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Top UN official highlights plight of children
Radhika Coomaraswamy
KABUL, 3 July 2008 (IRIN) - Nowhere in the world are children suffering as much as in Afghanistan, a top UN official has said.
UN presses Pakistan to boost regional effort to stabilize Afghanistan
By STEPHEN GRAHAM Associated Press / July 3, 2008
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A senior U.N. official called Thursday for Afghanistan's neighbors to work toward mending tense regional relationships so the conflict-torn country can be rebuilt.
Time to refocus the war in Afghanistan: Obama
Pajhwok News, 07/02/2008
PAN NEW YORK - Addressing the first election meeting with his political rival Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Friday asserted he would focus on Afghanistan if elected as the US President in the November elections.
US against talks with Pakistan's Taliban chief: envoy
ISLAMABAD (AFP) — The United States does not approve of negotiations with Pakistan's top Taliban commander but backs Islamabad's talks with tribal elders near the Afghan border, a senior US envoy said Wednesday.
FACTBOX-Security developments in Afghanistan, July 3
July 3 (Reuters) - Following are security developments in Afghanistan reported until 1200 GMT on Thursday:
Afghanistan summons Pakistani envoy over militants leaders' statement
KABUL, July 3 (Xinhua) -- The Afghan Foreign Ministry Thursday summoned the charge-de-affairs of the Pakistani Embassy to Afghanistan and lodged a protest over the remarks of Pakistani militants' leaders, a statement of the ministry said.
Bush says US to send more troops to Afghanistan
By BEN FELLER Associated Press Thu Jul 3, 1:07 AM ET
WASHINGTON - Grappling with a record death toll in an overshadowed war, President Bush promised Wednesday to send more U.S. troops into Afghanistan by year's end. He conceded that June was a "tough month" in the nearly seven-year-old war.
Afghanistan Moves Back into the Limelight
by Jim Lobe antiwar.com July 3, 2008
Six and a half years since the ouster of the Taliban, U.S. media attention is returning to Afghanistan, where more U.S. and NATO troops were killed in June than in any previous month.
Big Oil pumps up the ugly Afghan and Iraqi mix
LAWRENCE MARTIN The Globe and Mail (Canada) / July 3, 2008
In the war zones, the oil deals are coming on stream.
Afghanistan recently signed a major agreement to build an American-backed pipeline. It will traverse the Kandahar region where Canadian forces are fighting. If they're still there, Canadians could well be called on to be a pipeline protection force.
Japan donates 2.7m dollars for Afghan refugees in Pakistan
Text of report by official news agency Associated Press of Pakistan (APP)
Islamabad, Pakistan, 1 July: The government of Japan has contributed 2.7m dollars to assist Afghan refugees in Pakistan, continuing a tradition of humanitarian generosity towards the world largest refugee-hosting country.
The Long Arm Of Pakistan
Times of India By Haroun Mir 07/02/2008
KABUL -The latest terrorist attack on a prison in Kandahar was not the work of the Taliban alone. In fact, all significant terrorist attacks during the last several months in Afghanistan have the imprint of Al-Qaida both in the planning and execution.
Eco-bazaars install solar street lamps
www.quqnoos.com Written by PAN Wednesday, 02 July 2008
Province bordering Kabul starts to use solar power to light up markets
BAZAARS in a province bordering Kabul are slowly trading in their hurricane lamps and diesel generators for a more eco-friendly energy source.
New top general sees soldiers out of Afghanistan by 2011
The Globe and Mail STEVEN CHASE July 2, 2008
OTTAWA-Canada's new top general says he's still confident Canadian soldiers can quit combat operations in Kandahar by 2011, despite a surge in Taliban attacks and gloomier assessments of the Afghan war from the Pentagon.
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Top UN official highlights plight of children
Radhika Coomaraswamy
KABUL, 3 July 2008 (IRIN) - Nowhere in the world are children suffering as much as in Afghanistan, a top UN official has said.
Radhika Coomaraswamy, special representative of the UN Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, told reporters in Kabul on 3 July that during her six-day visit to Afghanistan she had found that “it takes an Afghan child a very long time to smile.” The conflict had killed, maimed and affected an increasing number of children, she said.
Coomaraswamy did not give any specific figures but said the number of children exploited by anti-government forces for military purposes had increased over the past few months. Children had also been used as “suicide attackers” by the Taliban, she said.
“This is a terrible situation… we urge all parties to the conflict, especially anti-government forces, to take measures to prevent the use of children in conflict.”
Children were also being recruited into the Afghan National Police and pro-government militias, where they were vulnerable to sexual abuse, Coomaraswamy said.
“This is illegal and should be eradicated.”
“Easy targets”
According to the UN, children have been detained by all the warring parties, but no one knows exactly how many children are being held in detention centres - even those run by US forces and the government.
The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said children were often at even greater risk than those directly involved in the conflict.
“Children are easy targets… They are especially vulnerable to two insurgent techniques utilised in Iraq and then in Afghanistan: suicide bombings and improvised explosive devices, also called roadside bombs,” the UNICEF Child Alert Report 2007 stated.
Afghan children have also been killed, wounded, displaced and traumatised by the “intensive use of air power” by international forces, the report said.
Attacks on schools
Over six million students are now enrolled at schools, with almost 40 percent of them girls, according to the Ministry of Education. However, an increasing number of attacks on schools by gunmen associated with Taliban insurgents and other anti-government elements have seriously threatened educational progress.
There have been 311 confirmed attacks on schools in the past 18 months, resulting in 84 deaths and 115 injuries (to schoolchildren, teachers and other school employees). Hundreds of schools in insecure areas have had to close, UNICEF reported.
Insecurity, conservative attitudes and poverty have denied education to over two million school-age children, mainly in the volatile south and southeastern provinces, aid agencies said.
New task force
UN officials in Kabul said a comprehensive report on the plight of Afghan children affected by the conflict would be submitted to the UN Security Council in October 2008.
Coomaraswamy said the aim of her visit to Afghanistan was to set up a task force to manage a Monitoring and Report Mechanism (MRM) to report to the Security Council on the “six grave violations” concerning children and armed conflicts - “the killing or maiming of children; recruitment or use of children as soldiers; rape and other grave sexual abuse of children; abduction of children; attacks against schools or hospitals; denial of humanitarian access for children”.
The MRM task force will be headed by the UN but will also include non-governmental organisations and the government, Coomaraswamy said.
Over half of Afghanistan’s estimated 26.6 million people - about 13.9 million - are under 18, and almost six million are under five, according to UNICEF.
Afghanistan also has the second highest infant mortality rate in the world, after Sierra Leone, with 165 deaths per every 1,000 live births, UNICEF reported in June.
The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHCR) said in a report in April that in a survey involving interviews with 2,250 children, over 42 percent said they did not have access to basic health services.
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UN presses Pakistan to boost regional effort to stabilize Afghanistan
By STEPHEN GRAHAM Associated Press / July 3, 2008
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A senior U.N. official called Thursday for Afghanistan's neighbors to work toward mending tense regional relationships so the conflict-torn country can be rebuilt.
Kai Eide, head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, is seeking to expand the world body's role in areas such as regional economic cooperation and crossborder infrastructure.
Eide, on his first visit to Islamabad since his appointment in March, said his priority is to harness the momentum from an international conference in Paris last month when donors pledged more than US$20 billion in additional aid for Afghanistan.
Other areas where regional cooperation is needed include combating Afghanistan's runaway illegal narcotics industry and its raging Taliban-led insurgency.
Eide said the U.N. is ready to facilitate "constructive" regional ties and that the reaction of Pakistani leaders in meetings Thursday was "positive."
He wouldn't elaborate on exactly what role the U.N. could play in the regional cooperation or what it would like to see from Pakistan.
He said priorities are building Afghan institutions, restructuring the economy as well as "bringing the region more closely together."
Afghan President Hamid Karzai accuses Islamabad of secretly aiding insurgents with the goal of installing a pliable government in Kabul. Pakistani officials complain they are getting blamed for the failings of Karzai and his Western backers.
"We are of course concerned with regard to the insurgency and also the fact that this is a regional phenomenon" that also threatens Pakistan, Eide said.
Asked whether meddling from Afghanistan's neighbors, who sided with different armed factions during its long wars, were still hampering a political settlement, Eide said he preferred not to look backward.
"I look forward and I try to use the conclusions from the Paris document as a tool in order to bring Afghanistan forward," he said. "The U.N. is ready to play a role in regional cooperation if the countries of the region wish it to do so."
Asked if he was optimistic about the outlook for Afghanistan, Eide said he was "sober in my assessment."
Afghanistan's other neighbors are Iran, China and the former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. Russia and India are also considered regional powers.
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Time to refocus the war in Afghanistan: Obama
Pajhwok News, 07/02/2008
PAN NEW YORK - Addressing the first election meeting with his political rival Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Friday asserted he would focus on Afghanistan if elected as the US President in the November elections.
It's time to refocus our attention on the war we have to win in Afghanistan," Obama told a cheering crowd in the small little New Hampshire town of Unity. His Democratic Party rival in the presidential race Clinton also addressed the campaign event the first in the series of many planned.
Throughout his campaign, Obama has maintained that it is Afghan war that needs to be the top priority of the United States and not the Iraq war as he believes that the real safe heaven to terrorists is in this part of the world. This was very much reflected in his speech at Unity.
It is time to go after the Al Qaida leadership where it actually exists. It is time to bring this war in Iraq to a close," Obama said.
It is a choice between moving forward and falling farther behind. It's a choice between more of the same policies that have failed us for eight long years or a new direction for the country we love," Obama said.
"We can continue spending $10 billion to $12 billion a month in Iraq and leave our troops there for the next 20 or 50 or 100 years. We can follow a policy that doesn't change whether violence is up or violence is down, whether the Iraqi government takes responsibility or not," he told the attentive crowd.
"Or we can decide that it's time to be in a responsible, gradual withdrawal from Iraq. It is time to rebuild our military. It is time to treat our veterans with the dignity and respect they deserve," Obama said.
Reiterating that Afghanistan would be his top priority, Obama said amidst applause: "That's what we will be working with and working on when I am president of the United States. That's the choice in this election."
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US against talks with Pakistan's Taliban chief: envoy
ISLAMABAD (AFP) — The United States does not approve of negotiations with Pakistan's top Taliban commander but backs Islamabad's talks with tribal elders near the Afghan border, a senior US envoy said Wednesday.
Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Richard Boucher added that Washington welcomes an ongoing operation by Pakistani forces against Islamic hardliners near the northwestern city of Peshawar.
"We don't support making concessions to Taliban leaders like Baitullah Mehsud," the Taliban chieftain who was accused by authorities of masterminding the slaying of former premier Benazir Bhutto last year, Boucher told reporters.
He said the United States backed the policy described in a statement by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani last week "where he said the intention was to negotiate with tribesmen not militants."
Gilani's government launched talks with Taliban militants in Pakistan's tribal frontier regions after defeating allies of US-backed President Pervez Musharraf in elections in February.
The move was aimed at ending a wave of Taliban-linked suicide bombings, but caused alarm among Western nations who allege that Pakistan-based militants are attacking their troops in Afghanistan.
Mehsud declared a ceasefire in April after negotiations with Pakistani authorities, but he announced at the weekend that he was halting all peace talks because of military operations by government forces.
Security forces launched an operation in the Khyber tribal district on the outskirts of Peshawar on Saturday, saying that the city was under threat from Islamic militants who were terrorising residents.
Khyber is also home to the main supply route for NATO and US forces in Afghanistan.
Pakistani officials say they have taken at least one town out of militant hands, but there has been little activity except for the demolition of several rebel hideouts and residents say most of the insurgents have fled.
Boucher however said the operation was a good step.
"The operation around Peshawar is very welcome. All people up there have had enough of the harassment by these groups, the threats to Peshawar," he said.
"But it's a reminder of how much of a problem there is up there."
During a three-day visit Boucher held talks with Musharraf, Gilani and army chief General Ashfaq Kayani in Islamabad. He also met ruling coalition partner and former premier Nawaz Sharif in the eastern city of Lahore.
Boucher said the United States was trying to support the new government's efforts to tackle mounting problems, including militancy as well as spiralling food prices and power shortages.
He said these issues were more crucial than the ruling coalition's divisions over the fate of the embattled Musharraf and the restoration of judges sacked by the president under a state of emergency last November.
"President Musharraf isn't the issue right now, this is not the problem that Pakistan faces right now," Boucher said. "The problems it faces are the bombings, suicide bombs, rising food prices, the energy difficulties."
Separately a Pakistani statement said that in talks with Boucher, Musharraf had "reiterated Pakistan's commitment to fighting extremism and terrorism."
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FACTBOX-Security developments in Afghanistan, July 3
July 3 (Reuters) - Following are security developments in Afghanistan reported until 1200 GMT on Thursday:
LOGAR - Five Afghan soldiers were killed on Wednesday when a roadside bomb hit their vehicle, which was part of a convoy in Logar province to the south of Kabul, police said.
BADGHIS - Taliban insurgents ambushed a convoy of Afghan soldiers but 25 of the attackers were killed in a subsequent clash in the northwestern province of Badghis on Wednesday, an official said, adding there were no casualties among the soldiers.
SPIN BOLDAK - A roadside bomb struck a NATO force convoy, destroying a vehicle, but caused no casualties near Spin Boldak town on the border with Pakistan on Thursday, an official said.
No Taliban could be immediately reached for comment.
(Compiled by Sayed Salahuddin; Editing by Robert Birsel)
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Afghanistan summons Pakistani envoy over militants leaders' statement
KABUL, July 3 (Xinhua) -- The Afghan Foreign Ministry Thursday summoned the charge-de-affairs of the Pakistani Embassy to Afghanistan and lodged a protest over the remarks of Pakistani militants' leaders, a statement of the ministry said.
"The foreign ministry described the remarks of Pakistani militants' leaders Mullah Nazir and Mullah Hafiz Gul Bahadir as intervention to the internal affairs of Afghanistan and called on the Pakistani government to check such irresponsible remarks," the statement said.
According to the statement, the above Pakistani militants' leaders had vowed to continue Jihad or holy war in Afghanistan.
In the statement, the Afghan foreign ministry termed such remarks as irresponsible and violation of all international norms, calling on Islamabad to punish such elements.
The Afghan government often accuses Pakistan of supporting Taliban militants and providing shelter to them while Islamabad terms such allegations baseless and rejects.
More than 80,000 troops, according to Pakistani authority, have been deployed in tribal areas close to the Afghan border to curb militancy in the region.
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Bush says US to send more troops to Afghanistan
By BEN FELLER Associated Press Thu Jul 3, 1:07 AM ET
WASHINGTON - Grappling with a record death toll in an overshadowed war, President Bush promised Wednesday to send more U.S. troops into Afghanistan by year's end. He conceded that June was a "tough month" in the nearly seven-year-old war.
In fact, it was the deadliest month for U.S. troops in Afghanistan since the conflict began.
"One reason why there have been more deaths is because our troops are taking the fight to a tough enemy, an enemy who doesn't like our presence there because they don't like the idea of America denying safe haven (to terrorists)," Bush told reporters. "Of course there's going to be resistance."
Bush said it was a tough month too for the Taliban. But the once-toppled Islamist regime in Afghanistan has now rebounded with deadly force.
More U.S. and NATO troops have died in the past two months in Afghanistan than in Iraq, a place with triple the number of U.S. and coalition forces.
In June, 28 U.S. troops died in Afghanistan. That was the highest monthly total of the entire war, which began in October 2001.
For the full U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan the death toll was 46, also the highest of the war.
Bush confronted the grim direction of the Afghanistan conflict during a sun-splashed Rose Garden appearance. The president used the event to tout his agenda for an upcoming Group of Eight meeting in Japan with world leaders, then addressed Iran, climate change and gasoline prices in a short Q&A session with reporters.
The Pentagon predicts the pace of attacks in Afghanistan by a resurgent Taliban is likely to rise this year, despite U.S.-led efforts to capture key leaders.
"We're going to increase troops by 2009," Bush said, without offering details about exactly when or how many.
It amounted to a reiteration of a promised buildup of U.S. troops in Afghanistan by Bush. He said coalition forces have doubled in size over two years, and pledged that the twin strategy of fighting extremists and supporting Afghanistan's civil development "is going to work."
The Pentagon's top military officer said Wednesday that if security continues to improve in Iraq he is hopeful he will begin to have troops available to shift to Afghanistan by the end of this year. Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said more troops are essential to stem the violence.
"The Taliban and their supporters have, without question, grown more effective and more aggressive in recent weeks, and as the casualty figures clearly demonstrate," Mullen said. He added that "there's no easy solution, and there will be no quick fix."
In terms of public attention, the war in Afghanistan has been obscured by the far costlier and deadlier one in Iraq.
But it is a matter of consensus within the Bush administration, and between the U.S. and key allies, that there are far too few troops in Afghanistan to fight the accelerating Taliban and to train Afghan soldiers and police.
Overall, roughly 32,000 U.S. troops are in Afghanistan, including 14,000 serving with NATO forces and 18,000 conducting training and counterinsurgency.
That's the largest U.S. presence since the war began.
Afghanistan, not Iraq, was the original target after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The United States led the ouster of the hardline Taliban regime in late 2001 for providing haven to terrorists, including al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
The latest assessment from the Pentagon, released last week, describes a dual terror threat in Afghanistan: the Taliban in the south, and "a more complex, adaptive insurgency" in the east, made up of groups ranging from al-Qaida and Afghan warlords to Pakistani militants.
Military officials say security has deteriorated in large part because of the lawless, tribal border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Bush said he will seek to remind his peers at the G-8 summit that the battle against violent extremists goes on.
"The temptation is to kind of say, well, maybe this isn't really a war, maybe this is just a bunch of disgruntled folks that occasionally come and hurt us," Bush said. "You know, that's not the way I feel about it. This is an ongoing, constant struggle to defend our own security."
The other G-8 nations are Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia. The summit will be the last of Bush's presidency.
On other topics:
• Bush said he wants a multi-country diplomatic solution to the nuclear standoff with Iran, but will not remove the option of a military strike. Asked directly about the possibility of an Israeli strike against Iran, "I have made it very clear to all parties that the first option ought to be solve this problem diplomatically."
In an interview later at the White House with Japanese journalists, Bush said the U.S. won't take the military option off the table on North Korea any more than it would on Iran.
"I have always said that diplomacy has got to be the first choice of solving any of these problems," Bush said referring to Iran, North Korea and Iraq. "But military options remain on the table, and they remain on the table for these three issues."
• The president blasted the Democratic-led Congress for not advancing his energy proposals, including lifting a ban on offshore oil and gas drilling. The president even went so far as to ask Americans to get involved in a lobbying effort. "They ought to be writing their Congress people about it," he said.
• Bush said he hoped the G-8 leaders would come to terms on long-range goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. He said that should come first, before an attempted agreement on shorter-range goals for cutting emissions, a matter of higher priority for many European nations.
• Bush said he will urge other nations to make good on earlier pledges to help alleviate malaria, HIV-AIDS and other diseases in the developing world. "We need people who not only make promises, but write checks, for the sake of human rights and human dignity, and for the sake of peace," he said.
___
Associated Press writers Robert Burns and Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.
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Afghanistan Moves Back into the Limelight
by Jim Lobe antiwar.com July 3, 2008
Six and a half years since the ouster of the Taliban, U.S. media attention is returning to Afghanistan, where more U.S. and NATO troops were killed in June than in any previous month.
Indeed, as noted by both the New York Times and the Washington Post Wednesday, June was the second month in a row in which U.S. deaths in Afghanistan approached the toll in Iraq, where the addition of some 30,000 troops last year and more aggressive counter-insurgency tactics have helped to reduce sectarian violence and attacks against U.S. and allied forces.
Twenty-eight U.S. troops were killed in Afghanistan last month, just one fewer than the 29 in Iraq, while another 18 soldiers from Washington's allies also lost their lives to Taliban forces. The British military, which has the second-largest contingent in Afghanistan, lost 13 soldiers, including the first servicewoman killed in the war.
Even President George W. Bush admitted Wednesday it had been a "tough month" in Afghanistan, insisting, however that the increase in the death toll showed that the coalition forces were taking the offensive.
"You know, one reason why there have been more deaths is because our troops are taking the fight to a tough enemy, an enemy who doesn't like our presence there because they don't like the idea of America denying safe haven," Bush told reporters in the White House Rose Garden.
And while most analysts agreed that the increase in the number of coalition deaths was indeed a result of U.S., British, Canadian, and Dutch forces, in particular, moving into areas in the eastern part of Afghanistan where their presence had previously been sporadic, they also credited a sharp rise in Taliban activity and its adoption of more unconventional tactics, including the use of explosive devices imported from the Iraq war.
"What it points to is that the opposition is becoming more effective," Barnett Rubin, an Afghanistan expert at New York University, told the Post. "It is having a presence in more areas, being better organized, better financed, and having a sustainable strategy. In all, their strategic situation has improved."
Indeed, the record of the last two months has suggested that the Taliban is at least as much on the offensive as U.S.-led forces, which together have reached an all-time high of well some 60,000 troops, of which about half are from U.S. allies operating under NATO command.
In addition to the growing death toll, the Taliban mounted a particularly bold assassination attempt against President Hamid Karzai during a military parade in Kabul in late April, and in mid-June staged a spectacular jailbreak in Kandahar that freed hundreds of suspected collaborators and subsequently seized and briefly held seven villages around Afghanistan's second-largest city.
Just last week, a new Pentagon report – the first review of the situation in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion in late 2000 – concluded that the Taliban has effectively "coalesced into a resilient insurgency" that was spreading into previously relatively peaceful parts of the country.
The report also predicted that violence – already at unprecedented levels since the Taliban's ouster – will likely increase through the rest of the year. Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser, the top U.S. commander in eastern Afghanistan, told reporters that attacks in his sector increased by 40 percent in the first five months this year compared to the same period in 2007.
While no one believes that the Taliban is powerful enough to oust the Karzai government or defeat – or even directly challenge – U.S. and NATO forces there, the Pentagon has been arguing for several months that it needs at least 10,000 more troops deployed to Afghanistan to adequately cope with resurgent insurgency.
But where those troops will come from remains a major question. In late March, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he would send 1,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Germany last week announced that it would send some 1,000 troops later this fall to bring its total force there to some 4,500, but the conditions attached by Berlin to their deployment forbid their involvement in combat.
The Pentagon, which added 3,000 marines to its Afghan force earlier this year, has been unable to come up with more of its own troops because of Bush's insistence that nothing be done to put at risk the relative stability that his "surge" strategy in Iraq has helped achieve. As a result, the current drawdown from Iraq from 170,000 troops earlier this year to some 140,000 troops by August will be suspended at the end of this month.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the Pentagon brass had hoped withdrawals would continue at roughly 5,000 troops a month beyond July, thus freeing up many more troops for deployment to Afghanistan. But those hopes have now been put on hold indefinitely to the clear frustration of Gates and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen.
Public support for more troops in countries that are expected to supply them is also growing increasingly doubtful. Indeed, a recent multi-national Pew Global Attitudes Project poll conducted in April – that is, before the bloody months of May and June – found bare pluralities of respondents in the U.S. and Britain in favor of "keep[ing] troops in Afghanistan until the situation is stabilized" as opposed to removing them.
In NATO members France, Germany, Spain, Poland, and Turkey, on the other hand, majorities ranging from 54 percent to 72 percent said they believed the U.S. and NATO should withdraw. Only in Australia, a non-NATO country that has contributed combat troops to both Afghanistan and Iraq, did a strong majority (60 percent) say they preferred to stay.
Some experts, however, believe that even adding troops – at least in the quantities the Pentagon believes is necessary – will not appreciably redress the deteriorating dynamics in Afghanistan if other key factors, including the growing perception that the Karzai government is ineffective and corrupt, the lack of development, and the continuing increase in the opium and heroin trade which help finance the Taliban, are not addressed.
At least, if not more, important is the safe haven enjoyed by Taliban forces in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the North-West Frontier Province in Pakistan, much of which has come under the control of the Pakistan's own Taliban and allied forces.
Relations between Washington and the Pakistani military have reportedly deteriorated badly in recent weeks over U.S. pressure on Islamabad to prevent the infiltration of Taliban forces from the Pakistani side of the border, and the new civilian-led government, which is still working out internal divisions on key issues, appears unprepared to deal with the problem.
"No matter how many more troops you add into Afghanistan, you won't really be able to get at the root of the problem" of safe havens in Pakistan, Rubin told a public-television interviewer last week.
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Big Oil pumps up the ugly Afghan and Iraqi mix
LAWRENCE MARTIN The Globe and Mail (Canada) / July 3, 2008
In the war zones, the oil deals are coming on stream.
Afghanistan recently signed a major agreement to build an American-backed pipeline. It will traverse the Kandahar region where Canadian forces are fighting. If they're still there, Canadians could well be called on to be a pipeline protection force.
In Iraq this week, the giant oil fields were opened to foreign bidders. U.S. conglomerates such as Exxon Mobil are about to sign no-bid contracts to move in. Big Oil, already brimming with profits, will have a fine Fourth of July.
The new Baghdad deals will trigger more wrangling over the real motivation for the Iraq invasion. There was a time when it was mainly just conspiracy theorists and other assorted weedy types who claimed the aggression was chiefly about oil. But along came Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, who wrote last year in his book The Age of Turbulence, "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq war is largely about oil." This week's entry of Big Oil in Iraq will only buttress this view.
The Afghan war wasn't all about oil. But that has certainly been among Washington's motivations and now, with the pipeline deal, it will be front and centre. As for Canada, oil wasn't on the radar screen in our war debate. Liberal governments didn't discuss it. "Never once heard mention of it from 2002 to 2006," said Eugene Lang, who worked closely on the Afghan file with two Liberal defence ministers.
In the late 1990s, an American-led oil consortium held talks with the Taliban about building a pipeline from Central Asia - where oil and gas reserves are gigantic - through Afghanistan to Pakistan, from where it could be shipped westward. The talks broke down in mid-2001. Washington was furious, leading to speculation it might take out the Taliban. After 9/11, the Taliban, with good reason, were removed - and pipeline planning continued with the Karzai government. U.S. forces installed bases near Kandahar, where the pipeline was to run. A key motivation for the pipeline was to block a competing bid involving Iran, a charter member of the "axis of evil."
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher said recently that Washington has a "fundamental strategic interest" in Afghanistan that extends well beyond ensuring it is not used as a base for terrorism. In Ottawa, energy economist John Foster recently released a report on the pipeline. "Government efforts to convince Canadians to stay in Afghanistan have been enormous," he wrote, "but the impact of the proposed multibillion-dollar pipeline in areas of Afghanistan under Canadian purview has never been seriously debated."
In November of 2006, the Conservatives seemed to take a stand. At a little-noticed meeting in New Delhi, they agreed to help Kabul become an energy bridge through the building of the pipeline.
With the Afghan war not going well, the likelihood is the $7.6-billion project might not proceed for a few years. Canadian soldiers could well be gone by then, though we could extend our deadline one more time. The Americans would certainly like us to help them defend the pipeline route.
What should also be considered is that Afghanistan stands to reap a windfall in transit fees if the pipeline goes ahead. Such a pipeline also would help the U.S. in its energy needs - needs that its entry into Iraq's oil fields would help replenish too.
But the plan should be to get off dependence on foreign oil. The Bush administration has utterly failed to move the ball forward on energy independence. Some war boosters predicted that a successful Iraq war would bring oil down to $20 a barrel. It is now about seven times that price. The war, which cut Iraqi production, contributed to the massive U.S. debt and the plunge in the greenback's value, a significant factor in the prices we now pay at the pump.
Both the American infiltration of Iraq's oil fields and the Afghan project might serve to increase the flow and eventually help stabilize prices to some degree.
War for oil is hardly a savoury option. But get ready. With the signing of the pipeline plan in Kabul, it will soon be part of the debate in this country.
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Japan donates 2.7m dollars for Afghan refugees in Pakistan
Text of report by official news agency Associated Press of Pakistan (APP)
Islamabad, Pakistan, 1 July: The government of Japan has contributed 2.7m dollars to assist Afghan refugees in Pakistan, continuing a tradition of humanitarian generosity towards the world largest refugee-hosting country. According to a press release issued here on Tuesday [1 July], the 2.7m dollars donation will go towards the UN refugee agency operations for registered Afghans throughout Pakistan.
In total, United Nation High Commission for Refugee (UNHCR) Pakistan needs over 18.3m dollars to carry out its activities this year. "We are committed to helping Afghan refugees and their hosts to find solutions after nearly 30 years in exile", said Ambassador of Japan to Pakistan Seiji Kojima. Japan has come through for refugees yet again, said UNHCR Representative in Islamabad, Guenet Guebre-Christos. "Its continuing support has allowed us to serve Afghans in this protracted situation," he said. It is also an acknowledgement of Pakistan long-term hospitality tow! ards refugees.
Since 2001, Japan has donated over 13m dollars to UNHCR Pakistan programme. Monetary contributions aside, the country has also assisted Afghan refugees in novel ways. From 1995 to 2004, the Japanese Girl Scouts Association visited Pakistan almost annually to distribute peace packs to refugee children. Consisting of stationary supplies, toys, T-shirts and toiletries, these packs brought smiles to thousands of Afghan children in Pakistan.
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The Long Arm Of Pakistan
Times of India By Haroun Mir 07/02/2008
KABUL -The latest terrorist attack on a prison in Kandahar was not the work of the Taliban alone. In fact, all significant terrorist attacks during the last several months in Afghanistan have the imprint of Al-Qaida both in the planning and execution.
Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai's harsh reaction against Pakistan, by threatening to send Afghan troops into Pakistani soil to fight Al-Qaida and the Taliban in their safe houses, shows the frustration of the Afghan leadership against Pakistan's latest peace agreements with the Taliban.
The US military in Afghanistan is convinced of Pakistan's duplicity and cannot ignore the threat coming from a reinvigorated Al-Qaida in Pakistan.
The series of well-organised terrorist attacks in Afghanistan since January of this year, such as the attack on Serena Hotel, an assassination attempt against Karzai and the latest attack on a prison in Kandahar, show that either the Taliban has improved its powers to strike or Al-Qaida has regained its lost influence in Afghanistan.
The 2007 United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan report on suicide attacks in Afghanistan indicated that Taliban suicide bombers are often inept.
In many instances they have killed only themselves and not their intended targets. Also, most of them are uneducated and come from the poorest segments of the population.
It seems highly unlikely that they could have improved in the short period of less than a year.
In addition, in all of the latest terrorist attacks in Afghanistan, the Afghan police seem to have assisted the terrorists.
The infiltration of Afghan security forces is out of reach and beyond the capability of the Taliban. Only Al-Qaida has the capacity to recruit security officials and organise highly sophisticated attacks in the heart of well-protected cities such as Kabul and Kandahar.
Since political turmoil started in Pakistan at least over a year ago, all military pressure has shifted away from the tribal area in Pakistan, where Al-Qaida and the Taliban have established their safe houses and training camps.
The recent peace agreement between the newly-elected civilian government of Pakistan and the Taliban has given the latter an implicit approval to intensify their attacks inside Afghanistan.
Indeed, Al-Qaida has benefited from the chaos in Pakistan and has had ample time to regroup and step up its terrorist attacks.
The Afghanistan president is disappointed by continuous deception from the Pakistani authorities. His recent threat to send Afghan troops into Pakistani soil and fight terrorists over there is symbolic of his personal frustration.
He was under tremendous pressure during the Paris conference held on June 12 for lack of improvements in Afghanistan. Indeed, increasing insurgency activities and growing terrorist attacks have blocked the development process in the entire southern region of the country.
This time, Karzai's frustration is also shared by the United States military in Afghanistan. The latest US attack in Pakistani territory, which killed 11 Pakistani soldiers, is a warning signal to the Pakistani military.
Indeed, the US authorities have for a long time trusted Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf as a key ally in the war against Al-Qaida and the Taliban.
It took Washington a long time to eventually become disillusioned with him. However, the civilian government of Pakistan is unable to impose its will on the powerful Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) branch of the military.
Since the early 1990s, successive prime ministers of Pakistan have had no other choice but to comply with the ISI's policy in Afghanistan.
There is a consensus among western intelligence services that Al-Qaida and the Taliban leadership live in safe houses inside Pakistan.
President Bush, during his speech in New York after the September 11, 2001 attacks, promised that he would "smoke out" the terrorists from their caves.
However, nearly seven years later the Al-Qaida and Taliban leadership are still at large in Pakistan. Lately, the current US administration has come under heavy criticism for going overboard to appease Pakistan. In an election year it is critical for the outgoing administration to show some success in the war against terror, and the best achievement would be to capture or kill a top leader of Al-Qaida or the Taliban.
Pakistani authorities take seriously the military threat coming from Afghanistan, even though an ill-equipped Afghan army of only 70,000 soldiers is not a match against a strong Pakistani military of 6,00,000 soldiers.
However, the Afghan army, backed by American special forces and the US air force, would be better equipped to fight Al-Qaida and the Taliban in the tribal areas bordering Pakistan than in Afghan villages and towns. Ultimately, Pakistan might face an existential challenge if the US is forced to intervene in Pakistani territory in the name of the "war on terror".
(The writer was a special assistant to Afghanistan's former defence minister Ahmad Shah Massoud.)
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Eco-bazaars install solar street lamps
www.quqnoos.com Written by PAN Wednesday, 02 July 2008
Province bordering Kabul starts to use solar power to light up markets
BAZAARS in a province bordering Kabul are slowly trading in their hurricane lamps and diesel generators for a more eco-friendly energy source.
About fifty street lamps, powered by the sun, have been installed in five bazaars in Kapisa province as part of a $90,000 plan that sponsors say will improve security in the area.
Bagram Airbase’s Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) started to install the solar powered street lamps three months ago in the market places of Tagab, Najrab, Sayad, Kohistan and Jamal Agha.
The district governor of Najrab, Sultan Ahmad Safi, said the new lights would improve security in his district by allowing security forces to improve their night operations.
The head of the district’s artisan union urged the PRT to install 20 more lamps because the current ones failed to provide enough light for the bazaar.
Before the solar powered lamps were installed, the districts’ bazaars relied on kerosene-fuelled hurricane lanterns and diesel generators to light up the night sky.
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New top general sees soldiers out of Afghanistan by 2011
The Globe and Mail STEVEN CHASE July 2, 2008
OTTAWA-Canada's new top general says he's still confident Canadian soldiers can quit combat operations in Kandahar by 2011, despite a surge in Taliban attacks and gloomier assessments of the Afghan war from the Pentagon.
General Walter Natynczyk replaced Rick Hillier as Chief of the Defence Staff in Ottawa on Wednesday in a pomp-and-circumstance-charged ceremony that ended with the departing top soldier riding off into retirement.
In his first news conference as the Canadian Forces top commander, Gen. Natynczyk batted down concerns about the strength of Afghan insurgency – worries that have arisen since Taliban fighters freed 800 prisoners from a Kandahar jail, including 400 sympathizers, on June 13.
The upsurge reflects the fact that the spring and summer fighting season is always busier, he said.
“We knew there'd be a spring and summer campaign season everyone was predicting that a little while ago and we're into the fight right now.”
He said the Afghan army is making “huge progress” in taking over responsibility for security from NATO coalition forces. This transfer is one of the goals Canada has set for its promised military exit from the Afghan province of Kandahar in 2011.
Gen. Natynczyk, 50, made much of one mid-June counteroffensive in the Arghandab district north of Kandahar, where Afghans and Canadians beat back and defeated Taliban forces. He said it's proof that Afghans are increasingly ready to take charge.
“The Afghan army that we have trained with this past two years are actually stepping up. It was their plan [in Arghandab]. It was their leaders. What I see is that the Afghans are taking ownership of this operation,” he said. “Where we were by their side or ahead of them in the past two years, now we're behind them and supporting them.”
Gen. Natynczyk's assessment of the situation in Afghanistan is more rosy than that of some U.S. military officials. A recent Pentagon report offered a downbeat assessment of security, saying Taliban forces had “coalesced into a resilient insurgency.”
In May, more U.S. and coalition troops were killed in Afghanistan than in Iraq for the first time since those wars began, according to the Pentagon. On Wednesday, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in Washington that the Taliban had become more effective.
“I am, and have been for some time now, deeply troubled by the increasing violence there,” he said. “The Taliban and their supporters have, without question, grown more effective and more aggressive in recent weeks.”
Gen. Natynczyk said Canadians shouldn't expect progress in Afghanistan to take a linear path. “Sometimes it's not [on] a linear plane. Sometimes something will happen like the Afghan military stepping up or tribal leaders will all the sudden say, ‘We've had enough of the Taliban,'” he said.
The ceremony to transfer command to Gen. Natynczyk from Gen. Hillier was far more high-profile than others in recent years – evidence of the departing general's push to give the military a greater role in Canadian society.
Hundreds of millions of dollars of military hardware, including a new C-17 cargo lifter plane, ringed the event. Parachutists jumped from the sky, artillery sounded a 21-gun salute, and jets from the Snowbirds aerobatic team roared overhead.
Gen. Hillier, 53, who served in armoured regiments early in his career, left the ceremony in the same gung-ho manner that he led the Forces, climbing aboard a tank and saluting the troops from the turret as the tracked vehicle drove away.
His next job will be as chancellor of Memorial University in St. John's.
With a report from Reuters
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