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Pentagon putting more air power on Afghanistan
By PAULINE JELINEK Associated Press Writer Tue Jul 8, 10:32 AM ET
WASHINGTON - Worried about increasing insurgent attacks in Afghanistan, the U.S. military says it is sending extra air power there by shifting an aircraft carrier away from the Iraq war.
Kabul bomb sign of worsening security in Afghanistan: Obama
by Stephen Collinson July 8, 2008
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul was another sign of a "severe deterioration" of security in Afghanistan, and promised to go on the offensive against Al-Qaeda.
Afghanistan blames 'foreign intelligence' for embassy blast
Tue Jul 8, 7:18 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - Afghanistan accused "foreign intelligence" of a role in an attack that killed 41 people at the Indian embassy as the Taliban insisted Tuesday they did not carry out the capital's deadliest suicide blast.
Afghan official suggests Pakistan linked to bomb
By AMIR SHAH
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghan officials have evidence that foreigners were behind a massive suicide bombing against India's embassy in Kabul, President Hamid Karzai's spokesman said Tuesday, implying that Pakistan orchestrated the attack.
Pakistan denies involvement in Kabul embassy blast
By AMIR SHAH
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A massive suicide bombing against India's embassy in Kabul could not have succeeded without the support of foreign intelligence agencies, Afghanistan said in a thinly veiled reference to Pakistan in a security report released Tuesday.
China condemns India embassy bombing in Kabul
Sapporo (Japan), Jul 8 (PTI) China today condemned the suicide bombing on the Indian embassy in Afghanistan in which 41 people, including two Indian diplomats and two ITBP personnel, were killed
NATO condemns Kabul bombing
BRUSSELS, July 7 (Xinhua) -- NATO condemned on Monday the bombing at the Indian Embassy in Kabul that killed about 40 people.
Australia condemns Indian embassy attack in Kabul
CANBERRA, July 8 (Xinhua) -- The Australian government on Tuesday condemned a suicide bombing of the Indian embassy in Afghanistan, sending its sympathies to India and Afghanistan over the attack which killed more than 40 people.
India: Afghanistan's influential ally
By Soutik Biswas - BBC News, Delhi
The attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul is a setback for a country which has been one of Afghanistan's closest allies in recent years.
Attacked embassy a symbol of Indian push into Afghanistan
7.7.08 – Times of India NEW DELHI - India's sprawling embassy compound in Kabul is a symbol of the country's bid for more strategic clout in Afghanistan since the fall of the extremist Taliban regime in 2001.
Now it's war against India in Afghanistan
By Sudha Ramachandran – Asia Times
BANGALORE - The suicide bomber who crashed an explosive-laden car into the Indian Embassy in the Afghan capital Kabul on Monday not only killed 41 people and injured more than 140, he sent a powerful message to Delhi
NATO soldier, four Afghan police killed in attacks
July 8, 2008
ASADABAD, Afghanistan (AFP) - A NATO-led soldier and four Afghan police were killed Tuesday in new attacks linked to an insurgency in Afghanistan by Taliban and other Islamic extremists, officials said.
Afghanistan: Euro-MPs back wider role for European Union
Brussels, 8 July (AKI) - Members of the European Parliament on Tuesday called for the European Union to play a much greater political role in conflict-wracked Afghanistan.
Bomb found on Afghan bus transporting Indians
Daily Times, Pakistan
HERAT/ASADABAD/ WASHINGTON: A bomb was found on a bus transporting 12 Indian workers in Afghanistan on Tuesday, a governor said, a day after a suicide attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul killed 41 people.
Turkey condemns terrorist attacks in Pakistan, Afghanistan
ANKARA, July 8 (Xinhua) -- Turkey condemned recent terrorist attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan, during which killed at least 59 people and injured scores, an official statement said on Tuesday.
Pakistan's deal with the devil
Beheadings, martial law, kidnappings: The Taliban is making its presence felt at the gates of one of Pakistan's biggest cities.
By Walter Mayr Jul. 08, 2008 | Der Speigel
The situation changed overnight in Peshawar. The villas in the posh suburb of Hayatabad, hidden behind acacias, palms and oleander bushes, are now directly on the front line. The Pakistani security forces have declared war
Russians reflect on Afghan conflict
By James Rodgers BBC News, Moscow Tuesday, 8 July 2008
Between 1979 and 1989 thousands of Soviet soldiers died in Afghanistan fighting the US-backed mujahideen. But 110 British soldiers have been killed in the country since 2001 as fighting rages with the Taleban. So what do Russian veteran
Alberta bucks trend to oppose Afghan mission
Stampede crowds reflect local support for military
Calgary Herald Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Canadians are increasingly turning against the Afghanistan mission in the wake of last month's Taliban prison break and continued casualties, says a new poll.
Turmoil puts Afghanistan at epicenter of White House campaign
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Fresh carnage in Kabul and a rising death toll among US troops are thrusting once-forgotten Afghanistan into the thick of the intensifying White House showdown between John McCain and Barack Obama.
Police arrest ministry's 'wheat thiefs'
www.quqnoos.com Written by PAN Monday, 07 July 2008
Ministry workers caught stealing 40 tonnes of wheat, police say
POLICE have arrested three employees at the ministry of agriculture for stealing 40 tonnes of wheat.
Villagers clash over lack of clean water
Written by www.quqnoos.com Monday, 07 July 2008
Disease spreads in drought-struck province as hundreds left without water
CLASHES over access to clean drinking water have broken out in the northern province of Samangan.
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Pentagon putting more air power on Afghanistan
By PAULINE JELINEK Associated Press Writer Tue Jul 8, 10:32 AM ET
WASHINGTON - Worried about increasing insurgent attacks in Afghanistan, the U.S. military says it is sending extra air power there by shifting an aircraft carrier away from the Iraq war.
Defense officials said Tuesday that the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln was moved out of the Persian Gulf and to the Gulf of Oman, shortening the time that the carrier's strike planes must fly to support combat in Afghanistan.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.
One official said the decision reflects both the worsened state of the fight in Afghanistan but improvements in Iraq as well. Since violence is down in Iraq, U.S. defense leadership believes it is possible to focus some air capabilities away from Iraq and more on Afghanistan.
The Navy routinely moves ships in and out of the Persian Gulf, where they not only support America's two ongoing wars but serve as a show of force to Iran and sign of support to regional allies.
The departure of the aircraft carrier from the Persian Gulf still leaves a number of other ships there, including the amphibious assault ship USS Peleliu, other amphibious ships and a couple of destroyers.
There is still also "significant air power" remaining on the ground inside Iraq, one official said.
Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Monday that it appears "security conditions are holding" in Iraq and that important elements of a solution to the war — including reduced levels of sectarian violence, political reconciliation and stronger Iraqi forces — are coming into view more than five years after the U.S. invasion.
Meanwhile in the seventh year of war in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last week that he has "real concern" about a sharp rise in attacks in the East, a development he blamed on Pakistan's failure to put pressure on insurgents there.
Commanders in Afghanistan have long asked for more ground forces and more air support and Mullen has been frank that he would like to send more but that Iraq is the priority.
After unsuccessfully pressing NATO for a year to send more troops, the Pentagon announced in January that it was ordering a Marine unit there instead to work in the volatile south.
Though officials had promised they would stay for only six months, they decided last week to extend them by 30 days.
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Kabul bomb sign of worsening security in Afghanistan: Obama
by Stephen Collinson July 8, 2008
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul was another sign of a "severe deterioration" of security in Afghanistan, and promised to go on the offensive against Al-Qaeda.
Obama's remarks on Monday came as the fresh carnage in Kabul and rising deaths among coalition troops battling Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants thrust the Afghan conflict, once seen as the "forgotten" war, into the center of the 2008 White House campaign.
Monday's car bomb ripped into the embassy compound in the capital, killing two Indian diplomats and two Indian guards and nearly three dozen Afghans. Nearly 150 people were wounded.
Afghan officials accused Pakistan of being behind the blast, saying the attack had the hallmarks of Islamabad's intelligence agency.
Obama told reporters that the bombing "is one more indication of the severe deterioration that we've seen in the security situation in Afghanistan."
"I have consistently stated that one of (the) other reasons for us to begin a careful phased deployment out of Iraq, is that we are under-manned in Afghanistan," the Illinois senator said in St. Louis, Missouri, on Monday.
"And as president of the United States I will do everything that we can to stabilize the situation in Afghanistan and go on the offensive against Al Qaeda, who have reconstituted themselves," he added.
"It is absolutely critical for us to go on the offensive."
Obama is promising to redeploy large numbers of US combat troops from Iraq to Afghanistan if he is elected president in November, in an effort to quell resurgent militant activity.
His Republican rival John McCain however maintains Iraq is the central front of the "war on terror," adding that a US withdrawal would embolden terrorists and US enemies and that the two wars cannot be seen in isolation.
Obama argues that the huge US troop presence in Iraq is draining resources from the anti-terror effort in Afghanistan.
The Illinois senator will lay out his plan for both conflicts in visits to Iraq and Afghanistan expected later this month, details of which have yet to be released for security reasons.
Democrats have long argued that the Bush administration took its eye off the search for Al-Qaeda kingpin Osama bin Laden, and the battle with the Taliban by invading Iraq in 2003.
Obama's foreign policy advisor Susan Rice last week accused McCain of fully supporting Bush administration policy on Iraq, which she said had dangerously distracted attention from the anti-terror fight in Afghanistan.
"Every day, there's a new report that underscores the reality that Afghanistan is sliding toward chaos," Rice told reporters on a conference call.
Obama has vowed to get most combat troops out of Iraq at the rate of one or two brigades a month, a process which he says should be complete within 16 months.
But McCain says such a plan would imperil gains made from the a troop surge strategy and argues that Obama's solution is too simplistic.
"To somehow think it is an either-or situation, either Afghanistan or Iraq, is a fundamental misreading of the situation in the Middle East," McCain told reporters last week.
"What happens in Iraq matters in Afghanistan," McCain said.
"If we had failed in Iraq if we had pursued the policies vociferously advocated by Senator Obama, we would have risked a wider war.
"We need to succeed in Iraq, and I am confident we can succeed in Afghanistan, but it's not just a matter of more troops."
The dispute over Afghanistan reflects differing political perceptions of the war on terror launched after the September 11 attacks in 2001.
The issue has moved to the forefront due to the death toll among international troops in the two wars: it is rising in Afghanistan, but decreasing in Iraq.
June was the deadliest month for foreign troops in Afghanistan since the 2001 fall of the Taliban, with 49 soldiers from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the separate US-led coalition killed.
Thirty-one soldiers including 29 Americans were killed in Iraq in June, despite the fact that there are more than twice as many troops there as in Afghanistan.
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Afghanistan blames 'foreign intelligence' for embassy blast
Tue Jul 8, 7:18 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - Afghanistan accused "foreign intelligence" of a role in an attack that killed 41 people at the Indian embassy as the Taliban insisted Tuesday they did not carry out the capital's deadliest suicide blast.
A security report to the cabinet hours after the blast said the attack could not have been carried out without the "full support of foreign intelligence," according to a summary of the meeting released to media Tuesday.
It did not name a foreign intelligence service but Afghanistan regularly accuses circles in Pakistan, a long-time rival of India, of supporting the Taliban and other insurgents. Pakistan denies the accusation.
Monday's car bomb ripped into the embassy compound, killing two Indian diplomats and two Indian guards as well as nearly three dozen Afghans. Nearly 150 people were wounded, Afghan officials said.
"The terrorists no doubt could not have succeeded in launching such an atrocity without full support of foreign intelligence," the summary said, citing the report.
The report also said a "big number of puppet and foreign terrorists, the enemies of peace and stability of the Afghan people, have entered the country in the past several months," according to the summary.
And in a clear reference to Pakistan, it said "evidence shows that the terrorists have been trained, equipped and financed in professional bases across the border."
The cabinet had "decided to raise the issue with Afghanistan's international anti-terrorism partners seriously," the summary said.
Kabul and Islamabad are key players in the United States' "war on terror" launched after the September 11, 2001 attacks blamed on Al-Qaeda, which the Taliban regime allowed to operate in Afghanistan.
But Afghan and Western officials allege that Islamic extremists have sanctuaries in Pakistan which helped to create the Taliban as an armed militia and was one of only three countries that recognised the hardliners' government.
Islamabad officially dropped its support for the Taliban only after the 9/11 attacks but Afghans allege it still wants the new government in Kabul to fail for its own strategic purposes.
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani however denied his government was involved in Monday's attack, saying in Kuala Lumpur it was not in Islamabad's interests to destabilise Afghanistan.
The Taliban meanwhile again denied involvement and blamed rivalry among regional powers, including Pakistan. The hardliners have claimed almost all of a wave of suicide attacks as part of their insurgency.
"We wish we had carried out this attack ... since India has been the enemy of the Islamic Emirate," spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed told AFP, referring to the 1996-2001 Taliban regime.
India had assisted the Northern Alliance, an Afghan faction that fought the Taliban, and was now helping the US-backed government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Mujahed said.
"They send secret military experts to Afghanistan and they train the Afghan army," he said.
Mujahed said he believed other countries were involved. "America, China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan and other countries around are rivals in Afghanistan and this attack may be the result of this rivalry," he said.
A special team from New Delhi was meanwhile in Kabul to help the Indian embassy get back on
its feet, the ambassador Jayant Prasad told AFP.
"They are helping to get the embassy functional again because the embassy has been badly hit and completely dislocated. There are structural problems with the building, our cars have been destroyed," he said.
The United Nations has led worldwide condemnation of the bombing, with its Security Council calling it a "reprehensible act of terrorism."
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Afghan official suggests Pakistan linked to bomb
By AMIR SHAH
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghan officials have evidence that foreigners were behind a massive suicide bombing against India's embassy in Kabul, President Hamid Karzai's spokesman said Tuesday, implying that Pakistan orchestrated the attack.
The spokesman, Humayun Hamidzada, did not name Pakistan's intelligence agency but told reporters it was "pretty obvious" who was behind Monday's bombing, which killed 41 people and wounded 150.
An Afghan security report released earlier Tuesday found that the bombing could not have succeeded without the support of foreign intelligence agencies, another reference to Pakistan, India's archrival.
"The sophistication of this attack and the kind of material that was used, the specific targeting, everything has the hallmarks of a particular agency that has conducted similar attacks inside Afghanistan. We have sufficient evidence to say that," Hamidzada said. "The project was designed outside Afghanistan. It was exported to Afghanistan."
Among the blast's victims were four Indians working in the embassy, including the military attache and a diplomat.
Pakistan's prime minister denied Tuesday that its intelligence service was behind the attack. Speaking in Malaysia, Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani said his country has no interest in destabilizing Afghanistan when both countries are fighting terrorism.
"We want stability in the region. We ourselves are a victim of terrorism and extremism," said Gilani on the sidelines of a summit of eight developing Islamic nations. He did not elaborate.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood condemned the attack on Monday, but Gilani's comment is the first high-level denial of involvement by the government.
Also on Tuesday, Afghanistan summoned the charge d'affair of the Pakistan Embassy to Afghanistan's Foreign Ministry over comments made by a former Pakistan member of parliament mentioning the need for jihad against U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan often accuses Pakistani intelligence of supporting the Taliban insurgency, a charge denied by Islamabad.
The bodies of the four Indians killed in the attack were flown back home late Monday aboard an Indian military plane, said Gen. Ahmad Zia Aftali, the head of Kabul's main military hospital.
Senior Afghan government officials were at the airport, including Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak and President Hamid Karzai's national security adviser Zalmay Rasoul, Aftali said.
Karzai condemned the bombing Monday and said it was carried out by militants trying to rupture the Afghan-India friendship. He told the Indian prime minister during a phone conversation that Afghanistan would do all it could do identify the attackers. The blast was the deadliest in Kabul since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
Suspicion of Pakistan's involvement runs deep in the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan — Pakistani intelligence helped create the Taliban militia, many of whose leaders and recruits studied at religious schools in Pakistan.
Despite international condemnation of the Taliban regime's fundamentalist rule in Afghanistan from 1996-2001, Pakistan was one of the few countries that gave it diplomatic recognition.
Pakistan formally abandoned its support for the Taliban after Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington. Still, Taliban leaders are suspected of getting continued shelter and support in Pakistan, and maintaining links with the Pakistani intelligence agency.
Meanwhile, Pakistan views with suspicion the involvement of its longtime rival India in post-Taliban Afghanistan.
India has donated millions of dollars to Afghanistan for reconstruction, and there are thousands of Indian engineers and laborers in the country helping to build roads and other infrastructure.
Pakistanis are wary of Indian consulates established in the outlying cities of Kandahar, Jalalabad, Herat, and Mazar-i-Sharif. But Indian officials say they are there to support reconstruction. Militants have frequently attacked Indian offices and projects around Afghanistan.
Ikram Sehgal, a political analyst in Pakistan, said he doubted Pakistan's intelligence service was behind the attack. He said a more likely culprit is the Pashtuns — the largest of Afghan ethnic groups that also forms the core of the Taliban insurgency — saying they see the Indians as "enemies."
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Pakistan denies involvement in Kabul embassy blast
By AMIR SHAH
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A massive suicide bombing against India's embassy in Kabul could not have succeeded without the support of foreign intelligence agencies, Afghanistan said in a thinly veiled reference to Pakistan in a security report released Tuesday.
The report said terrorists entered Afghanistan after receiving training and logistical support from across the border, a reference to Pakistan. The report by the Ministry of Defense and the country's national security adviser was discussed by Afghanistan's Cabinet shortly after Monday's embassy attack, which killed 41 people and wounded 150.
"Without any doubt the terrorists could not have succeeded in this act without the support of foreign intelligence agencies," the report said.
Pakistan's prime minister denied Tuesday that its intelligence service was behind the attack. Speaking in Malaysia, Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani said his country has no interest in destabilizing Afghanistan when both countries are fighting terrorism.
"We want stability in the region. We ourselves are a victim of terrorism and extremism," said Gilani on the sidelines of a summit of eight developing Islamic nations. He did not elaborate.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood condemned the attack on Monday, but Gilani's comment is the first high-level denial of involvement by the government.
Also on Tuesday, Afghanistan summoned the charge d'affair of the Pakistan Embassy to Afghanistan's Foreign Ministry over comments made by a former Pakistan member of parliament mentioning the need for jihad against U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan often accuses Pakistani intelligence of supporting the Taliban insurgency, a charge denied by Islamabad.
The bodies of the four Indians killed in the attack were flown back home late Monday aboard an Indian military plane, said Gen. Ahmad Zia Aftali, the head of Kabul's main military hospital.
Senior Afghan government officials were at the airport, including Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak and President Hamid Karzai's national security advisor Zalmay Rasoul, Aftali said.
Karzai condemned the bombing Monday and said it was carried out by militants trying to rupture the Afghan-India friendship. He told the Indian prime minister during a phone conversation that Afghanistan would do all it could do identify the attackers.
The blast was the deadliest in Kabul since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
Suspicion of Pakistan's involvement runs deep in the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan — Pakistani intelligence helped create the Taliban militia, many of whose leaders and recruits studied at religious schools in Pakistan.
Despite international condemnation of the Taliban regime's fundamentalist rule in Afghanistan from 1996-2001, Pakistan was one of the few countries that gave it diplomatic recognition.
Pakistan formally abandoned its support for the Taliban after Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington. Still, Taliban leaders are suspected of getting continued shelter and support in Pakistan, and maintaining links with the Pakistani intelligence agency.
Meanwhile, Pakistan views with suspicion the involvement of its longtime rival India in post-Taliban Afghanistan.
India has donated millions of dollars to Afghanistan for reconstruction, and there are thousands of Indian engineers and laborers in the country helping to build roads and other infrastructure.
Pakistanis are wary of Indian consulates established in the outlying cities of Kandahar, Jalalabad, Herat, and Mazar-i-Sharif. But Indian officials say they are there to support reconstruction. Militants have frequently attacked Indian offices and projects around Afghanistan.
Ikram Sehgal, a political analyst in Pakistan, said he doubted Pakistan's intelligence service was behind the attack. He said a more likely culprit is the Pashtuns — the largest of Afghan ethnic groups that also forms the core of the Taliban insurgency — saying they see the Indians as "enemies."
Associated Press writer Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, contributed to this report.
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China condemns India embassy bombing in Kabul
Sapporo (Japan), Jul 8 (PTI) China today condemned the suicide bombing on the Indian embassy in Afghanistan in which 41 people, including two Indian diplomats and two ITBP personnel, were killed.
"We strongly denounce the terrorist attack on the Indian embassy. I sincerely express my heartfelt condolences to the families of those killed in the bombing in Afghanistan," Chinese President Hu Jintao told Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when they met here on the sidelines of the G-8 summit.
Militants rammed an explosives-laden car into the heavily fortified Indian embassy's gates in Kabul yesterday, killing at least 41 people, including Defence Attache Brigadier R D Mehta and Counsellor Venkateswara Rao.
Hu also thanked the government and people of India for its help in relief and reconstruction in the Sichuan province of China which had suffered a massive earthquake recently. He recalled that India had given USD five million for assistance.
The prime minister reiterated India's profound condolences and sympathy for those affected in the earthquake and said he had no no doubt that the Chinese people had the capability to overcome the impact of the disaster.
In this measure, he said, India had been privileged to offer small help. He also expressed India's deep admiration for the way the Chinese handled the earthquake. PTI
EU condemns attack on Indian embassy in Kabul
BRUSSELS, July 7 (Xinhua) -- European Union (EU) foreign policy chief Javier Solana has condemned Monday's terrorist attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan.
"I condemn the terrorist attack outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul today, which killed more than 40 innocent civilians, including staff members of the Indian mission, and left hundreds injured," he said in a statement.
Solana conveyed his condolences and "deepest sympathy" to the families of the victims and to the Afghan and Indian authorities.
He voiced hope "that the Afghan Government will find and bring to justice those behind this barbaric act."
"Such actions, which are clearly intended to undermine the process of stabilization and reconstruction in Afghanistan, will achieve nothing," he emphasized.
Solana said the EU was fully committed to long-term support for the people and government of Afghanistan in their efforts to build a democratic and stable state.
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NATO condemns Kabul bombing
BRUSSELS, July 7 (Xinhua) -- NATO condemned on Monday the bombing at the Indian Embassy in Kabul that killed about 40 people.
"On behalf of NATO, I wholeheartedly condemn the bombing at the Indian Embassy. The loss of life and injuries to so many is a tragedy, and a clear attempt to undermine regional relations," NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said in a statement.
He call on all parties to remain calm and reiterated NATO's commitment to Afghanistan. "The alliance remains determined to continue its mission to help bring security and stability to Afghanistan, including against the scourge of terrorism," he said.
A suicide car bomb ripped through the front wall of the Indian Embassy in the Afghan capital of Kabul on Monday, killing some 40 people.
NATO is leading a 52,700-strong International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, fighting Taliban militants and helping with reconstruction.
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Australia condemns Indian embassy attack in Kabul
CANBERRA, July 8 (Xinhua) -- The Australian government on Tuesday condemned a suicide bombing of the Indian embassy in Afghanistan, sending its sympathies to India and Afghanistan over the attack which killed more than 40 people.
A suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden car into the Indian embassy in Kabul on Monday, killing 41 people and wounding nearly 150 others.
Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said the Australian government "condemns the car bomb attack ... and extends its deep sympathies to the Afghan government and people and to the Indian government and people."
"The Australian embassy in Kabul has been in contact with local authorities who have advised that no Australians have been killed or injured in the attack. No Australian officials in Kabul were caught up in the attack," Smith said in a statement.
"This attack further demonstrates their determination to kill, maim and intimidate the Afghan people and to undermine international efforts to bring peace and stability to Afghanistan," he said.
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India: Afghanistan's influential ally
By Soutik Biswas - BBC News, Delhi
The attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul is a setback for a country which has been one of Afghanistan's closest allies in recent years.
After the fall of the Taleban in 2001 India moved quickly to regain its strategic depth in Afghanistan.
It opened two new consulates in Herat and Mazhar-e-Sharif and reopened two others in Kandahar and Jalalabad which had been shut since 1979.
India also became one of Kabul's leading donors - it has pledged to spend $750m on helping rebuild the country's shattered infrastructure.
Funds have been committed for education, health, power and telecommunications. There has also been money in the form of food aid and help to strengthen governance.
India is erecting power transmission lines in the north, building more than 200km (125 miles) of road, digging tube wells in six provinces, running sanitation projects in Kabul, and working on lighting up 100 villages using solar energy.
It has given at least three Airbus planes to Afghanistan's ailing national airline. Several thousand Indians are engaged in development work.
Bilateral trade has grown rapidly, reaching $225m in 2006-2007. "India's reconstruction strategy was designed to win over every sector of Afghan society, give India a high profile with Afghans, gain the maximum political advantage and, of course, undercut Pakistani influence," says analyst Ahmed Rashid, who has written extensively on the region.
Pakistan has had misgivings about increasing Indian influence in Afghanistan since the Taleban were ousted.
President Pervez Musharraf has openly accused Afghan President Hamid Karzai of kow-towing to India. Islamabad has also said that the Indian consulates in Kandahar and Jalalabad are funnelling arms and money to insurgents in Pakistan's troubled Balochistan region.
All this once provoked President Hamid Karzai, who went to university in India, to say: "If Pakistan is worried about the role of India, let me assure [you], I have been very specific in telling the Indians that they cannot use Afghan soil for acts of aggression against another country."
Analysts say Pakistan believes its influence is declining in post-war Afghanistan.
"India's success in Afghanistan stirred up a hornet's nest in Islamabad which came to believe that India was 'taking over Afghanistan'," says Ahmed Rashid in his new book Descent Into Chaos. Also, local Taleban have attacked and kidnapped Indians in the country.
There have been explosions and grenade attacks on the Indian consulates in Herat and Jalalabad.
In January, two Indian and 11 Afghan security personnel were killed and several injured in an attack on the road that India is building, which will link the western cities of Zaranj and Herat with Kandahar in the south.
In November 2005, a driver with India's state-run Border Roads Organisation was abducted and killed by the Taleban while working on the road. There have been other attacks on Indians too.
In 2003, an Indian national working for a construction company was killed by unknown attackers in Kabul's Taimani district. In 2006, an Indian telecommunications engineer was abducted and killed in the southern province in Zabul.
India's fortunes in Afghanistan have swung back and forth for much of the past two decades. A staunch ally of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, India supported the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. This decision made India vastly unpopular among Afghans.
A decade later, it continued to back the Communist-regime of President Najibullah, while Pakistan threw its entire support behind the ethnic Pashtun mujahideen warlords, particularly the Islamist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who were fighting the Soviet Union.
So when the Taleban swept to power and put an end to a bloody civil conflict among warlords, India was left without any influence in the country.
It ended up backing the Northern Alliance, which controlled territory north of the Shomali plains near Kabul.
Pakistan, on the other hand, backed and recognised the pariah Taleban regime and gained further strategic depth in the region.
Afghanistan's interior ministry says it believes the attack on the Indian embassy was carried out "in co-ordination and consultation with an active intelligence service in the region".
It is clearly alluding to Pakistani agents, who have been blamed for a number of attacks in Afghanistan. We may never know precisely who carried out the attack.
But the bombing points to the "Great Game" still being played out between neighbours seeking to gain influence in Afghanistan.
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Attacked embassy a symbol of Indian push into Afghanistan
7.7.08 – Times of India NEW DELHI - India's sprawling embassy compound in Kabul is a symbol of the country's bid for more strategic clout in Afghanistan since the fall of the extremist Taliban regime in 2001.
India's ramped-up presence in Afghanistan -- including the opening of consulates in several cities and resources for reconstruction -- has put it in competition with neighbour and long-time rival Pakistan, analysts say.
Pakistan condemned Monday's car bomb attack that targeted the Indian embassy in Kabul, but the Indian media and commentators have been quick to see it as a part of an intensifying Afghan feud between the rivals.
The nuclear-armed countries are officially at peace but are still seen by commentators as engaging in proxy tactics.
"Pakistan has a stated policy of seeking strategic depth in the region - Afghanistan and beyond," said C. Uday Bhaskar, ex-deputy chief of the Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis in New Delhi.
"India, since the fall of the Taliban, has been trying to revive its links with Afghanistan. So there is an element of competition here," Bhaskar said.
The attackers "are the forces that are trying to disrupt the (President Hamid) Karzai administration, disrupt any kind of initiative that seeks to bring about change from what the Taliban represented."
For some commentators in India and many officials in Afghanistan, those "forces" are believed to be a nexus of Islamist militants and elements of Pakistan's shadowy spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
Pakistan strongly denies it supports the Taliban and also rejects Afghan claims that it has failed to clamp down on Taliban militants based in its tribal regions bordering Afghanistan.
"I don't think Pakistan would ever like to add fuel to fire in the current situation by interfering in Afghanistan. We cannot do it unless we go mad," former ISI chief Asad Durrani said.
"Pakistan enjoys great clout in Afghanistan being its next-door neighbour as compared to India. Afghans depend on us, we are culturally very close to them," said Durrani, who headed the organisation in the 1990s.
For years, India and Pakistan have been at opposite sides of the devastating conflicts that have raged in Afghanistan.
After the Soviet invasion in 1979, Pakistan threw its weight behind hardline Islamic rebels from the dominant Pashtun ethnic group, and went on to provide all-out backing for the Taliban militia.
India, as a friend of the Soviet Union, generally kept out of the conflict up to the collapse of the Moscow-backed Afghan government in 1992.
The ensuing turmoil in the country followed by the Taliban's rise provided a fertile training ground for militants fighting Indian rule over part of the Himalayan region of Kashmir, divided between India and Pakistan but claimed by both in full.
The Taliban's close relationship with rebels fighting in Kashmir was underscored in 1999, when a group of militants hijacked an Indian passenger plane and flew it to Kandahar.
The 157 passengers and crew were freed when New Delhi agreed to free three Islamic militants imprisoned in New Delhi -- a deal brokered by the Taliban.
New Delhi soon became more aware of the strategic significance of Afghanistan -- and therefore more embroiled in the conflict, and directly opposed to Islamabad.
It provided covert support to Ahmad Shah Masood, the figurehead of the so-called Northern Alliance battling the Taliban.
Assistance included intelligence sharing, logistics support including the acquisition of weapons from former Soviet-bloc countries and limited financial assistance, according to intelligence experts and Afghan officials.
The ouster of the Taliban in a US-led invasion and the installation of the Western-backed Karzai government saw India increase its diplomatic presence in Afghanistan.
It has also given 750 million dollars' worth of assistance to Afghanistan since 2001.
Consequently Indian facilities, as well as its nationals, remain a target for Taliban insurgents who have killed or kidnapped several workers. Last year two bombs were thrown at the Indian consulate in Jalalabad.
In 2006, the Taliban ordered all Indian nationals to leave Afghanistan.
Pakistan meanwhile has accused India of using its consulate in Jalalabad to foment a separatist insurgency in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, an allegation dismissed by New Delhi.
P. Stobdan, an Indian expert on Afghan affairs, said he was concerned India and Pakistan were being drawn towards overt confrontation over Afghanistan.
"I also blame the Indian government because we were overdoing things in Afghanistan," he said. "We should have a more nuanced way of doing things."
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Now it's war against India in Afghanistan
By Sudha Ramachandran – Asia Times
BANGALORE - The suicide bomber who crashed an explosive-laden car into the Indian Embassy in the Afghan capital Kabul on Monday not only killed 41 people and injured more than 140, he sent a powerful message to Delhi that its significant presence and growing influence in Afghanistan through its reconstruction projects are now in the firing line.
Among the dead were four Indians, including Defense Attache Brigadier R D Mehta, diplomat Venkateswara Rao and two guards at the embassy, who were personnel of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police - a paramilitary outfit. The attack is said to be among the deadliest in Kabul since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
The Indian Embassy stands near Afghanistan's Interior Ministry in busy part of Kabul. Intelligence sources had apparently warned of an attack on the mission this week and security had been upgraded. Yet the suicide bomber and his explosive-filled vehicle were able to reach the gates unhindered.
The attack comes within the context of spiraling violence in the country, including the capital. More US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops were killed in Afghanistan in June than in any other month since military operations began in 2001. Forty-five soldiers, including 27 American, 13 British, two Canadian, one Polish, one Romanian and one Hungarian, were killed during the month. Coalition fatalities in June in Afghanistan, for the first time, exceeded coalition fatalities in Iraq.
In April 27, militants opened fire on President Hamid Karzai at an annual military parade in Kabul, killing a legislator and two other Afghans. Last month, in a brazen attack, the Taliban stormed a jail in Kandahar, freeing hundreds of prisoners.
The Taliban issued a statement denying responsibility for Monday's attack. But few in India or Afghanistan are convinced. The Taliban generally claim responsibility for attacks against international or Afghan troops and deny their hand in attacks in which victims are mainly Afghan civilians. Most of the victims of Monday's blast were Afghan civilians; many had lined up for visas to travel to India.
Indian experts say that the needle of suspicion points to the Taliban and its backers in the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan's intelligence agency. This is the view in Kabul as well. While Afghanistan's Interior Ministry said the "attack was carried out in coordination and consultation with an active intelligence service in the region" - alluding to the ISI - Karzai said the bombing was the work of the "enemies of Afghanistan-India friendship", an implicit reference to Pakistan.
Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was quick to deny the allegations, saying that Pakistan "needed a stable Afghanistan".
India and Afghanistan enjoy a close relationship nowadays, a matter that irks their common neighbor and traditional foe, Pakistan.
India and Pakistan have vied for influence in Afghanistan for decades. In the 1990s, with the Pakistan-backed Taliban in power, Islamabad's influence peaked. Then in a reversal of fortune, India, which backed the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance during the years the Taliban were in power, saw its fortunes improve in Kabul, even as Islamabad's influence touched a nadir.
With its old friends in the Northern Alliance in power and an India-educated Karzai at the helm, India's influence has grown significantly in recent years.
It has pledged about US$750 million to Afghanistan's reconstruction since 2002 and is today the fifth-largest bilateral donor in Afghanistan after the United States, Britain, Japan and Germany. This places India among the big players in the country.
India is involved in an array of projects, ranging from providing food to children to improving infrastructure. It is constructing the 218-kilometer Zaranj-Delaram road, the Afghan parliament and a power transmission line from Pul-e-Khumri to Kabul and a substation in Kabul. It is repairing and reconstructing the Salma Dam in the western province of Herat at a cost of $109.3 million and building telephone exchanges linking 11 provinces to Kabul. It has supplied hundreds of buses and mini-buses. India is training bureaucrats and is providing over 3,000 Afghans with skills to earn a livelihood in carpentry, plumbing and masonry.
Hundreds of Afghans have been given scholarships to study in India. India is providing food assistance in the form of high-protein biscuits to 1.4 million school children daily.
"India's reconstruction strategy was designed to win over every sector of Afghan society, give India a high profile with Afghans, gain the maximum political advantage and, of course, undercut Pakistani influence," the BBC quoted analyst Ahmed Rashid as saying,
India's role in road construction is improving its access to Afghanistan and beyond to Central Asia. The Zaranj-Delaram project, for instance, will run from the Iranian border to Delaram, which lies on Afghanistan's Garland Highway. The Garland Highway connects several of the country's key cities. India can offload shiploads of goods at Iran's Chabahar port and then send the consignments overland through the Zaranj-Delaram highway and the Garland Highway to cities across Afghanistan.
Approximately 3,000-4,000 Indian nationals are working on reconstruction projects across Afghanistan.
Pakistan, which has denied India overland access to Afghanistan, is annoyed that the road construction will provide India with a land route to Afghanistan. India believes that the ISI has used the Taliban to strike at Indian activity in Afghanistan. India's road projects - Zaranj-Delaram in particular - have come under repeated Taliban fire, the most recent being a suicide attack in April that left seven people, including four Indians, dead.
India's engagement in Afghanistan has helped it exert its soft power in Afghanistan. It is seen as a country that is working at changing the daily lives of Afghans, committed to capacity-building of Afghans rather than engaged in winning contracts for Indian business. India is seen as contributing to the building of democracy in Afghanistan.
Then there is the popularity of Bollywood films and Indian television soaps in Afghanistan, which have won India many hearts in this country - and the Taliban's ire.
Pakistan has done its utmost to restrict Indian influence. It put its foot down on allowing Indian troops into the country, but contrary to Islamabad's expectations, this might have worked in India's favor.
India's engagement in Afghanistan has not been tainted by military operations gone awry. Unlike other powers in Afghanistan, whose reconstruction work has been sullied by indiscriminate bombing and killing of civilians, India is seen as working for the Afghan people.
So great is Pakistan's concern of India's presence in Afghanistan that it raised strong objections to India setting up consulates in Kandahar and Jalalabad. It has accused India of using these consulates, which border Pakistan, to support "terrorist activities" inside Pakistan. The Indian consulate at Jalalabad has been a target of at least a couple of grenade attacks, the most recent last December.
Monday's attack was the first time the Indian Embassy has been targeted since the fall of the Taliban. But the embassy building was in the crosshairs of the Taliban even in the 1990s. The building was a "favorite target of the Taliban" between 1996 and 2001, when it was in power.
"So intense were the rocket attacks on the embassy at a time when the Taliban were inching closer to Kabul waging bloody fights against the Northern Alliance forces led by legendary leader [Ahmad Shah] Massoud that [Indian] officials had decided to construct a heavily fortified bunker right inside the embassy premises. So specific was the targeting of the Indian Embassy that the officials used to leave their cars and other vehicles parked inside the Indonesian Embassy, which is next to the Indian Embassy, to keep them safe from the Taliban rockets," reports the Times of India.
The embassy was closed on September 26, 1996 - a few hours before the Taliban entered Kabul, to be reopened on December 22, 2001 - the day Karzai was sworn in as president.
Over the past few years, the ISI and its surrogates in the Taliban have sought to cut India's influence through intimidation and attacks on Indian engineers and construction workers. Now with the attack on the embassy, they have signaled that they are stepping up their battle against India. It marks a major escalation in terrorist attacks not only against India's presence in Afghanistan but against New Delhi's Afghan policy.
India has reiterated that the attacks will not weaken its mission to help in Afghanistan's reconstruction. In New Delhi, the Ministry of External Affairs commented, "Such acts of terror will not deter us from fulfilling our commitments to the government and people of Afghanistan."
And already there are calls in India for troops to be sent to Afghanistan. An editorial in the influential English daily, India Express, says, "After the Kabul bombing, India must come to terms with an important question that it has avoided debating so far. New Delhi cannot continue to expand its economic and diplomatic activity in Afghanistan, while avoiding a commensurate increase in its military presence there. For too long, New Delhi has deferred to Pakistani and American sensitivities about raising India's strategic profile in Afghanistan."
A military presence in Afghanistan might increase India's profile and add to its stature as a growing power in the region. But it will end up being bracketed with the Americans in Afghanistan, an image it would do well to avoid. It would work against the country's long-term interests in the region, jeopardizing the enormous goodwill it has earned to date.
Troops in Afghanistan would push India into the Afghan quagmire. This might be what the ISI was gunning for when they attacked the Indian embassy on Monday.
Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in Bangalore.
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NATO soldier, four Afghan police killed in attacks
July 8, 2008
ASADABAD, Afghanistan (AFP) - A NATO-led soldier and four Afghan police were killed Tuesday in new attacks linked to an insurgency in Afghanistan by Taliban and other Islamic extremists, officials said.
The International Security Assistance Force trooper was killed when a roadside bomb struck a convoy in the eastern province of Kunar, ISAF said. Four other ISAF soldiers were wounded, it said.
The 40-nation force did not give details, including the nationalities of the soldiers caught up in the attack. Most of the troops in Kunar are US citizens.
Kunar, on the border with Pakistan, sees regular violence from militants involved in an insurgency against President Hamid Karzai's Western-backed government.
The insurgents mainly rely on bombs, including suicide devices, to attack international and Afghan troops.
Two policemen were killed in fighting with Taliban insurgents in the central province of Ghazni on Tuesday, provincial spokesman Ismail Jahangir said.
Five militants were also believed to have died in the hour-long battle but their bodies were removed from the scene, he told AFP.
Two other policemen were killed in a similar incident in the neighbouring province of Paktika, another troubled region on the Afghan-Pakistan frontier, another government spokesman said.
Such clashes have become routine in an insurgency led by the Al-Qaeda-linked Taliban who were in government between 1996 and 2001.
The Afghan government regularly accuses neighbouring Pakistan of supporting the militants, with officials saying Pakistani intelligence had a hand in the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul Monday that killed 41 people.
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Afghanistan: Euro-MPs back wider role for European Union
Brussels, 8 July (AKI) - Members of the European Parliament on Tuesday called for the European Union to play a much greater political role in conflict-wracked Afghanistan.
The lawmakers overwhelmingly endorsed a report urging far greater coordination among institutions involved in reconstructing the war-torn country.
"In Afghanistan, the EU is primarily known as a humanitarian organisation, but there is also a need for the EU to be seen as having a much greater political influence," said the report.
"A major strengthening of political will and commitment is necessary."
"This should be followed up not only by a willingness to provide additional combat troops in the most difficult areas, unrestricted by national caveats, but also by urgent and reinforced civil reconstruction efforts."
The parliament said it supported NATO's efforts to improve security in the country "and tackle local and international terrorism."
The presence of NATO forces in Afghanistan is "essential to ensure the country's future," the report continued.
"Afghanistan's security problems are more complex than just a war on terror and therefore they require more than a military solution," the report admitted.
The report called on the US government to abandon its policy of eradicating the Afghan opium crop, which represents the only legal livelihood for many people.
A report published in April by New York University argued that attempts to wipe out opium production disproportionately harms impoverished farmers and can drive them to side with the Taliban.
EU lawmakers in the report also urged "a clear demarcation between military and humanitarian action that should be maintained."
The report blamed tense relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan for "much of the region's instability," calling for a "comprehensive policy towards both states."
The report pinpointed financial and technical support to local reconciliation projects and media freedom as areas that are crucial to rebuilding Afghanistan and ending a "culture of violence."
It expressed particular concern about the rising number of attacks on journalists and called on the Afghan authorities to seriously investigate these violations.
EU parliamentarians adopted the report by 423 votes in favour, 74 against and 73 abstentions.
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Bomb found on Afghan bus transporting Indians
Daily Times, Pakistan
HERAT/ASADABAD/ WASHINGTON: A bomb was found on a bus transporting 12 Indian workers in Afghanistan on Tuesday, a governor said, a day after a suicide attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul killed 41 people.
The workers, including engineers, had noticed a "suspicious package" on the bus as they were travelling to work in the southwestern province of Nimroz, provincial governor Ghulam Dastagir Azad told AFP. They called the police who discovered it was a remote-controlled bomb, he said. The driver of the bus was arrested for questioning. "The bomb could have been fixed on his bus without him knowing but all this will be made clear after the investigation is over," he said.
Trooper dies: Meanwhile, a soldier from the NATO-led forces and four Afghan policemen were killed on Tuesday in new attacks linked to an insurgency in Afghanistan by Taliban and other Islamist extremists, officials said.
The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) trooper was killed when a roadside bomb struck a convoy in the eastern province of Kunar, NATO’s ISAF said. Four other ISAF soldiers were wounded, it said. The 40-nation force did not give details, including the nationalities of the soldiers caught up in the attack. Most of the troops in Kunar are US citizens. Kunar, on the border with Pakistan, sees regular violence from militants involved in an insurgency against President Hamid Karzai's Western-backed government. The insurgents mainly rely on bombs, including suicide devices, to attack international and Afghan troops. Also on Tuesday, two policemen were killed in fighting with Taliban insurgents in the central province of Ghazni, provincial spokesman Ismail Jahangir said.
Five militants were also believed to have died in the hour-long battle but their bodies were removed from the scene, Jahngir told AFP. Two other policemen were killed in a similar incident in the neighbouring province of Paktika, another troubled region on the Pak-Afghan frontier, another government spokesman said.
US carrier: A US aircraft carrier has moved to the Arabian Sea to support military operations in Afghanistan, leaving the Gulf without a carrier, US defence officials said on Tuesday. The shift by the USS Abraham Lincoln over the weekend comes amid stepped-up insurgent violence in Afghanistan. The operations in Afghanistan and Iraq "are extremely dynamic and sometimes we have to adjust the posture of forces so we can we can take advantage of certain opportunities that are there," said a Navy official, who asked not to be named. afp
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Turkey condemns terrorist attacks in Pakistan, Afghanistan
ANKARA, July 8 (Xinhua) -- Turkey condemned recent terrorist attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan, during which killed at least 59 people and injured scores, an official statement said on Tuesday.
The statement issued by the Turkish Foreign Ministry said that "Turkey strongly denounces these atrocious terror acts."
On Sunday, a suicide blast killed 17 people, 13 of them were police officers at a protest rally in Islamabad, Pakistan.
On Monday, a car bomb went off in the Afghan capital of Kabul, killing at least 41 people and injuring more than 100 others.
"We call on the international community once again to act in solidarity against terrorism," the statement added.
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Pakistan's deal with the devil
Beheadings, martial law, kidnappings: The Taliban is making its presence felt at the gates of one of Pakistan's biggest cities.
By Walter Mayr Jul. 08, 2008 | Der Speigel
The situation changed overnight in Peshawar. The villas in the posh suburb of Hayatabad, hidden behind acacias, palms and oleander bushes, are now directly on the front line. The Pakistani security forces have declared war on the Muslim fundamentalists who are said to have taken up positions in the immediate vicinity.
Eight armored vehicles belonging to the Pakistani Frontier Corps stand ready to move out in the courtyard of Peshawar's Beaconhouse School. Riflemen are positioned behind sandbagged emplacements at strategically important intersections. Pakistani anti-terror units and paramilitary forces in black uniforms are on patrol in the area, their submachine guns at the ready.
But where is the enemy? Outside the city, in the direction of the Khyber Pass, the sound of exploding heavy artillery rounds can be heard every few seconds.
Roger Sarfaraz listens as the monotonous recurrence of muffled detonations keeps breaking the silence of an oppressively hot summer day. He is standing on the edge of Hayatabad and looks like someone who could tell you right down to the last decimal point what this war is costing him. This smart-looking, athletically built man wearing a Playboy T-shirt is a real estate agent.
With property prices currently at around $315 per square meter in the suddenly embattled development, a secure environment has to be part of the deal. Several years ago, a security wall was built around the settlement -- a three-meter-high concrete wall capped off with barbed wire. It was originally intended to protect the Hayatabad's well-off inhabitants from undesired contact with their neighbors -- people from the tribal areas of the Northwest Frontier Province whose mud houses can be seen from here.
The Empire of the Taliban
Now, in addition to the wall, three Pashtuns from the paramilitary Frontier Corps stand guard on the demarcation line with Chinese-made grenade launchers shouldered and ready to fire. But like the concrete wall and the barbed wire, they won't be able to do much to stem the tide of onrushing Taliban forces. The fighters from the tribal areas have no need to climb over the wall. They simply drive their SUVs and pickups in on the main road -- direct from the empire of the Taliban.
What the inhabitants of Hayatabad know about the world that exists just a stone's throw away from them is what they read in the newspapers or are told on television: that black-bearded, kaftaned mullahs preach to their disciples the need to wage war to defend the strict moral code of Islamic fundamentalism or that "spies" are beheaded with butcher knives, tribal elders shot, and infidels persecuted barbarically.
Still, the Pakistani government didn't get around to ordering troops into Peshawar to counteract the threat until the very end of June. By then, the rich suburb of Hayatabad had long since become a testing ground for the Islamists' advance. Last November a suicide bomber blew himself up outside the home of former Political Affairs Minister Amir Muqam after being stopped at the gate by security personnel. Four people were killed in the attack -- and since then the settlement has been on the alert.
Now, though, the bearded Taliban come into town in broad daylight, crowded together in the beds of their pickup trucks. After repeated hit-and-run raids, including the abduction of half a dozen prostitutes, this rich section of town has grabbed headlines in the press as a "kidnappers' paradise."
Massive Pressure
Real estate agent Roger Sarafaz's brother was abducted by the Taliban just a few days ago. Together with 16 other hostages, all of them members of Pakistan's Christian minority, he was dragged off to the tribal areas, where he was beaten with rifle butts until he was unconscious. He was released only after massive pressure was brought to bear on the Taliban, not least of all by Western players. Since then the Pakistani government has been carrying out a military operation aimed at putting a stop to brazen attacks of this kind by the ethnic Pashtun fundamentalists who are at home in the regions along the border close to the Khyber Pass.
Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province has a population of 21 million. It's the country's Achilles' heel and one of the burdens left behind by British colonial rule. In 1893 the British drew the Durand Line dividing what was then British India from Afghanistan. Since 1947, the line has been the internationally recognized border between Afghanistan and Pakistan -- but it also goes right through the middle of the Pashtun tribal areas. East of the Khyber Pass up to the outskirts of the city of Peshawar the effects of the British Raj live on -- Pakistani law is not recognized in the "ilaka ghair," or the "land of the lawless," as the tribal areas are known.
For centuries decisions on right and wrong have been made here by a "jirga," a council of tribal elders -- an institution that is today monitored by a "political agent" appointed by the Pakistani government. At least that was the case until the Taliban began seeking refuge in Pakistan in 2001. Mehmood Shah, Pakistan's former security chief in the tribal areas, refers to this as the "human fallout" of the war against Afghanistan.
The radical Islamic militants who fled across the border found everything they needed for a new beginning -- brothers in arms from the time when they were allied against the Soviet regime in Afghanistan, a large supply of madrasa students who were now without jobs and a small group of "Maliks," tribal elders who were paid for their loyalty to the military regime of General Pervez Musharraf. The Taliban cut into the traditional structures of Pashtun society like a sharp ax into soft wood.
The fact that the backward region between the Khyber Pass and the banks of the Indus has become a focus of worldwide attention has to do with the fact that the Pakistani government has finally started its military operations there. And with the growing impatience of the U.S. administration, given its conviction that the al-Qaida leadership is holed up somewhere in the tribal areas. The trail Osama bin Laden and his accomplices have left behind in the service of jihad reaches all the way to Hayatabad.
The One-Armed Sheik
Take the case of Algerian-born Sheik Abu Suleiman al-Jaziri, for instance. The May 14 death of this key strategist for al-Qaida missions around the world went largely unnoticed. He died on Pakistani soil along with 13 others in the rubble of a house that belonged to a former Taliban minister. A U.S. drone fired the missiles that took them out.
The one-armed sheik had been known to the authorities in Peshawar for a long time. According to the Pakistani secret service Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), a house registered in his name in Hayatabad was occupied in 1986 by an inconspicuous but very wealthy guest from Saudi Arabia -- Osama bin Laden. It was during a time when an international Islamic resistance force was gathering to fight the godless Soviets in neighboring Afghanistan.
It was also in Peshawar, on August 11, 1988, that al-Qaida was established.
An Incubator of Radical Islamists
It's not difficult to follow the threads spun by al-Qaida since then to the spider web of terror we have today. At the end of June video footage went around the world showing two Afghans who had been sentenced to death as "American spies." One of them was forced to kneel and then was beheaded while surrounded by a crowd of cheering Taliban. What was not mentioned was who the alleged spies were said to have betrayed -- al-Qaida's Sheik Abu Suleiman.
It seems to be only gradually dawning on the Pakistanis just what the full meaning is of their "pact with the devil," as some observers have called it -- one entered into with the full support of the secret service, the army and the government. More than a thousand members of the Pakistani armed forces have been killed in the tribal areas since 2001. Eighteen police officers have recently lost their lives in clashes on the outskirts of Peshawar. Suicide attacks and summary executions have become common occurrences. And jihadists have been blowing up schools at the rate of two a day.
As usual, Pakistan's political leaders are standing next to this powder keg with a fuse in one hand and a fire extinguisher in the other. There is currently talk of negotiating with the Taliban and of using force only as a last resort. Media-friendly mullahs are allowed to give television interviews before they -- having been given plenty of warning of a pending military raid -- flee into the mountains.
According to retired general Talal Masood, who served as a field officer during the military dictatorship of Zia ul-Haq and later as an advisor to Benazir Bhutto, the army -- despite the iron grip it has often had on the country since independence -- has suffered considerable damage to its reputation as a result of its constant interference in government affairs. He says the armed forces are holding back now and that the new government is too preoccupied with itself, leaving the Taliban to do pretty much as it pleases: "A small group of extremists is holding an entire country hostage," he says.
A Dangerous Lack of Focus
Indeed, political Islamabad does not give the impression that Pakistan is currently facing one of the deepest crises in its history. Asif Ali Zardari, co-chairman of the Pakistan People's Party and widower of Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif, the political head of the Pakistan Muslim League, and President Pervez Musharraf seem more interested in settling old scores.
For a country under attack from the Taliban, it seems a dangerous lack of focus.
The power vacuum has been an invitation to the fundamentalists, and they are responding by advancing ever further into the border regions. They have moved down from the mountains and toward Peshawar, bringing pious messages and undisguised threats.
The Taliban already come and go with perfect ease in Peshawar. They rely on their pin-prick tactics: here a threatening letter to a CD dealer; there a brief visit to a Sufi shrine where Allah is worshipped with undue pomp; now and then a black veil painted over a woman's face on advertising posters -- all of which generates a tangible fear that the Taliban may soon arrive in force.
There is a certain irony in the fact that Islam is being reinvented in Peshawar, of all places. Two thousand years ago, the city was the center of the Buddhist empire known as Gandhara. Alexander the Great also swept through the region. But in addition to the irony is the danger. A tendency in the city toward submissiveness could win out in the end. As one politician from the Pakistan People's Party put it: "I'm afraid that when the time comes, the inhabitants will simply go out and welcome the Taliban."
Things haven't gone that far yet, though. Daily life continues as though nothing has happened -- including on narrow streets deep inside the bazaar where traders, black marketeers, and rumormongers are on their home ground, where spices and trinkets, gold and silk are bought and sold in the daily hustle and bustle. Nisar Ahmad, the spokesman for the business owners in the Saddar Bazaar, who himself sells lipstick and women's apparel, promises on his honor that he hasn't yet received any threats from the Taliban.
But why has he recently started pulling the shoulder sash, veil-like, across the entire face of his store window dummies? "Just a precaution," Ahmad says.
At the Afghan market closer to the tribal areas, things have evolved a bit further. In addition to those clandestinely selling weapons, drugs and whiskey, a number of merchants made their living with the open sale of pornography. Sex films copied onto Chinese CDs were sold for 15 rupees apiece, the equivalent of 15 cents. The price for these films has since doubled and now they are kept hidden under the counter. The films that are officially for sale are of the kind used to prepare volunteers for jihad. They show, for instance, the Taliban beheading "traitors" who are restrained in straitjackets. Or a teenage boy being prepared over a period of weeks for his big day -- his being sworn in by experienced fighters wearing black hoods reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan; an otherworldly smile when he sees explosive charges that have been wired together; and finally the ball of fire that consumes an American Humvee in Afghanistan when the boy detonates the bomb that was mounted in his Toyota pickup.
Paradise Is Near
The final scene of the film shows the face of the young martyr suspended together with clouds in the sky. A white dove takes to the wing. Paradise is near. A message shown in the final sequence says: "This is an example for you to follow."
According to sources in Pakistan's academic circles, the worse prospects become for the future of young people and the more illiteracy there is, the more young men will be willing to volunteer to become jihadists. Indeed, on a recent morning in Akora Khattak, a dusty little town 29 miles to the southeast of Peshawar, a group of nine-year-olds from the Waziristan tribal area were standing outside in the summer heat at the infamous Darul Uloom Haqqania madrasa, which in Pakistan is also known as the "University of Jihad." They call out to passersby with a childlike mixture of pride and defiance: "We are Taliban! We are mujahedin! "We are al-Qaida!"
Some 4,000 students are instructed here free of charge and, on graduation, are awarded government-recognized qualifications. It's not clear where the money comes from to support the school. The training its students receive is, on the other hand, very clear. The madrasa, run by Sami ul-Haq -- often referred to as the "Father of the Taliban" -- is seen as an incubator of radical Islamists.
Earlier this decade, the school even granted an honorary degree to Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar. It is the only honorary degree ever bestowed by Darul Uloom Haqqania, but Sami ul-Haq says it was nothing more than the recognition of a person with special qualities -- exactly as is done in all cultures. "We honored Mullah Omar for his contribution to peace, just like your universities did with Mother Teresa," he says.
"Fight Against the American Occupiers"
Is the call for jihad against America and its allies justified? "As justified as the one against the Russians," Sami ul-Haq growls. Do prospective suicide bombers ask him if the Koran provides a basis for their actions? "Am I a mufti that I have to give them advice?" the Islamic scholar bellows. "They make their own choice to fight against the American occupiers."
In the seventh year of the war in Afghanistan anti-Americanism is stronger than ever. Hamid Mir, the country's most popular journalist and the only person in the world to have interviewed Osama bin Laden after September 11, 2001, says: "We didn't have any suicide bombers before 2001. We were doing fairly well economically. But then General Musharraf gave in to the Americans -- who have always supported dictators in Pakistan."
From an American perspective Pakistan was little more than a set of map coordinates that deserved attention for three reasons: It borders on Afghanistan; it's engaged in a smoldering conflict with a nuclear-armed India over Kashmir; and it possesses nuclear weapons of its own and has passed its technology on to "rogue states." Washington's announcement that it intends to triple its financial assistance for civilian projects would seem to be a signal that for the first time a proud Pakistan is going to be taken seriously on its own merits.
But this turnaround could be coming too late for many people. For instance, for those hundreds of thousands of people in the tribal areas who may be followers or potential followers of bearded mullahs -- such as former fitness trainer Baitullah Mehsud in Waziristan, former bus driver Mangal Bagh from the Khyber Pass area, and ski lift assistant Mullah Fazlullah in the Swat Valley.
Most of the children who live in the tribal areas have no conception of the world that exists beyond the concrete wall in Hayatabad. All they know are their own rules and their own convictions, and now they want to take these with them into the cities.
The roads leading from the tribal areas into Peshawar are still blocked. Word is that the military operation is to be continued for the time being. The death toll among the Taliban is reported to be high. But clashes with Pakistani troops aren't the reason. Since taking refuge in the valleys and mountains of the tribal areas, the Taliban have been fighting among themselves.
They have decided to wait a while before they return to the city.
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Russians reflect on Afghan conflict
By James Rodgers BBC News, Moscow Tuesday, 8 July 2008
Between 1979 and 1989 thousands of Soviet soldiers died in Afghanistan fighting the US-backed mujahideen. But 110 British soldiers have been killed in the country since 2001 as fighting rages with the Taleban. So what do Russian veterans think of Afghanistan and the current Nato campaign?
"It's not the truth," said a voice over my shoulder. I turned round. A man had seen me taking notes as I looked at an exhibition of a pristine Soviet field hospital.
It was 1991. In its last days, the USSR was trying to come to terms with its military campaign in Afghanistan.
The Manezh exhibition hall, almost in the shadow of the Kremlin, was open for anyone who wanted to have a look.
The man explained that he had fought in Afghanistan, and the reality had been very different to the display.
Today, Russian veterans of the Afghan war still have little good to say of their experience.
They look at the presence of British and other Nato troops there with an air of grim recognition.
"When the troops went into Afghanistan, a lot of our veterans said: 'It's a shame they've gone in. People are going to get killed. People understand they haven't just gone for a stroll,'" says Franz Klintsevich, who heads the Russian Union of Afghan Veterans.
He was 28 when he went to fight in Afghanistan - still "a little boy", as he describes it now.
He sees the current conflict as one of young men pitted against veterans whose skills were forged fighting the Soviets.
"Today the British troops, these young lads, are fighting 40-year-old blokes who were 14 or 17 in our time," he says.
"Experienced, knowing, fighters."
Alexander Golts, a military analyst with the ej.ru website, covered the conflict as a war correspondent.
He saw a Soviet generation who were deeply affected - and left with a bleak view of the situation they see in Afghanistan now.
"You should understand it's approximately one million people who went through Afghanistan during the years of occupation. And everybody among them understood that it was a deadlock."
There's no sense things are different now.
"It'll finish exactly the same way it did with us," Franz Klintsevich says.
Sense of solidarity
If there is a feeling here that unpleasant episodes of history are repeating themselves, then it brings no pleasure.
Instead, there seems to be a sense of solidarity, and understanding. Mr Klinsevich believes that British troops are doing the world a service by being there.
"There'll be people too who'll accuse them of losing, who'll say this was all in vain, all the crippled and dead lives were in vain," he says.
"No, it's not in vain. These British and American soldiers will always get moral support from us. They aren't there in vain."
There are other factors shaping Russia's opinion.
Many in Russia loathe and mistrust Nato, but Moscow recognises that it benefits from the alliance's presence in Afghanistan.
The country borders the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) - a group which includes most of the former Soviet republics. Moscow has a stake in seeing an Afghanistan which is as stable as possible.
Little optimism
Alexander Golts explains Russia's view.
"There is a very mixed feeling. First, the Russian authorities show that they are not very happy that Nato is deploying on our southern borders, or the southern borders of CIS countries.
"There is a strong feeling that Nato has another plan - not only dealing with the situation in Afghanistan," he says, reflecting suspicion of Nato's motives.
"On another hand, it's absolutely clear that Nato countries, and Great Britain among them, they are doing our job," he adds.
"Now western countries are doing our job and support tremendously Russian security."
Still, it is hard to find optimists here.
"No-one knows the way out," Mr Golts concludes.
I wonder if the man I spoke to at the exhibition all those years ago might accept that as the truth.
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Alberta bucks trend to oppose Afghan mission
Stampede crowds reflect local support for military
Calgary Herald Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Canadians are increasingly turning against the Afghanistan mission in the wake of last month's Taliban prison break and continued casualties, says a new poll.
But, as thousands gravitate daily toward a string of military vehicles at the Calgary Stampede, the same poll shows Albertans remain the strongest military supporters in the country.
Only 36 per cent of Canadians support the decision to extend the Afghan mission to 2011 -- down from 41 per cent in May, according to an Angus Reid survey of approximately 1,000 Canadians conducted July 2 and 3. The poll has a 3.5 per cent margin of error.
While a mere one-third of Saskatchewanians, Manitobans and Quebecers are in favour of keeping Canadian troops in Afghanistan until 2011, almost half of Albertans -- 46 per cent -- say Canadian soldiers need to remain in the war-ravaged region.
Long lines snaking across the Stampede grounds for a chance to sit in a CF-18 fighter cockpit or to climb inside a tank suggest local support for the military isn't waning.
"We have people come up to us and give soldiers a hug. We have little old ladies crying and thanking (us)," said retired lieutenant-colonel Al Price, who has participated in the annual Stampede military display for the past decade. He said interest from visitors has grown considerably since the Afghanistan conflict.
"Over 100,000 people visit this site over the next 10 days and we only get about five negative comments a year," he said, referring to the exhibit.
At the nearby Military Family Resource Centre tent, a stream of people purchase Support Our Troops decals, magnets and clothing, with funds going to support local military families.
Volunteer Cheryl Cameron, whose son is serving in Afghanistan, said she's noticed a marked increase in the number of Calgarians inquiring about the Afghan mission.
"It's not just people saying they support the troops or being polite. They are wanting to know what's going on and where can they read about it or where can they find that article. I am finding more support here than ever before," said Cameron.
There is political correlation between Alberta's support of the military and its conservative roots, said David Bercuson, director of the University of Calgary's Centre for Military and Strategic Studies.
According to the poll, 63 per cent of Conservatives agree with the extended mission compared to 35 per cent of Liberals and 31 per cent of NDP respondents.
"Part of the reason the numbers are so high (in Alberta) is this is where Harper's base is," agreed Mario Canseco, director of global studies for Angus Reid. "Forty-six per cent of Albertans believe he is doing the right thing."
The presence of multiple military bases in Alberta could also account for the stronger military support here, said Bercuson.
Elsewhere in Canada, the insurgent-led prison break in June that freed as many as 1,100 inmates at Sarposa Prison -- around a third of them Taliban fighters -- could be contributing to the dropping support for the mission as the perception of the conflict appears less rosy, said Canseco.
Albertans appear immune to this effect. This continued commitment to the military action comes as this province mourns the loss of yet another soldier.
Edmonton-based combat medic Pte. Colin William Wilmot was killed by an explosive device Sunday while on foot patrol in the troubled Panjwaii district in Kandahar province. He is the 87th Canadian soldier to die in Afghanistan since 2002.
"He wasn't slated for this tour," Chief Warrant Officer Chris Kaye said Monday of the young medic who had recently become engaged. "We had others more senior to him, but he was always hanging around my door and wanting that one chance to come over here."
A few hours before the ramp ceremony for Wilmot on Monday, troops held a similar ritual at a Canadian base in the Persian Gulf called Camp Mirage for a soldier whose death is under investigation by military officials.
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What the Poll Says:
36% - Percentage of Canadians who support extending the Afghan mission, compared to 41% in May
46% - Percentage of Albertans who support extending the Afghan mission
73% - Percentage of Canadians who think Canada is shouldering too much of the NATO mission
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Turmoil puts Afghanistan at epicenter of White House campaign
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Fresh carnage in Kabul and a rising death toll among US troops are thrusting once-forgotten Afghanistan into the thick of the intensifying White House showdown between John McCain and Barack Obama.
Democratic presumptive nominee Obama is promising to redeploy large numbers of US combat troops from Iraq to Afghanistan if he is elected president in November, in an effort to quell resurgent militant activity.
Republican candidate John McCain however maintains that Iraq is the central front of the "war on terror" adding that a US withdrawal would embolden terrorists and US enemies, and that the two wars cannot be seen in isolation.
Afghanistan moved to center stage in the campaign last week, before Monday's suicide car bombing at the Indian embassy in Kabul, which killed at least 41 people in the deadliest attack since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
The Afghan conflict garnered new attention in the United States after more foreign troops died battling Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in the last two months than were killed in Iraq.
The security situation in Iraq meanwhile appears to be improving, following a US troop "surge" anti-insurgent strategy launched last year.
Obama, who based his primary campaign win over Hillary Clinton on his early opposition to the invasion of Iraq, argues that the huge US troop presence there is drawing resources from the anti-terror effort in Afghanistan.
The Illinois Senator will lay out his plan for both conflicts in visits to Iraq and Afghanistan expected later this month, details of which have yet to be released for security reasons.
"It's time to refocus our attention on the war we have to win in Afghanistan," Obama said in his first joint appearance with former Democratic foe Hillary Clinton last month.
"It is time to go after the Al-Qaeda leadership where it actually exists. It is time to bring this war in Iraq to a close."
Obama's foreign policy advisor Susan Rice last week accused McCain of fully supporting Bush administration policy on Iraq, which she said had dangerously distracted attention from the anti-terror fight in Afghanistan.
"Every day, there's a new report that underscores the reality that Afghanistan is sliding toward chaos," Rice told reporters on a conference call.
Obama aides pounced on a remark last week by Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that he needed more anti-insurgency troops in Afghanistan, but could not get them because they were needed in Iraq.
Obama has vowed to get most combat troops out of Iraq at the rate of one or two brigades a month, a process which he says should be complete within 16 months.
But McCain says such a plan would put imperil gains made under the surge strategy, and has called on Obama to climb down, arguing his rival's solution is too simplistic.
"To somehow think it is an either or situation, either Afghanistan or Iraq is a fundamental misreading of the situation in the Middle East," McCain told reporters last week.
"What happens in Iraq, matters in Afghanistan," McCain said. "If we had failed in Iraq if we had pursued the policies vociferously advocated by Senator Obama, we would have risked a wider war.
"We need to succeed in Iraq, and I am confident we can succeed in Afghanistan, but it's not just a matter of more troops."
Democrats have long argued that the Bush administration took its eye off the search for Al-Qaeda kingpin Osama bin Laden, and the battle with stubborn Afghan militants, by invading Iraq in 2003.
Political synergy between the two wars has been thrown into focus by the death toll among international troops, which is rising in Afghanistan, but decreasing in Iraq.
June was deadliest month for foreign troops in Afghanistan since the 2001 fall of the Taliban, with 49 soldiers from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the separate US-led coalition killed.
Thirty-one soldiers including 29 Americans were killed in Iraq in June despite the fact that there are more than twice as many troops there as in Afghanistan.
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Police arrest ministry's 'wheat thiefs'
www.quqnoos.com Written by PAN Monday, 07 July 2008
Ministry workers caught stealing 40 tonnes of wheat, police say
POLICE have arrested three employees at the ministry of agriculture for stealing 40 tonnes of wheat.
Police officers arrested the three men in the northern province of Kunduz.
One of the police officers responsible for the arrests said: "These three people were arrested red handed when they were trying to take out 800 sacks of wheat from the agriculture and animal husbandry department in the province."
Police officials in the province said the wheat was part of the 200 tonnes of food earmarked by the United Nations and the government for famine-struck regions in the north.
Head of the agriculture department in Kunduz, Abdul Aziz Nikzad, said three men from the department had been arrested but refused to give any details about the claims of attempted theft.
The governor of Kunduz, engineer Muhammad Omar, said during an emergency meeting of northern governors that 85% of the people in Kunduz were suffering from a lack of food and were in desperate need of emergency aid.
One of the province’s residents, Yar Muhammad, said he had been forced to sell his lambs and goats because of the lack of grass for them to feed on.
"There are also no jobs, and if there is any, I will be paid only Afg100 in a day. I am the only bread winner of the seven members in our family, and this money is not enough for us," he said.
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Villagers clash over lack of clean water
Written by www.quqnoos.com Monday, 07 July 2008
Disease spreads in drought-struck province as hundreds left without water
CLASHES over access to clean drinking water have broken out in the northern province of Samangan.
Hundreds of people in the province, especially in the Dar-e-Sof and Roydoab districts, have caught a range of diseases because of the lack of water in the region.
Mullah Ghias, who lives in the Nowroz village of Roydoab, said more than 1,800 families suffer from a lack of water in the district’s five villages.
He said the school students in Roydoab district recently fainted from dehydration during class. The pupils had to be carried to the local hospital and some failed to participate in their mid-term exams.
He said several people were injured on Saturday during clashes that erupted between residents in two of the district’s villages because of a dispute over water.
Water in Roydoab village has dried up because of the lack of rainfall.
Mullah Khair Muhammad, temporary governor of Roydoab district, said he had sent a delegation to the affected areas to fix the lack of water.
About 640 people in the province, including women and children, have caught typhoid and dysentery from drinking unclean water, the deputy of the department of health in the province.
Only 8% of people in the province have access to clean drinking water, a Swedish NGO said.
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