, our correspondent adds.
But the comments reflect the growing concern, particularly in the US, UK and Australia, that the tribal areas of north-west Pakistan have become a sanctuary for the Taleban and a springboard for attacks in Afghanistan.
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Afghanistan: Attacks hit WFP school feeding programme in south
CHAGHCHARAN, 30 July 2008 (IRIN) - The UN World Food Programme's (WFP's) food-for-education programme has been adversely affected by recent attacks on aid convoys: Some 300,000 primary school children, mostly in southern provinces, have not received vegetable oil and fortified biscuits over the past four months.
The aim of the food-for-education programme is to promote education and ensure children's - particularly girls' - access to formal schooling.
WFP has been distributing 4.5kg of cooking oil to 450,000 girls every month; and a snack of fortified biscuits to about 1.5 million schoolchildren in food-insecure areas every day.
The education department in Ghor Province, central Afghanistan, said that of the 150,000 students in the province 80,000 were entitled to benefit from the school feeding programme, but no aid had been delivered since March 2008, the beginning of the academic year.
Eid Gul Azem, deputy head of the education department, said delays in the school feeding programme and high food prices had adversely affected school attendance.
"Recently about five percent of schoolchildren have failed to turn up regularly," said Azem, adding that most of the absent children were from "very poor families" and had been forced to work to help feed their families.
"Previously my children were bringing wheat and oil home but this year there is nothing. Food prices are very high and we are very poor, so my children are working to earn a piece of bread for us instead of going to school," said Bibi Gul, 55, a mother of three in Chaghcharan, Ghor's provincial capital.
Schools closed in south
"We have not distributed vegetable oil and fortified biscuits to some 300,000 students in southern provinces," Ebadullah Ebadi, a WFP public information officer, told IRIN in Kabul on 29 July, adding that insecurity and repeated attacks on aid convoys were the main cause of the delay.
Meanwhile, hundreds of schools, mostly in volatile southern provinces, have been closed down due to attacks, thus depriving tens of thousands of schoolchildren of both education and food rations.
The need for school feeding programmes has soared in the past few months as food price inflation and severe drought have pushed millions into high-risk food insecurity, say officials and aid workers.
WFP has requested funding to feed 4.5 million highly food-insecure people, in addition to its current programme.
Food aid convoy attacked
On 24 July unidentified armed men attacked a convoy of 49 trucks in Balabolok District, Farah Province, southwestern Afghanistan. The trucks had been hired by WFP to transport food aid from Kandahar to Herat.
The attackers set two trucks ablaze and stole eight others, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said. Over 320 metric tonnes of food, enough to feed about 38,400 people for a month, was looted.
"We have a message for those responsible - shame on you. Such attacks dishonour the Afghan people and the generosity of the international community, they are unacceptable and must stop," said Aleem Siddique, a UNAMA spokesman.
WFP said such security challenges would not deter it from continuing humanitarian food deliveries.
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Drilling in Afghanistan
The New York Times - Editorials & Opinion By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN July 30, 2008
Sometimes in politics, particularly in campaigns, parties get wedded to slogans — so wedded that no one stops to think about what they’re saying, whether the reality has changed and what the implications would be if their bumper stickers really guided policy when they took office. Today, we have two examples of that: “Democrats for Afghanistan” and “Republicans for offshore drilling.”
Republicans have become so obsessed with the notion that we can drill our way out of our current energy crisis that re-opening our coastal waters to offshore drilling has become their answer for every energy question.
Anyone who looks at the growth of middle classes around the world and their rising demands for natural resources, plus the dangers of climate change driven by our addiction to fossil fuels, can see that clean renewable energy — wind, solar, nuclear and stuff we haven’t yet invented — is going to be the next great global industry. It has to be if we are going to grow in a stable way.
Therefore, the country that most owns the clean power industry is going to most own the next great technology breakthrough — the E.T. revolution, the energy technology revolution — and create millions of jobs and thousands of new businesses, just like the I.T. revolution did.
Republicans, by mindlessly repeating their offshore-drilling mantra, focusing on a 19th-century fuel, remind me of someone back in 1980 arguing that we should be putting all our money into making more and cheaper IBM Selectric typewriters — and forget about these things called the “PC” and “the Internet.” It is a strategy for making America a second-rate power and economy.
But Democrats have their analog. For many Democrats, Afghanistan was always the “good war,” as opposed to Iraq. I think Barack Obama needs to ask himself honestly: “Am I for sending more troops to Afghanistan because I really think we can win there, because I really think that that will bring an end to terrorism, or am I just doing it because to get elected in America, post-9/11, I have to be for winning some war?”
The truth is that Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Pakistan are just different fronts in the same war. The core problem is that the Arab-Muslim world in too many places has been failing at modernity, and were it not for $120-a-barrel oil, that failure would be even more obvious. For far too long, this region has been dominated by authoritarian politics, massive youth unemployment, outdated education systems, a religious establishment resisting reform and now a death cult that glorifies young people committing suicide, often against other Muslims.
The humiliation this cocktail produces is the real source of terrorism. Saddam exploited it. Al Qaeda exploits it. Pakistan’s intelligence services exploit it. Hezbollah exploits it. The Taliban exploit it.
The only way to address it is by changing the politics. Producing islands of decent and consensual government in Baghdad or Kabul or Islamabad would be a much more meaningful and lasting contribution to the war on terrorism than even killing bin Laden in his cave. But it needs local partners. The reason the surge helped in Iraq is because Iraqis took the lead in confronting their own extremists — the Shiites in their areas, the Sunnis in theirs. That is very good news — although it is still not clear that they can come together in a single functioning government.
The main reason we are losing in Afghanistan is not because there are too few American soldiers, but because there are not enough Afghans ready to fight and die for the kind of government we want.
Take 20 minutes and read the stunning article in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine by Thomas Schweich, a former top Bush counternarcotics official focused on Afghanistan, and dwell on his paragraph on Afghan President Hamid Karzai:
“Karzai was playing us like a fiddle: The U.S. would spend billions of dollars on infrastructure improvement; the U.S. and its allies would fight the Taliban; Karzai’s friends could get rich off the drug trade; he could blame the West for his problems; and in 2009, he would be elected to a new term.”
Then read the Afghan expert Rory Stewart’s July 17 Time magazine cover story from Kabul: “A troop increase is likely to inflame Afghan nationalism because Afghans are more anti-foreign than we acknowledge, and the support for our presence in the insurgency areas is declining ... The more responsibility we take in Afghanistan, the more we undermine the credibility and responsibility of the Afghan government and encourage it to act irresponsibly. Our claims that Afghanistan is the ‘front line in the war on terror’ and that ‘failure is not an option’ have convinced the Afghan government that we need it more than it needs us. The worse things become, the more assistance it seems to receive. This is not an incentive to reform.”
Before Democrats adopt “More Troops to Afghanistan” as their bumper sticker, they need to make sure it’s a strategy for winning a war — not an election.
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Afghanistan: UN aims to have Bamiyan city mine-free by October
New York, 30 July (AKI) - The United Nations Mine Action Centre for Afghanistan (UNMACA) has announced plans to clear a total of 1,800,000 square metres of land in the historic city of Bamiyan that is contaminated with mines and unexploded ordinance (UXOs) by October.
Bamiyan contains a number of Buddhist monastic ensembles and sanctuaries, as well as fortified edifices from the Islamic period. It is also where the Taliban destroyed two standing Buddha statues in March 2001.
The mine-clearance project will exclude four sites which have been declared as cultural heritage sites by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and need to be cleared with the cooperation of archaeologists.
“After receiving authorization from the Ministry of Information and Culture we will start clearing the four cultural heritage sites,” said Abdul Qader Qayoumi, the head of UNMACA in Bamiyan.
Nearly 500 de-mining personnel, most of them from Afghan Technical Consultants (ATC), an Afghan non-governmental organization (NGO), are working to clear Bamiyan from landmines and UXOs.
Since the beginning of April, 104 anti-personnel mines and 169 UXOs have been found and destroyed.
Afghanistan is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world, and more than four million Afghans are living in mine-contaminated areas.
As a party to the global anti-landmine treaty, known as the Ottawa Convention, Afghanistan has committed itself to clear all of its landmines by 2013. With the help of the UN, some 65,361,363 square metres of land has already been cleared across the strife-torn nation.
Qayoumi said the Mine Action Programme for Afghanistan (MAPA) – which comprises UNMACA and other partners – will start de-mining work in three other districts in Bamiyan province, namely Shibar, Saighan and Kahmard.
Also in Bamiyan, the efforts of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to promote crop diversification and new seed varieties was on display during an event on 26 July attended by some 250 farmers and the Governor of the province.
The programme aimed to showcase practical results in the field, including experimental testing of 200 potential wheat lines and 14 potato lines, which are in the advanced stages of screening for the release of new varieties in the near future, according to FAO.
The participants were also able to visit a newly-constructed modern potato storage facility and a tissue culture/virus testing laboratory nearing completion at the Mullah Ghulam agricultural research farm, which hosted the event.
FAO has been working with Afghanistan to support agricultural and environmental rehabilitation and assist the country to achieve food security.
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Kidnapped Afghan businessman found
Daily Times (Pakistan) / July 30, 2008
PESHAWAR: Khasadaar force Jamrud, Khyber Agency recovered an Afghan businessman kidnapped for US$2 million ransom after exchange of fire with his captors late on Monday, political authorities have said.
Political Agent Khyber Agency Tariq Hayat Khan told reporters at Khyber House that Afghan businessman Abdur Rehman Zazali was kidnapped from Karkhano Market some 26 days back and the kidnappers were demanding around US$ 2 million ransom from his family for his release. He said that on a tip-off that some unidentified people were pushing a car which had run out of fuel, Khasadaar force reached the spot and the kidnappers fled the scene, leaving their hostage behind after an exchange of fire. He said that they are investigating the incident. The kidnapper’s gang has its network in Afghanistan as well as ransom demands were also made from Afghan mobile connections.
175 POs arrested in Peshawar in one month: City police arrested at least 175 proclaimed offenders (POs) in three circles of the city and recovered arms and drugs from their possession during the past one month, said a statement issued here on Tuesday.
It said during raids in the City, Cantonment and Rural circles, police arrested at least 175 POs in addition to other criminals.
Police recovered 98 Kalashnikovs, 40 Kalakovs, 45 rifles, 83 shotguns, seven hand grenades, 606 pistols, 8300 rounds and two snatched vehicles. Police also recovered around 989 kilogram (kg) charas, six kg opium, five kg heroin and 365 bottles liquor, said the statement.
Protesting doctors suspend strike for one week: The protesting doctors at Peshawar city’s three major hospitals on Tuesday suspended their strike for one week.
Provincial Doctors Association (PDA) president Dr Abdul Qadir told Daily Times that they have suspended their strike for a week in view of inconvenience and difficulties faced by the patients due to their strike.
He said the provincial government’s indifferent attitude is the biggest hurdle in resolution of their problems, adding that they are giving the provincial government time to address the issues within a week.
He said that if their grievances were not redressed within a week, they would extend their strike to districts’ level and the provincial government would be responsible for that.
Earlier, a meeting of PDA representatives with the provincial health minister and secretary health remained inconclusive. However, the doctors suspended their strike, saying that patients were suffering due to the strike and secondly, it would provide time to the provincial government to consider their demands. staff report
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On Al Qaeda, Good News and Bad News
New York Times, United States By Mike Nizza July 29, 2008
In more than 200 pages, a RAND study released today takes issue with the Bush administration’s “war on terror,” from its focus on military force to the very title of the effort.
As others have also argued, the authors of the report conclude that terrorists are criminals — not “holy warriors” — who should be fought mainly by police officers and intelligence agents under the the rubric of “counterterrorism,” rather than by soldiers.
Unlike some other critics of the administration, though, the RAND researchers didn’t stop with a look at American strategy: they also examined al Qaeda’s strategy, and saw serious shortcomings. Both sides, the report suggests, have benefited from the other’s failings.
The authors reached their conclusions with the help of an immense database about terrorist groups and their activities from 1968 to 2006. Here is how the report frames one of its major questions:
How do terrorist groups end? All terrorist groups eventually end. But do they end because police or military forces defeat them? Do they end by achieving victory? Or do they end for other reasons?
Terrorist groups usually end for two major reasons: They decide to adopt nonviolent tactics and join the political process, or local law-enforcement agencies arrest or kill key members of the group. Military force has rarely been the primary reason that terrorist groups end, and, since 1968, few groups have ended by achieving victory.
In making their case, the RAND authors assert that American efforts since the Sept. 11 attacks have been a mixed bag. They bottom-line it this way in layman’s terms:
The good news about countering Al Qaeda is that its probability of success in actually overthrowing any governments is close to zero.
The bad news is that U.S. efforts against Al Qaeda have not been successful.
As evidence, the study notes that the number of Al Qaeda attacks worldwide — excluding Iraq and Afghanistan — had increased after 9/11 and spiked last year to nearly double the previous high. Iraq and Afghanistan were excluded, and so were any strikes by groups without “probable” connections to Osama bin Laden’s organization.
That left a tally of attacks that was dominated by a single country: Algeria, which was hit with 23 attacks by the group Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. The group was the subject of an exhaustive article in The New York Times earlier this month that noted the F.B.I.’s new office in Algiers to deal with the growing threat.
Two of the remaining three incidents took place in the West Bank and injured no one, the report said, but Pakistan paid dearly for the third attack, which left the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto dead along with 24 others in December. Al Qaeda has not mounted a succesful attack on United States soil since September 2001. But RAND said that the increased activity in Northern Africa has provided the group with a crucial training ground.
Even as Al Qaeda lands blows elsewhere, the report said that the threat it poses would have been much stronger if it had built significant popular support for its cause, but it has failed to do so. “Making a world of enemies is never a winning strategy,” the authors noted dryly, referring to Qaeda opponents in various governments as well as public opinion.
The group’s refusal to embrace health and social welfare initiatives, which have turned Hezbollah into a political force in Lebanon, also plays a role. Indeed, polio is resurgent in the tribal areas of Pakistan, where Al Qaeda is based.
Then again, there don’t seem to be any examples of “winning strategies” for terrorist groups with as broad ambitions as Al Qaeda. As RAND found, “No terrorist group that sought empire or social revolution ever achieved victory.”
By the same token, no long-researched report can keep up with the fast-moving events that it seeks to analyze. Just as RAND unveiled its prescription for shifting the American fight to intelligence units and working more closely with local forces, reports pf the death of a senior Qaeda trainer and weapons expert in Pakistan were circulating.
According to anonymous reports, a strike by a C.I.A. drone aircraft did him in, and a Pakistani intelligence official has said that his nation’s “active cooperation” was a key ingredient in the attack.
Unfortunately, the Bush administration would not hit the trifecta, at least in terms of the report’s recommendations. A White House “fact sheet” pegged to the Pakistani prime minister’s visit to Washington on Monday did not end without mentioning once again, against RAND’s advice on nomenclature, the “war on terror.”
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India, Afghanistan to jointly fight terrorism
New Delhi, July 29, IRNA
In the wake of recent terror attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul, the two countries today put up a united face and resolved to jointly fight the "enemies of peace".
"We must show resolve to continue our relationship so that enemies of peace in Afghanistan get the message that their designs would not succeed," Afghanistan's Deputy Minister for Rural Rehabilitation and Development Asif Rahimi said at a joint media interaction with Panchayati Raj Minister Mani Shankar Aiyer.
Referring to the July 7 attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul in which four Indians were among those killed, Rahimi said "we must resist terrorism and show resilience."
"We are very sad that four of our Indian friends lost lives in the attack," he said.
Describing the bilateral ties as historical and cultural, he said that Afghanistan valued the relations with India very high.
In a word of advice to the Afghan minister, Aiyer suggested that a strong Panchayat system, which empowers people at grass-root level to govern, can go a long way in combating violence.
"An Expert Group in the Planning Commission here has advised that stronger panchayats will help combat Naxal menace. Though the problem in Afghanistan is not the same, this experiment can be tried there as that country too has the problem of violence," he said.
India is actively involved in capacity building in Afghanistan and over 3,000 Indians are engaged in reconstruction and development projects there.
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Struggle ahead for Afghanistan
Boston Globe - Editors By Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould July 30, 2008
WHEN THE next president enters the Oval Office in January, he will face the toughest foreign policy decisions of any president since Franklin Roosevelt. But the toughest of all will involve the struggle for Afghanistan.
Lest he fall prey to Washington's beltway wisdom, he should be advised that today's Afghanistan is as much a creation of Washington and Islamabad as it is of Kabul. He should also know that achieving anything resembling real victory will require rethinking basic assumptions about both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
As the first Americans to negotiate a TV crew into Kabul in 1981, after the western press corps had been expelled, we encountered a country frozen between its feudal past and 100 years of social modernization. What we witnessed was an Afghan state walking a fine line between communism, capitalism, and a uniquely "progressive" and moderate Islam.
Today's Afghanistan suffers no trace of its progressive Islamic past. Culturally erased by the US- and Saudi Arabian-backed war from Pakistan, Afghanistan is a neo-feudal, corporatized playground of warlords, NATO troops, private military companies, and radicalized Islamists. On Kabul's traffic-congested streets, "liberated" chador-clad women beg desperately for handouts at the darkened windows of local drug lords' Japanese SUVs. For thousands of years a hub for trade and a melting pot of cultures, Afghanistan is now the world's largest exporter of heroin and extreme forms of Islam.
After seven years and billions spent, little economic and social rebuilding can be seen. The new constitution guarantees women's rights. Women work and vote, girls can go to school. But without security or oversight in the countryside, hard fought women's rights mean nothing.
The next president must reverse this process by remaking US policy. That policy must address the needs of the Afghan people, not Washington. He must revamp USAID management to ensure that roads are rebuilt, power is restored, irrigation systems are improved, and independent contractors are held responsible for their work. He must redeploy thousands of troops from Iraq to major population centers around Afghanistan, disarm warlords, and establish security. He must also convince America's NATO allies to get serious. Under current counterterrorism doctrine, Afghanistan would require 400,000 International Security and Assistance Force soldiers. There are currently 47,000. That done, he can promote alternative food crops while encouraging drug manufacturers to purchase Afghan opium for legal medicinal use.
With the Afghan people's support, the president can then proceed to political problems and Pakistan's subversive role in them. These problems stem from a failed British colonial policy designed to make Afghanistan invisible as a nation.
The first stirrings of Afghan nationalism began in the 16th century. In 1747 Ahmed Shah Durrani established an Afghan empire that was one of the world's largest and a dynasty that lasted until the Marxist coup of 1978.
Nonetheless, India's 19th century British viceroy, Lord Curzon, claimed Afghanistan was "a purely accidental geographic unit." British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli advocated subsuming Afghanistan into British India. Failing that, in 1893 the British drew a line down the Hindu Kush (the Durand line), dividing Afghan tribal homelands.
Following Indian partition in 1947, Britain refused to renegotiate the boundary. Pakistan's struggle to control these Afghan homelands provided cause for Cold War confrontation. In 1979, it provided President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, with the bait to lure the Soviet Union into its own Vietnam.
From that day forward, this historic border dispute, originally intended as a hedge against Afghan independence, has grown into an international monster.
Pakistan's obsession with another border dispute with India fuels its need for nuclear weapons. Its fear of annihilation justifies smuggling guns and heroin, helping the Taliban, and harboring terrorists like Osama bin Laden. Only the United States can forge a lasting peace between India and Pakistan, but only a lasting peace will stop Pakistan's interference in Afghanistan. America's Afghanistan is not Vietnam or Iraq. America's Afghanistan is a dream that can still be made to happen. It is something the new president must do.
Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould are authors of "Invisible History, Afghanistan's Untold Story," which will be published in January.
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Taliban's war of words undermines Afghanistan's nation building
A successful propaganda campaign has weakened public support for the Afghan government and its international backers, according to a new report from the International Crisis Group.
Christian Science Monitor, MA By Aunohita Mojumdar Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor July 29, 2008 edition
Kabul, Afghanistan-Arbitrary detentions by United States forces in Afghanistan and the aerial bombardment by the international forces has not only increased public discontent, it has also given the Taliban opportunities to cash in on a sophisticated media strategy, observers say.
The International Crisis Group (ICG) has pointed to the dangers of the Taliban's successful propaganda in a July 24 report and argues that the result is "weakening public support for nation building, even though few actively support the Taliban."
While Taliban propaganda is often rudimentary and crude, the ICG report says, the Taliban is adept at exploiting local disenfranchisement. Its use of local languages and traditional cultural medium like songs and poems give it greater outreach than that of international organizations and the government. The ICG report also points out that the Taliban has also begun using DVDs and photographs, which it had earlier prohibited.
International forces also face questions about the accuracy of their reports – such as a US bombing in Nangarhar on July 6 that described civilians attending a wedding party as enemy deaths. The questionable credibility is not just confined to the military forces but impacts the image of the entire international community.
And the lack of credible and effective communication could mean much more than a war of words – especially in a situation where, according to the ICG report, the Afghan population is increasingly "sitting on the fence or weighing options amidst a sense of insurgent momentum."
The Taliban are not winning the propaganda war but are putting a lot of effort into it, says NATO's civilian spokesman in Afghanistan, Mark Laity.
"If you want disinformation, yes, you can get it," Mr. Laity says. "They can make something up. One has to define reliable and accurate information."
But reporter Zubair Babakarkhail of Pajhwok, an independent Afghan news service, says Taliban reports enable him to put out stories on time. "It is difficult to reach the spokesperson of the president's office and the Ministry of Interior and often when they do return a call it is too late."
Mr. Babakarkhail says he does not feel that the information from the military is any more credible. "The Taliban makes claims, and the other side also makes claims,"he says. "We don't believe in either."
UN spokesman Aleem Siddique admits the Taliban are better than the international forces are in reaching the media, but points to UN efforts to reach out to the local press in their own language.
Zamarai Bashary, a spokesperson of the Ministry of Interior, says the media also latches onto bad news, which helps the Taliban propaganda. Mr. Bashary insists that the delay is due to the problem of collecting accurate, verifiable information.
Unfortunately, the lack of speed is also not always compensated by absolute accuracy. Mr. Laity says NATO has "reviewed how we are dealing with civilian casualties and the speed of our response," a task which is made difficult by "the remoteness of the area, the speed of the burial of bodies, and the lack of birth registration."
And while US-led forces cause most of the civilian casualties, a distinction between the Coalition Forces and the NATO-led ISAF forces is not always evident. "People won't make that distinction," Laity says. "We have to live with that."
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Afghanistan welcomes commitment to border security
Radio Australia - News 30/07/2008
Afghanistan's government says it's time for Pakistan to take action after its prime minister made a commitment to US President George W. Bush to secure the border with Afghanistan.
Yousaf Raza Gilani sought to reassure Mr Bush of his government's commitment to securing the border with Afghanistan during a visit to Washington on Monday.
The Afghan government says it welcomes comments in which the President says Pakistan made a very strong commitment to making sure the border is secure as possible.
Relations between Afghanistan and its neighbour Pakistan have sharply deteriorated in recent months with Afghan officials repeatedly accusing Pakistani agents of secretly backing Taliban insurgents fighting Afghan and foreign troops on Afghan soil.
The Afghan government has told the United States and NATO allies the source of the terrorism in Afghanistan goes back to the sanctuaries inside Pakistan.
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ECC set to approve new oil pricing formula:
Govt to impose duty on diesel export to Afghanistan
By Sajid Chaudhry and Zafar Bhutta Daily Times (Pakistan) / July 30, 2008
ISLAMABAD: The government is likely to impose a regulatory duty of 35 percent on the export of diesel for NATO forces in Afghanistan in the meeting of the Economic Co-ordination Committee (ECC) of the Cabinet being held today (Wednesday), sources said.
They said the duty would be imposed to discourage subsidised diesel exports and to avoid diesel shortages in the country, adding that the committee was also likely to approve a new oil pricing and margin mechanism.
As per special authorisation of Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani, Finance and Revenues Federal Minister Syed Naveed Qamar would chair the ECC meeting. Sourced said the ECC planned to reduce local duties and margins of the oil marketing companies (OMC) and dealers of petroleum, oil and lubricants (POL) products.
They claimed that Pakistan was suffering by the export as well as the smuggling of diesel to Afghanistan where the price of diesel was Rs 95 per litre and 15 percent of the total requirement of Pakistan was being smuggled to Afghanistan.
OMC: According to the proposal, a cap of OMCs’ margins on diesel and motor spirit at $100 per barrel of crude oil is to be imposed as against the existing practice of allowing margins on import value of the oil.
The ECC is also expected to cut the margin on diesel from Rs 1.55 per litre to Rs 1.13 per litre and from Rs 2.12 per litre to Rs 1.60 per litre on motor spirit.
Dealers’ margins are also likely to be lowered from existing capped margin of Rs 1.77 per litre on diesel and Rs 2.43 per litre on motor gasoline.
ECC may consider a proposal for reduction in Deemed Duty from existing 10 percent to 5 percent to reduce the gains of oil refineries of the country, the official added.
Maize export: The ECC is also likely to consider a proposal submitted by the Ministry of Commerce for imposing a ban on the export of maize to reduce poultry feed prices. Due to the increase in poultry feed in the country the prices of farm chicken and eggs have registered a sudden increase in the month of July.
The government has recently allowed duty-free import of maize to save locally produced wheat, which was being used as poultry feed at an estimated quantity of 1 million tonnes annually.
However, the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock (MINFAL) is set to oppose the move by the Commerce Ministry for a possible ban on maize export.
MINFAL authorities fear that a ban on maize export would severely hurt the crop’s sowing in the next season and farmers would be left with no option but to convert to sowing sunflower instead.
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Gunmen burn school in Kunduz
Written by www.quqnoos.com Tuesday, 29 July 2008
Elementary school burnt down in Chahar Dara in Kunduz
Unknown gunmen put fire to a school in Chahar Dara district of Kunduz province.
Abdul Rahman Aqtash, head of the security commandant of Kunduz province, said the school was called the elementary school of Quqlosh, and it was put to fire early in the morning.
He added that there were 4 tents in the school’s yard, which were all burned.
Mr. Aqtash said the government opposition forces have done this, and they have sent a delegation to investigate the problem.
Muhammad Sarwar, deputy of the education department of Kunduz, said the school had 200 male students, and after the school was burnt, most of them have not come to school.
Zabihullah Mujahid, who claims to be a Taliban spokesman, said the Taliban do not burn schools, but they are against the government’s educational system.
He claimed that the people who burn schools want to discredit the Taliban.
Officials of the education department of Kunduz say that Germany’s Provincial Rehabilitation Teams (PRT) has promised to reconstruct the school in the future.
Three months ago, a school was set on fire in Kohdaman area of Imam Sahib district of Kunduz province.
The province’s governor said the unknown gunmen kidnapped the school’s guard, and cut his ears off.
The Taliban have denied involvement in this incident as well.
Many schools have been burnt this year in different parts of the country, especially in the south, but precise figures are not available.
According to information given by the ministry of education, 187 schools have been burnt throughout the country, in 2007.
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ISI sends 3000 terrorists to stop Afghan construction
Written by www.quqnoos.com Tuesday, 29 July 2008
Afghan NDS says Pakistani intelligence sent terrorists to stop Gardez-Khost highway
According to NDS, intelligence networks of Pakistan have sent about 3,000 terrorists to Afghanistan to deter the construction for the Gardez – Khost Highway.
It is understood that work for this highway will start soon and be undertaken by an Indian Company.
In a news statement from NDS on Monday it was announced that the tender for the highway construction was awarded to an Indian company called LBG.
According to the NDS, the intelligence organizations of Pakistan decided to hinder the works of this Company and have sent between 2500 and 3000 militants including a large number of foreigners to the area.
Khyber Pashtoon, the speaker of the Governor of Khost says they have taken sufficient precautions for the safety of the company staff and the commencement of the works of the highway.
He added that “the enemy is always trying to block the rehabilitation works, but we will give a firm response to any incursion of the enemy, along this highway.”
He said that the construction of the Gardez-Khost Highway is not only important for these two provinces but for the entire nation.
Pashtoon said that Khost has a common border with Pakistan and this is a transit route with the completion of which trade will increase between the two countries.
This 115 km highway between Gardez and Kost will be constructed at a cost of $85 million.
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Dam water levels decrease by 65%
Written by www.quqnoos.com Tuesday, 29 July 2008
Lack of rainfall leads to sever reduction of water supply across Afghanistan
Water in Afghanistan’s dams have decreased by up to 65% over last year.
The ministry of energy and water on Monday told reporters that if the situation continues like this, this ministry cannot continue to provide electricity to people for more then 4 hour a day in Kabul city.
According to the ministry of water and energy, two sub-stations have been established to provide electricity for Kabul city and the ministry says that it cannot provide more then 4 hours electricity to householder per day.
The ministry of water and energy authorities advise that each kilowatt hour of electricity costs the ministry about Afg40 (or US$0.80) but they provide this power to people for only Afg10 (US$0.20).
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104 Afghans released from Pakistani jails
Written by www.quqnoos.com Tuesday, 29 July 2008
Pakistani authorities release Afghans from Baluchistan jails and hand over to Afghanistan
(APP) : Pakistani authorities on Monday released 104 more Afghan nationals from various jails of Balochistan and handed them over to Kabul officials at the Pak-Afghan Chaman border, police sources at the border told APP.
These people were held for having entered into Pakistan without any legal documents.
They were tried under the Foreign Act and were released after completion of their sentences.
In another incident, an Afghan refugee was gunned down by some people on Monday for allegedly spying for the US forces in Afghanistan.
Officials found the body of the 60-year-old Ibrahim in a dry nullah near Sarlarra area of Lowisam, about 15 kilometres from Chaman.
There were marks suggesting torture on the body. The refugee lived in the nearby area of Gabbri.
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