Serving you since 1998
July 2008 :   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

July 9, 2008 

India to stay in Afghanistan: New Delhi envoy
July 9, 2008
NEW DELHI (AFP) - India will continue its presence in Afghanistan despite a suicide attack on its embassy in Kabul that killed 41 people including four of its nationals, New Delhi's envoy said Wednesday.

Afghanistan says embassy bombers trained in Pakistan
Reuters - July 9, 2008
DUSHANBE - Militants who carried out this week's suicide bomb attack on the Indian embassy in the Afghan capital received their training at camps in Pakistan, Afghanistan's interior minister said on Wednesday.

Now it's war against India in Afghanistan
By Sudha Ramachandran Asia Times Online / July 9, 2008
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

Bombing in Afghanistan prompts Indians to examine world role
By Somini Sengupta The International Herald Tribune  Wednesday, July 9, 2008
NEW DELHI: The suicide bombing this week outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul was the latest and most audacious attack in recent months on Indian interests in Afghanistan, where New Delhi, since helping to topple

Alarm over Afghan civilian deaths
Wednesday, 9 July 2008 BBC News
At least 250 Afghan civilians have been killed or wounded in insurgent attacks or military action in the past six days, the Red Cross says.

Afghanistan says coalition forces to start withdrawal in October
DUSHANBE, July 9 (RIA Novosti) - The Afghan interior minister told a news conference in Tajikistan on Wednesday that international troops would start withdrawing from Afghanistan this October.

War memories fade in Afghan valley
By Bilal Sarwary BBC News, Shomali Wednesday, 9 July 2008
For many in the West the picture they get of Afghanistan is one of unremitting gloom and doom for the average person.

AFGHANISTAN: Appeal for cash to feed 4.5 million people
KABUL, 9 July 2008 (IRIN) - The government of Afghanistan and the UN on 9 July launched a Joint Emergency Appeal for over US$404 million to provide an emergency safety-net for 4.5 million vulnerable Afghans who have been pushed

AFGHANISTAN: NGOs call for separation of UN political, humanitarian roles
KABUL, 9 July 2008 (IRIN) - Six international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) involved in development and relief activities in Afghanistan said in a joint press release on 29 June that the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan

435 HIV cases detected in Afghanistan
KABUL, July 9 (Xinhua) -- The spread of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) has been on rise in the conservative Islamic society of Afghanistan as over 400 cases have been reported so far, Afghan Public Health Ministry said Wednesday.

Afghanistan sends medical aid to Kurram Agency
Dawn (Pakistan)
PESHAWAR, July 8: The Afghan government has sent life-saving drugs and surgical equipment to avert a humanitarian crisis in the strife-torn Parachinar and other parts of the Kurram Agency, where hospitals are running short of medicines

As Pakistan's Taliban take control of town, military stays in fort
By Saeed Shah | McClatchy Newspapers July 8, 2008
DARRA ADAM KHEL, Pakistan — The Taliban fighters were sitting in the back of a pickup, parked right outside the army fort in Darra Adam Khel, a wild town in Pakistan's troubled northwest that's famous for its arms bazaar.
Back to Top
India to stay in Afghanistan: New Delhi envoy
July 9, 2008
NEW DELHI (AFP) - India will continue its presence in Afghanistan despite a suicide attack on its embassy in Kabul that killed 41 people including four of its nationals, New Delhi's envoy said Wednesday.

India's ambassador to Kabul, Jayant Prasad, also told the Times Now TV channel that Afghan authorities remain convinced that Pakistan's spy agency, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), was behind the attack.

"My political message is that India is not going to be deterred," Prasad said of Monday's attack, in which nearly 150 people were also wounded.

Describing the suicide bombing as intended "to deter India from our engagement in Afghanistan," Prasad said: "We are going to continue to be here and we are going to continue to do what we have been doing here."

The car bomb ripped into the embassy compound, killing India's military attache, a diplomat and two Indian guards as well as nearly three dozen Afghans.

It has been described as the deadliest in Kabul since the start of the insurgency that began after the extremist Taliban movement was removed from power in a US-led invasion in late 2001.

Prasad said Afghan authorities had accused Pakistan "on the basis of preliminary investigations. These investigations are continuing, several arrests have taken place."

On Tuesday, Afghan presidential spokesman Homayun Hamidzada said the "sophistication of this attack and the kind of materials used and the specific targeting, everything has the hallmark of a particular intelligence agency that has conducted similar terrorist acts in Afghanistan in the past."

Afghanistan regularly accuses circles in Pakistan, a long-time rival of India, of continuing to support the Taliban and other militants waging a deadly insurgency in the war-ravaged nation.

Pakistan rejects the accusation.

India assisted the so-called Northern Alliance, a grouping of Afghan factions that fought the Taliban, and is now helping the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.

New Delhi has pledged 750 million dollars for rebuilding and reconstruction in Afghanistan since 2001.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Afghanistan says embassy bombers trained in Pakistan
Reuters - July 9, 2008
DUSHANBE - Militants who carried out this week's suicide bomb attack on the Indian embassy in the Afghan capital received their training at camps in Pakistan, Afghanistan's interior minister said on Wednesday.

On Monday, a car bomb rammed into the Indian embassy's gates and killed dozens of people in the deadliest attack in Kabul since U.S.-led and Afghan forces overthrew the Taliban in 2001.

"Unfortunately dozens of people who died or were injured during the explosion were civilians," Zarar Ahmad Moqbel said on a visit to neighbouring Tajikistan.

"Some nations are keen to derail the process of stabilisation in Afghanistan. The training centre for the terrorists who carried out the latest act of violence in Kabul at the Indian embassy is in Pakistan," he said.

Moqbel did not elaborate. Pakistan strongly condemned Monday's attack and denied any involvement.

Afghanistan has said the attack bore the hallmarks of a foreign intelligence agency.

The explosion killed two Indian diplomats and two Indian guards. Most of the other victims were people waiting in line for visas or shoppers at a nearby market.

Afghanistan has accused Pakistani agents of being behind the April assassination attempt against President Hamid Karzai, a mass jail break in Kandahar last month and other attacks.

Karzai has threatened to send troops across the border to attack militants there if Pakistan did not take action.

(Reporting by Roman Kozhevnikov; Writing by Maria Golovnina; Editing by Mariam Karouny)
Back to Top
Back to Top
Now it's war against India in Afghanistan
By Sudha Ramachandran Asia Times Online / July 9, 2008
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 a 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.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Bombing in Afghanistan prompts Indians to examine world role
By Somini Sengupta The International Herald Tribune  Wednesday, July 9, 2008
NEW DELHI: The suicide bombing this week outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul was the latest and most audacious attack in recent months on Indian interests in Afghanistan, where New Delhi, since helping to topple the Taliban in 2001, has staked its largest outside aid package ever.

India has poured unprecedented amounts of money and people into the reconstruction of Afghanistan, a vital passage into resource-rich Central Asia. It has spent more than $750 million, building a strategic road across the country's southwest, training teachers and civil servants, and working on erecting a new seat of the national Parliament.

That engagement has come at a mounting cost to the 4,000 Indian citizens working in Afghanistan. In the past two and a half years, an Indian driver for the road reconstruction team was found decapitated, an engineer was abducted and murdered, and seven members of the paramilitary force guarding Indian reconstruction crews were killed.

Last year alone, the Indian Border Roads Organization came under 30 rocket attacks as it built the 200-kilometer, or 125-mile, stretch of road across Nimroz Province that will ultimately link landlocked Afghanistan to a seaport in Iran.

The embassy bombing on Monday seems to have been the most effective strike: A suicide bomber blew himself up as two Indian diplomats drove into the embassy early in the morning, reducing much of the compound to rubble and blood. Four Indians, including the two diplomats, were killed. The bulk of the 41 dead were Afghan civilians who had come for embassy services.

To much of the world, the bombing may have appeared to be another in a series of escalating attacks by militants looking to destabilize the U.S.-backed administration of President Hamid Karzai.

Here, in the Indian capital, the message of the bombing was explicit: India, get out of Afghanistan.

"It is a notice saying, 'You quit, or we are going to hit you,"' said Lalit Mansingh, a retired Indian diplomat who served in Kabul in the 1970s.

In condemning the attack, the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, sent a plain message that his country would not quit, and that the Indian engagement in Afghanistan would "continue with renewed commitment."

Not surprisingly, Pakistan was swiftly blamed for the bombing.

Pakistan, just as swiftly, denied having a hand in it.

But it also set off a lively policy debate, first over whether India should complement its reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan with military boots on the ground, and then whether Pakistan, and its backers in Washington, would ever allow India to play a more robust military role.

Pakistan has long been nervous about India's penetration into Afghanistan, including its five consular missions there, along with an air base in Tajikistan, across Afghanistan's northern border.

C. Raja Mohan, an Indian foreign policy analyst who teaches at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said the time had come for India and Pakistan to look beyond their traditional rivalries and fuse a joint strategy to confront extremists operating on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Such an initiative, he argued, would be to both countries' advantage.

"Whatever problems we had with Pakistan, Pakistan had been a buffer between India and the badlands," he said. "Now the buffer is falling apart. Afghanistan needs to be stabilized. Pakistan needs to be stabilized. This requires more drastic remedies."

The attack on the embassy in Kabul has also stirred a simmering debate about whether India, as a rising economic power in the world, ought to also flex its muscle in areas of strategic interest.

The United States, for instance, long ago leaned on India to send troops to Iraq and to use its influence on Myanmar to push for democracy. India refused both requests. Sri Lanka invited India to mediate in its long-running ethnic war, but India's intervention there 20 years ago left the Indian military with a bloody nose, and it has since refused to meddle.

"I don't know where is an example of India punching its weight," said K. Subrahmanyam, a defense analyst. "It is India that is keeping a restrained posture. It goes back to how India became free and what kind of state India is."

Indian newspaper editorials on Tuesday urged the government not to buckle under the new threats in Afghanistan. "As India mourns the murder of its two diplomats in Kabul, it must brace itself up to a new burden that comes with increasing global weight," The Indian Express wrote. "New Delhi cannot continue to expand its economic and diplomatic activity in Afghanistan while avoiding a commensurate increase in its military presence there."

Afghanistan is in some ways the test case of the extent to which India is willing to use its hard power to advance its strategic and commercial interests.

"As India's influence grows, it will become increasingly involved in the local politics of a foreign country," said Rahul Roy-Chowdhury, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. "It cannot afford to see itself as an innocent bystander anymore."

Gurmeet Kanwal, head of the Center for Land Warfare Studies, said that Indian paramilitary troops were ill-prepared to face the insurgents in Afghanistan and that India's development aid to that country needed to be secured by a military presence.

"I wouldn't use the expression 'flex its muscles,"' he said. "I would say the time has come to live up to our responsibility. If it involves military intervention, so be it."
Back to Top
Back to Top
Alarm over Afghan civilian deaths
Wednesday, 9 July 2008 BBC News
At least 250 Afghan civilians have been killed or wounded in insurgent attacks or military action in the past six days, the Red Cross says.

It has called on all parties to the conflict to avoid civilian casualties.

Nato said separately that more than 900 people including civilians had died in Afghanistan since the start of 2008.

On Monday a suicide bombing in Kabul killed more than 40 people, while officials say two coalition air strikes killed dozens at the weekend.

The issue of civilian casualties is hugely sensitive in Afghanistan.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly urged foreign forces to exercise more care.

'Constant care'

The statement released by the International Committee of the Red Cross say that civilians "must never be the target of an attack, unless they take a direct part in the fighting".

The organisation's chief representative in Kabul, Franz Rauchenstein, made his findings public following Monday's suicide car bomb attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul and reports that a US-led coalition air strike had killed members of a wedding party in the east of the country.

"We call on all parties to the conflict, in the conduct of their military operations, to distinguish at all times between civilians and fighters and to take constant care to spare civilians," Mr Rauchenstein said.

His report said that parties to the conflict "must take all necessary precautions to verify that targets are indeed military objectives and that attacks will not cause excessive civilian casualties and damage".

The statement also expressed concern "about the reportedly high number of civilian casualties resulting from the recent [coalition] air strikes in the east of the country".

The Taleban has denied involvement in Monday's bombing, which killed 41 people, while the US-led coalition has disputed claims that its recent airstrikes killed civilians.

Mr Karzai has ordered an investigation into one of the bombings, in eastern Nangarhar province. Locals there said at least 20 people had been killed on Sunday at a wedding party.

US forces rejected the claims, saying those killed were militants involved in previous mortar attacks on a Nato base.

The UN said recently that the number of civilians killed in fighting in Afghanistan had jumped by nearly two thirds compared to last year.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Afghanistan says coalition forces to start withdrawal in October
DUSHANBE, July 9 (RIA Novosti) - The Afghan interior minister told a news conference in Tajikistan on Wednesday that international troops would start withdrawing from Afghanistan this October.

NATO is responsible for the 52,000-strong International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF), a security and development mission in the country.

Since 2006, ISAF personnel have been taking an active role in combat operations after its area of responsibility was stretched to the whole country in 2003. Of late, the forces have been suffering from a spate of terrorist attacks.

"The government of Afghanistan has backed the initiative of the parliament to begin the withdrawal of the ISAF as soon as October this year," said Ahmad Moqbel Zarar, who arrived in Tajikistan on Tuesday for a four-day working visit at the invitation of his Tajik counterpart.

Commenting on the suicide attack at the Indian Embassy in Kabul, which killed 41 people and injured around 140 more, the minister said: "Without doubt, the blast was planned in terrorist camps in certain neighbor countries."

The ISAF troops and civilian personnel provided by around 40 countries, were initially responsible for securing the capital of Kabul and surrounding areas from attacks and creating conditions necessary to set the Afghan Transitional Administration headed by Hamid Karzai.

More than 860 coalition personnel in ISAF and Operation Enduring Freedom have been killed since October 2001. Over 2,000 U.S. personnel are reported to have been wounded.
Back to Top
Back to Top
War memories fade in Afghan valley
By Bilal Sarwary BBC News, Shomali Wednesday, 9 July 2008
For many in the West the picture they get of Afghanistan is one of unremitting gloom and doom for the average person.

While there is no doubt that many people in the south and east are suffering terribly, for some the removal of the Taleban has meant that their lives have immeasurably changed for the better.

Take the case of 17-year-old Mohammad Fahim in the beautiful northern town of Charkiar for example.

Under the Taleban, his entire village was burned down, causing him to seek refuge in Pakistan, where he worked as a child labourer in a brakes factory.

Fertile

He has bitter memories of working tirelessly in the scorching heat of a foreign country.

But now he has returned to his homeland - one of the most beautiful parts of Afghanistan - which is free of insurgents, free of violence and basking in its former glory.

Today Mr Fahim earns about $15 a day selling water melons in the fertile Shomali plain - renowned for its wide range of vegetables and grapes.

"It's from my own fields, it feels so good to earn money in your own country," he told me.

"A lot of people like our province, with its beautiful gardens and the Salang river. I am so happy that there is peace in Afghanistan. There is life because we have peace.''

Please don't just take Mr Fahim's word for it.

Like everyone else, I couldn't resist the temptation of the sweet berries, and decided to sit down by the side of the wild Salang river that springs from the heart of the Hindu Kush.

It is not difficult to see why this strikingly beautiful area is known as Afghanistan's paradise.

For the people of Shomali, there is a visible economic boom in this former Taleban battleground.

''We sell our berries and yoghurt, and we rent our garden to people who come from Kabul to relax in the Salang valley," another man, Rohullah, told me.

''During the time of the Taleban, people left everything behind, because Shomali was a battleground - thank God, today we are back in our homes and life is better.''

During the fighting between the Taleban and their arch rivals, the Northern Alliance, Rohullah lost his father, when his village was caught in the midst of war.

Almost seven years after the fall of the Taleban, life is improving for him and thousands of families who live along the busy Kabul-Mazar highway.

The road to northern Afghanistan from Kabul is lined with lush fields and dense vineyards. It winds through the rugged landscape and high peaks of the Hindu Kush, until it reaches the idyllic, nirvana-like Salang valley.

Battlegrounds

In the 1980s, the invading Soviet forces were constantly ambushed by the mujahideen forces seeking refuge in this mountainous valley.

Today, there are other dangers - often in the form of reckless drivers searching for the best picnic spots.

Over the decades, the valley has borne the brunt of much of the fighting in Afghanistan.

It was the front line between the Taleban and the Northern Alliance.

At the time of the fighting, everything was destroyed as warring factions sought to limit their enemy's choices for cover.

During the Soviet invasion, it was one of the most heavily mined areas in the country.

Today the Salang valley has returned to some of its former natural splendour.

Unlike the south and east of the country, the area is virtually devoid of the Taleban.

New petrol stations, food shops and local fruit sellers have replaced destroyed houses and damaged tanks. Afghan drivers say that they don't have to fear landmines anymore.

The roads are clogged with packed passenger buses, goods lorries and private vehicles.

More cross-country travel like this means more money for the long-suffering people of Shomali.

Roadside shops and huts sell juice made out of yoghurt and there are mouth-watering ground berries, melons and vegetables.

This is arguably the least troubled part of Afghanistan.

No wonder that many people are crying out for this kind of peace in other parts of a country which has known only war for the last few decades.
Back to Top
Back to Top
AFGHANISTAN: Appeal for cash to feed 4.5 million people
KABUL, 9 July 2008 (IRIN) - The government of Afghanistan and the UN on 9 July launched a Joint Emergency Appeal for over US$404 million to provide an emergency safety-net for 4.5 million vulnerable Afghans who have been pushed into "high-risk" food-insecurity.

This significant portion of Afghanistan's total estimated population of 26.6 million has fallen into the "high risk" category due to high food prices, drought and a sharp decrease in domestic agricultural production.

"This appeal for over $404 million aims to ensure the food security of 450,000 urban and rural households that have been hit hardest by worldwide food price hikes. A further 300,000 farming families will receive vital livestock and agricultural assistance, while 550,000 women and children under five years old will receive help to protect them from malnutrition," said the appeal, which was launched in Kabul.

"Afghanistan is facing a food crisis which will turn into a human catastrophe if donors do not act promptly," Karim Khalili, the country's second vice-president, said.

Bo Asplund, the UN humanitarian coordinator and deputy special representative of the Secretary-General, said there was an urgent need to deliver "life-saving" aid to the most vulnerable Afghans.

"The needs are great and the time is limited… We urge donors to step forward with commitments of support that will enable us to provide essential food, water and health services to vulnerable groups over the next 12 months," said Asplund.

The new appeal covers more people and is intended for a longer period than the first joint emergency appeal, which was launched in January but has only reached about 33 percent of its targeted 2.55 million people to date.

Insecurity, logistical and import hurdles have complicated and delayed aid delivery to a number of needy communities, but UN and Afghan officials say the January appeal will be completed by the end of August.

Food-insecurity

Prices of wheat and wheat flour, the main staples for Afghans, have gone up by 200 percent country-wide over the past year, according to the appeal.

Some 12 million Afghans (42 percent of the population) live below the poverty line, with per capita incomes of 45 US cents per day or less. These people are unable to meet their basic food requirements, according to the appeal.

About 85 percent of Afghan households spend most of their income on food, the findings of a National Risk and Vulnerability Assessment (NRVA) say.

Most affected by the unprecedented hikes in food prices, severe drought and the failure of rain-fed agriculture (which accounts for 35 percent of domestic production) are "small farmers, landless people, nomads and casual labourers", aid agencies said.

The worsening food-insecurity has sparked concerns about increasing malnutrition among under-five children, lactating and pregnant women.

The Ministry of Public Health said "preliminary results of the ongoing rapid nutrition assessment in 22 of the country's 34 provinces show Global Acute Malnutrition of 19.7 percent and Severe Acute Malnutrition of 6.7 percent in 6-58 month old children."

"Twenty four percent of lactating women are malnourished and 19 percent of pregnant women have a poor nutrition status," it added.

Avoiding "a prolonged relief situation"

About 50 percent of the requested funding is intended for food aid, which will be distributed by the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and its local partners, mostly through food-for-work projects.

The appeal includes various other components - such as health, water and sanitation, temporary shelter, livestock recovery and agriculture support activities - to be implemented within 12 months (July 2008 - July 2009).

The government will lead the implementation phase in close collaboration with UN agencies and national and international non-governmental organisations.

"The appeal also aims to avoid a prolonged relief situation… This will help avoid another emergency appeal," Second Vice-President Khalili said.
Back to Top
Back to Top
AFGHANISTAN: NGOs call for separation of UN political, humanitarian roles
KABUL, 9 July 2008 (IRIN) - Six international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) involved in development and relief activities in Afghanistan said in a joint press release on 29 June that the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) had remained "worryingly silent" about the worsening humanitarian crisis in the country, and that its coordination capacity was "extremely limited".

"Despite enormous challenges, the UN Mission in Afghanistan has not paid sufficient attention to humanitarian needs and the ability of agencies to respond," the NGOs' press release said.

However, UNAMA has rejected the criticism regarding its humanitarian performance. Aleem Siddique, spokesman for UNAMA in Kabul, told IRIN the mission had beefed up its humanitarian coordination capacity over the past year from two international staff in February 2007 to 16 in July 2008. He added that the mission hoped to again double the number of humanitarian staff over the next year to meet growing humanitarian needs.

"UNAMA has been one of the strongest advocates on both human rights issues and humanitarian affairs within this country. We reject any allegations that we have remained silent. We have and will continue to speak out without fear or favour to ensure the needs of Afghanistan's most vulnerable communities are met." Siddique said.

Military involvement in aid delivery

NGO representatives who met John Holmes, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, during his four-day visit to Afghanistan 26-29 June, expressed concern about increasing military involvement in relief activities.

"International military actors' increased involvement in relief and reconstruction is further complicating the operational environment for NGOs, particularly in terms of security," said the NGOs, which included CARE International, Save the Children USA, the Norwegian Refugee Council, the International Rescue Committee and Mercy Corps.

At least 16 aid workers had been abducted and 12 reportedly killed in various security incidents over the past six months, the NGOs reported.

"Our principles prevent us from being agents for any armed parties to the conflict. Moreover, being perceived as such by communities, or any of these armed parties, is a clear threat to our security," Nigel Pont, the head of Mercy Corps, was quoted in the press release as saying.

The UN should ensure that military and civilian actors are clearly separated and avoid a "blurring of lines", the NGOs said.

UNAMA gave assurances that its activities were in line with international humanitarian law and that the world body was defending humanitarian impartiality.

"Clearly it is very important to defend the impartiality and the neutrality of humanitarian action," Holmes told IRIN in Kabul on 28 June.

Call for return of OCHA

UNAMA was established on 28 March 2002 according to resolution 1401 of the UN Security Council - initially to help implement the Bonn Agreement [http://www.afghangovernment.com/AfghanAgreementBonn.htm] on transitional arrangements in Afghanistan and to coordinate all reconstruction and development activities in the country. Additionally, UNAMA is mandated to coordinate and lead humanitarian action. Its mandate follows the UN "integrated mission" approach [http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/faq/q5.htm].

But some aid agencies warn that UNAMA's political mandate has made it very difficult for it to work as an "apolitical coordinator" of humanitarian assistance.

To tackle the problem and also to better coordinate response to a "deteriorating humanitarian situation" [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=79002], the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) should re-establish an independent presence in Afghanistan, the NGOs suggested.

"OCHA is seen mostly as an independent office which has extensive experience in coordination, resource mobilisation and disbursement," Lex Kassenber, country director for CARE Afghanistan, told IRIN.
Back to Top
Back to Top
435 HIV cases detected in Afghanistan
KABUL, July 9 (Xinhua) -- The spread of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) has been on rise in the conservative Islamic society of Afghanistan as over 400 cases have been reported so far, Afghan Public Health Ministry said Wednesday.

"So far 435 HIV positive cases have been reported from different sources," the ministry said in a press release, adding that there are estimated 2000-2500 HIV positive cases nationwide.

However, the press release said the prevalence of HIV in Afghanistan is currently considered low.

The ministry said the three decades of war poverty, illiteracy, massive internal and external displacement, high level of poppy cultivation, drug trafficking and usage, existence of commercial and unsafe sex, unsafe injection practices and blood transfusion are potential risk factors for the spread of HIV and AIDS.

It also said that the World Bank at the request of Afghan health ministry has granted 10 million U.S. dollars to enhance efforts for upgrading the awareness about HIV and AIDS and to reduce discrimination against people living with HIV and AIDS in the country.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Afghanistan sends medical aid to Kurram Agency
Dawn (Pakistan)
PESHAWAR, July 8: The Afghan government has sent life-saving drugs and surgical equipment to avert a humanitarian crisis in the strife-torn Parachinar and other parts of the Kurram Agency, where hospitals are running short of medicines because of a nine-month-old blockade of the area by local Taliban militants.

Sources said that President Hamid Karzai had sent the medical consignment valued at Rs8 million to Parachinar, the agency’s headquarters, on humanitarian grounds. It was handed over to tribal elders on Tuesday on behalf of the Afghan president.

Hospitals in the Kurram Agency are facing an acute shortage of medicines and people injured in clashes and other patients could not be taken to Peshawar and other parts of the country because of the closure of the main Thall-Parachinar road by Taliban.

Doctors at the Agency Headquarters Hospital feared that any further delay in the supply of medicines and essential equipment could create a humanitarian crisis. Sources said the government was yet to take affective measures to open the main road for resumption of supplies of medicines and essential commodities to the area.

The main road, the only supply line, has remained blocked since November following clashes in the area and the Afghan government has allowed the people stranded in Parachinar and other parts of the Kurran Agency to travel to Peshawar via Afghanistan.

A convoy carrying food items was attacked by Taliban militants near Sadda town last month. The militants killed 12 drivers and set 14 trucks on fire.
Back to Top
Back to Top
As Pakistan's Taliban take control of town, military stays in fort
By Saeed Shah | McClatchy Newspapers July 8, 2008
DARRA ADAM KHEL, Pakistan — The Taliban fighters were sitting in the back of a pickup, parked right outside the army fort in Darra Adam Khel, a wild town in Pakistan's troubled northwest that's famous for its arms bazaar.

The Islamic militia, linked with al Qaida, has controlled Darra for about six months. Wrapped in head scarves, with just their eyes showing, and bristling with weaponry, its members patrol the streets and impose their own austere rules. They've become such a routine sight in the town that no one pays them any attention.

The security forces, when they emerge from their fort, don't challenge the hot-blooded young militants. Even their presence outside the Pakistan Frontier Corp's White Fort in Darra didn't concern residents.

"What's wrong with that?" said Shah Mahmood, a tribal elder and gun store owner, when he was asked about the scene at the fort. "They (the Taliban) don't bother us, only those who are doing wrong. They have finished the robbers, the drug dealers, the kidnappers. Look, there is peace here now."

In theory, Pakistan's security forces are in opposition to the Taliban, who are now firmly entrenched across the country's Federally Administered Tribal Areas and encroaching on the adjacent region in the North West Frontier Province, known as the "settled" areas. In reality, the government has ceded large swathes of territory to the extremists.

Some blame President Pervez Musharraf, who removed colonial-era local government structures and replaced them with weak elected local officials in the settled areas and the military in the tribal areas, who couldn't maintain law and order.

Late last month, the Frontier Corp, a paramilitary force, launched an operation against Islamist warlords not linked to the Taliban who were based on the outskirts of Peshawar in the Khyber agency, a part of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

Darra, just a 40-minute drive from Peshawar, is in the North West Frontier Province, which means it shouldn't be as lawless as the tribal areas. Yet the Taliban, far more hard-line than the Khyber agency's militants, operate with impunity in Darra. The rubble of a paramilitary checkpoint that they bombed marks the edge of the town.

The Taliban presence didn't seem to dent business in Darra's market. Bursts of gunfire jolted the main street every few minutes, as buyers tested weapons by letting off a few rounds into the air. While the gun stores are unique to Darra, butchers, candy shops and cafes grilling meat kebabs also were open.

In Mahmood's shop, a Kalashnikov copy made in Darra starts at $92, while a smuggled Russian-made model would cost $1,500. Darra produces all components of the weapons in tiny workshops, even the bullets.

On display at Mohammad Illyas' store was a new-looking American M-16 rifle, a bulky submachine gun that could have been taken from a dead U.S. soldier across the border in Afghanistan. Illyas wanted $7,000 for that M-16, and $3,400 for a 1970s-era model.

"People say that these Taliban here are Tajiks or Chechens or whatever, but that's a lie. They are our own people," Illyas said. "When there was government rule here, the police took money, the army took money. The Taliban don't. . . . We say George Bush is the terrorist, not the Taliban."

It would take a brave person to speak out against the Taliban. Girls and women in particular suffer under their rule, often banned from going to school or working. But the Taliban seem to be genuinely welcome in Darra and across the tribal belt, so exasperated is the population by the anarchy that prevailed under the Pakistani government.

"I would say that 70 percent of people support the Taliban," said Abdul Qadir Khan, a student in Peshawar from South Waziristan, the epicenter of Pakistan's Taliban movement. "That's because people don't have education, they don't have jobs. The Taliban say they are fighting a holy war."

While the Taliban can't bring economic development, they've cracked down on the criminal gangs that plague the northwest and have set up their own Islamic courts, which dispense speedy justice. And development projects weren't taking place anyway, locals said.

The Taliban were able to spread rapidly across Pakistan's northwest, experts said, because the colonial-era system of local government had broken down or been removed.

That administrative system, a legacy of the British empire, gave enormous powers to the local chief bureaucrat, known as the political agent in the tribal territories and the deputy commissioner in the rest of Pakistan. He controlled the security forces and acted as a magistrate, adjudicating on disputes, powers that could have been used to quash Taliban cells before they had a chance to mushroom. Adding fuel was the anger that the tribes of the area felt about Pakistan's alliance with Washington after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001.

"The perception that we are fighting someone else's war and the destruction of the institutional framework that could have dealt with the (security) crisis created an administrative vacuum. That was filled by the Taliban," said Rustam Shah, a former Pakistani ambassador to Afghanistan.

Musharraf's regime abolished the deputy commissioner structure six years ago — replacing it with elected mayors who had far fewer powers — in an attempt to provide democratic legitimacy to his army-led government. The political agent was sidelined after the army went into the tribal areas for the first time, after 9-11, against Afghan insurgents whom Pakistani tribes had given refuge there.

"The blunder was taking power away from the political administration and giving it to the army. The army then indulged in war with the local people," said Mohammad Amad, the executive director of IDEA, a nongovernmental organization that conducts social surveys in Pakistan's tribal areas.

Bashir Bilour, the senior minister of the provincial government in the North West Frontier Province, said that Taliban militants never would have been able to move last year into the area of Swat, a valley in the settled area, if a deputy commissioner had been in place.

"There was no government to challenge them" in Swat, Bilour said in an interview. "We propose bringing the (colonial) administrative system back."

To reinstate the deputy commissioners and wrest control of the tribal territories from the army would require strong action from the new federal government. However, Islamabad is caught up in a spiraling political crisis, and while some members of the coalition government have vowed to reverse Musharraf's local government revisions, the complexity of the task means that it's a long way down the agenda.

(Shah is a McClatchy special correspondent.)
Back to Top

 Back to News Archirves of 2008
 
Disclaimer: This news site is mostly a compilation of publicly accessible articles on the Web in the form of a link or saved news item. The news articles and commentaries/editorials are protected under international copyright laws. All credit goes to the original respective source(s).