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Kidnapped Canadian kept in well in Afghanistan: official
Sun Nov 9, 2:30 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – A Canadian journalist freed after nearly a month in captivity was kept in a well near Kabul, Afghanistan's intelligence agency said Sunday, adding three men had been arrested.
Kidnapped Canadian journalist free in Afghanistan
Sat Nov 8, 4:12 pm ET
OTTAWA (Reuters) – Mellissa Fung, a journalist working for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp in Afghanistan, was freed on Saturday after being kidnapped a month ago near the capital, Kabul, her employer said.
Never mind the Taliban: in Afghanistan, thugs, bandits and everyday threat
The Canadian Press, 8 November 2008
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - The Afghanistan kidnapping of CBC reporter Mellissa Fung, a 28-day ordeal that finally came to an end Saturday, shouldn't be taken as a sign that the Taliban are running rampant
Two Spanish soldiers killed in Afghanistan: defence ministry
Sun Nov 9, 7:10 am ET
MADRID (AFP) – Two Spanish soldiers were killed and another critically wounded by a suicide bomber in Herat, western Afghanistan, the Spanish Defence Ministry said Sunday.
Govt to wait and see on Obama's Afghanistan plans: Miliband
LONDON (AFP) – The government will not necessarily follow suit if US President-elect Barack Obama sends more troops to Afghanistan as part of an Iraq-style 'surge', Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Sunday.
US diplomat says relations with Afghanistan good
By JASON STRAZIUSO, Associated Press Writer – Sat Nov 8, 3:33 pm ET
KABUL, Afghanistan – A top American diplomat said Saturday he did not believe tensions over civilian casualties have damaged relations between the U.S. and Afghanistan.
U.S. acknowledges 37 Afghan civilians killed in fighting last week
The response to Afghan officials' claims is unusually swift. But the military stops short of taking direct blame for the casualties.
By M. Karim Faiez and Laura King Los Angeles Times - Sat Nov 8, 2:49 pm EST
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Istanbul, Turkey -- The U.S. military acknowledged Saturday that 37 civilians were killed and 35 injured during fighting last week in Kandahar province between insurgents and coalition forces.
Stolen UN vehicle raises security worries in Kabul
Associated Press - November 9, 2008 3:03 AM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - A police official says authorities are searching for a United Nations vehicle stolen from the Kabul airport Saturday.
Pakistani airstrike kills 14 Taliban militants: official
Sun Nov 9, 3:18 am ET
KHAR, Pakistan (AFP) – At least 14 militants were killed Sunday when Pakistani jets pounded suspected Taliban hide-outs in a restive tribal area bordering Afghanistan, officials said.
Military chief warns against moving troops direct from Iraq to Afghanistan
Head of defence staff says British armed forces need time to recover after years of deployment in war zones
Jenny Percival and agencies guardian.co.uk, Sunday November 9 2008 13.26 GMT
Troops should not be transferred directly from Iraq to Afghanistan after a "significant reduction" is made to the British contingent there next year, the head of the armed forces said today.
Seven pointless years in Afghanistan
A negotiated settlement with the Taliban would precipitate the end of an unwinnable conflict
Robert Skidelsky guardian.co.uk, Sunday November 9 2008 13.00 GMT
Seven years after the beginning of the American-led bombardment of Afghanistan the Taliban are still fighting. Some 50 insurgents died recently in an assault on Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province.
U.S. electricity project forges ahead despite Afghan terrain and Taliban
By Carlotta Gall Sunday, November 9, 2008 International Herald Tribune
KAJAKI DAM, Afghanistan: Five shipping containers marked with the Afghan flag, some of them still wrapped in plastic, now sit in the construction camp at Kajaki Dam, Afghanistan's biggest hydroelectric project.
Canada buys wheat seeds to give Afghan farmers alternative to poppies
Ethan Baron , Canwest News Service Saturday, November 08, 2008
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Canada is providing $1.2 million to buy wheat seeds and fertilizer for thousands of Afghan farmers, but the Taliban warn they may attack any foreigners who attempt to distribute the seeds.
Elusive threats boost PTSD risk in Afghanistan
Stefania Moretti CTV.ca News November 8, 2008
Canadian troops fighting in Afghanistan are up against two dangerous adversaries. The first, the elusive enemy; the second, the less-tangible threat of mental breakdown.
UN appreciates India's USD 12 million contribution to Afghan
November 8, 2008
New York (PTI): The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has welcomed a USD 12 million contribution from New Delhi that will be used to provide fortified biscuits made from Indian wheat for 1.2 million school children in Afghanistan.
Lack of jobs 'pushes Afghans into Talib hands'
Written by www.quqnoos.com Sunday, 09 November 2008
Jobless refugees turfed out of Iran turn to lives of crime, officials say
Laghman residents bemoan poor roads
Written by www.quqnoos.com Saturday, 08 November 2008
Governor apologises for lack of good roads, clinics and schools
Talk is cheap - Gap-e moft
The Guardian By Nushin Arbabzadah 11/08/2008
While preaching human rights, President Karzai panders to a public that wants to see criminals hang
$1b smuggled to Afghanistan
Staff Reporter The Post, Pakistan 9 November 2008
ISLAMABAD: Around $1 billion has been illegally transferred to Afghanistan during the last two months which led to worsening the country's financial crisis, well-placed sources said. "Dollars are being shifted
Bin Laden son under investigation at Cairo airport
The Associated Press Saturday, November 8, 2008
CAIRO, Egypt: The son of al-Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden was questioned at the Cairo airport by Egyptian officials on Saturday after his application for asylum in Spain was rejected, said an airport security official.
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Kidnapped Canadian kept in well in Afghanistan: official
Sun Nov 9, 2:30 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – A Canadian journalist freed after nearly a month in captivity was kept in a well near Kabul, Afghanistan's intelligence agency said Sunday, adding three men had been arrested.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation journalist Mellissa Fung -- who was kidnapped by armed men on October 12 as she visited a refugee camp on the outskirts of the Afghan capital -- was freed late Saturday.
"The Canadian journalist was being kept in a well in Wardak province," National Directorate of Security (NDS) spokesman Sayed Ansari told a press conference.
She was handed over to NDS officials near the provincial capital Maydan Shah, about 50 kilometres (30 miles) southwest of Kabul, provincial government spokesman Adam Khan Sirat told AFP.
There had been no deal for her release, he said.
Ansari said the woman had been held in a similar fashion to a member of the royal family and former presidential candidate, Humayun Shah Asifi, who was kidnapped last month and held for about 10 days.
Asifi was kept for days with the adult son of a Kabul banker in a one-by-two metre (yard) hole about five metres (16 feet) underground outside of the capital.
Three men had been arrested for involvement in the kidnapping of Fung but they were only mid-level players, Ansari said. The kingpins were being sought, although one had fled the country, he added.
He would not give details about the captured men.
The abduction, kept secret on the request of Canadian Broadcasting Corporation out of concern for Fung's safety, has been blamed on criminal groups, and the insurgent Taliban has denied involvement.
About two weeks after Fung's kidnapping a Dutch female journalist, whose abductor claimed to be with the Taliban, was kidnapped and held for about 10 days before being released on Friday.
A French aid worker was snatched in the city centre on Monday and is still missing.
His kidnapping has been blamed on organised crime which has been climbing and, with increased insurgent attacks, has left security at its weakest since the Taliban were removed from power after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
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Kidnapped Canadian journalist free in Afghanistan
Sat Nov 8, 4:12 pm ET
OTTAWA (Reuters) – Mellissa Fung, a journalist working for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp in Afghanistan, was freed on Saturday after being kidnapped a month ago near the capital, Kabul, her employer said.
The CBC said Fung was safe in the Canadian Embassy and undergoing a medical checkup after being released to Canadian forces.
Fung was abducted by armed men at a U.N. refugee camp on the outskirts of Kabul on October 12 and taken to the mountains west of the city, the network said in a statement.
Afghanistan -- one of the most dangerous nations in the world for reporters -- has seen a spike in assassinations and kidnappings of foreigners.
"Obviously it was not a random abduction," Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper told a news conference.
He said no ransom had been paid by Ottawa, the CBC or anyone else to free Fung, whom he spoke to after her release.
"She sounded in remarkably good spirits under the circumstances," he said.
The CBC said it seemed likely the kidnappers were criminals rather than members of the Taliban.
Harper said hundreds of Canadian and Afghan officials had been involved in the effort to free Fung and that he called Afghan President Hamid Karzai to thank him.
Harper -- who declined to give many details about the kidnapping or Fung's release -- also thanked media organizations for agreeing to a request from the CBC to respect a news blackout until the case had been resolved.
Fung had been on assignment in the southern city of Kandahar, where Canada has about 2,700 troops on a military mission due to end in 2011.
"(It) is an extremely dangerous country and that's why we're there, to try and lessen those dangers," said Harper.
(Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Peter Cooney)
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Never mind the Taliban: in Afghanistan, thugs, bandits and everyday threat
The Canadian Press, 8 November 2008
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - The Afghanistan kidnapping of CBC reporter Mellissa Fung, a 28-day ordeal that finally came to an end Saturday, shouldn't be taken as a sign that the Taliban are running rampant and escalating activity against westerners.
In fact, the simple truth of Afghanistan is that the vast majority of kidnappings are crimes of opportunity committed by local thugs and bandits in a desperately poor, lawless and extremely dangerous country.
In a land where the average yearly salary is about US$300, people live in refugee camps and most can't read, it's hardly surprising that criminals see westerners, Europeans and even wealthy Afghans as a way to make a quick buck.
Businesses that take credit cards in Afghanistan are few and far between, forcing many people to carry large amounts of cash. Word travels fast any time someone makes the mistake of flashing a large wad of U.S. bills, the currency of choice.
"We all know that the security situation in Afghanistan remains a challenging one and a big part of it is the activity of the criminal class," acknowledged Ron Hoffman, the Canadian ambassador to Afghanistan, who's stationed in Kabul.
There has been a rash of kidnappings involving journalists and aid workers, mostly by criminal gangs looking to collect ransom money. British journalist Sean Langan was grabbed at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in June and released three months later after a ransom was paid.
Dutch journalist Joanie de Rijke, who was kidnapped by suspected Taliban rebels near Kabul a week ago, was freed Friday.
Afghanistan is far from being the only place where abduction is rampant. Kidnapping has been big business in Colombia for years, and it was in Somalia where Canadian freelance journalist Amanda Lindhout, whose whereabouts remain unknown, was kidnapped last August.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper acknowledged the dangers of Afghanistan during a news conference Saturday in Ottawa.
"At all times, Afghanistan is a dangerous place - not merely for foreigners, but Afghanistan is a dangerous place for Afghans," Harper said.
"It is an extremely dangerous country; that's why we're there, to try and lessen those dangers. It is particularly dangerous not just for foreign journalists, it is extremely dangerous for Afghan journalists, for anybody who exercises the freedoms we take for granted."
Hoffman said Afghan criminals typically prey on their own people, but their tactics seem to have changed in recent months.
"Afghans themselves are the principal victims of that criminality," Hoffman said.
"That being said, there appears to have been a spike in targeting of internationals, certainly by virtue of some of the kidnappings and attacks we've seen in recent weeks."
In any event, it's too early to call it a trend, he added.
"Kidnapping is a broad-based criminal activity that involves a wide range of victims."
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Two Spanish soldiers killed in Afghanistan: defence ministry
Sun Nov 9, 7:10 am ET
MADRID (AFP) – Two Spanish soldiers were killed and another critically wounded by a suicide bomber in Herat, western Afghanistan, the Spanish Defence Ministry said Sunday.
"Two Spanish soldiers were killed and another was critically wounded in an attack south of Herat," a ministry spokesman said.
Defence Minister Carme Chacon would speak to the media about the incident at noon Sunday, he added.
Earlier Sunday Afghan police said one foreign soldier had been killed and five wounded when a suicide attacker rammed an explosives-filled minivan into a NATO-led convoy.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) confirmed the attack but was unable immediately to give details or nationalities.
Spain has 800 soldiers in ISAF, which numbers more than 50,000 men fighting alongside US troops against the Taliban, who were chased from power in 2001.
Police had initially said the troops involved were Italian but the Italian defence ministry in Rome told AFP none of its soldiers had been involved.
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Govt to wait and see on Obama's Afghanistan plans: Miliband
LONDON (AFP) – The government will not necessarily follow suit if US President-elect Barack Obama sends more troops to Afghanistan as part of an Iraq-style 'surge', Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Sunday.
Obama indicated during his election campaign that he wanted to increase the US presence in Afghanistan while beginning a phased withdrawal from Iraq.
Britain already has 8,000 troops in Afghanistan, fighting Taliban extremists in the south of the country.
Asked if Obama's plans to step up the pace of operations in Afghanistan would require an increase in Britain's commitment there, Miliband told the BBC: "Not necessarily, no."
He added: "We will look at what new American deployments are going to be. President-elect Obama has said he wants two new brigades to go in, there are an extra 1,500 French troops and the Germans are increasing the number of their troops.
"As the second-largest contributor of troops in Afghanistan, the first thing we say is that we don't want to bear an unfair share of the burden.
"The second thing we say is that more foreign troops on their own are not going to provide the answer in Afghanistan. It needs to be an approach that combines a serious security presence with the development of the country."
Miliband said the lesson learned from Iraq had been that military might alone would not win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people.
"It's got to be a civilian surge as well as a military surge. That is the lesson from Iraq as well as Afghanistan," he said.
Britain is expected to scale down its involvement in Iraq next year, but the head of the armed forces, Jock Stirrup, said he would oppose troops being transferred from there to Afghanistan.
"I have said for a very long time that the British armed forces are stretched," he said in a BBC interview.
"We are doing more than we are structured and resourced to do in the long term. We can do it for a short period, but we can't continue doing it ad infinitum.
"So it can't be -- even if the situation demanded it -- just a one-for-one transfer from Iraq to Afghanistan. We have to reduce that tempo."
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US diplomat says relations with Afghanistan good
By JASON STRAZIUSO, Associated Press Writer – Sat Nov 8, 3:33 pm ET
KABUL, Afghanistan – A top American diplomat said Saturday he did not believe tensions over civilian casualties have damaged relations between the U.S. and Afghanistan.
Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher said U.S. troops in the country are doing everything they can to avoid killing civilians in the fight against Taliban and al-Qaida militants.
"I think we also understand together with our Afghan partners that we're dealing with an enemy that often deliberately embeds itself in villages ... and so it's very difficult to avoid these incidents," Boucher said.
"No village wants to be left as a playground for the Taliban. These people unfortunately have had the experience of living under the Taliban in their villages, and I don't think anyone wants to repeat that," he said.
Civilian deaths have caused increasing friction between the Afghan government and the U.S. An Afghan commission found that an August operation by U.S. forces killed 90 civilians in the village of Azizabad. The U.S. originally said no civilians died; a high-level investigation later concluded 33 civilians were killed.
Boucher's remarks followed those of a U.S. official who said Friday the military has firsthand knowledge the Taliban hoped to cause civilian deaths by forcing the Afghans to stay in their villages. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release details of internal discussions.
Insurgents have always used populated areas for cover in conflicts such as Iraq and Afghanistan. But the U.S. claim Friday represents the first detailed intelligence on an apparent Taliban strategy to bring innocent lives into the crossfire, the official told The Associated Press.
The official said the U.S. had "firsthand" knowledge that Taliban fighters held a wedding party captive and fired on U.S. forces in an attack designed to draw U.S. airstrikes on civilians and stoke anti-American sentiment.
The official declined to give further details of the reported events leading to the U.S. operation on Monday in the southern Afghan village Wech Baghtu.
A joint U.S.-Afghan investigation found that American forces battling Taliban militants killed 37 Afghan civilians and wounded 35 at the wedding party, a U.S. military statement said Saturday. The battle also killed 26 insurgents.
In another sign of the sensitivity over civilian casualties, the U.S. military said Saturday its forces held their fire during a battle with militants in order to avoid hitting civilians that may have been in the area.
The military its forces killed 10 militants in multiple operations Friday in eastern Afghanistan. But during one engagement in Nangarhar province, U.S. troops decided not to fire because of nearby civilians, it said in a statement.
Separately, gunmen ambushed and killed the chief government official of Taywara district in Ghor province Saturday, said provincial police chief Gen. Shah Jahan Noori. Taliban and other militants often attack government officials in an attempt to destabilize the government.
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U.S. acknowledges 37 Afghan civilians killed in fighting last week
The response to Afghan officials' claims is unusually swift. But the military stops short of taking direct blame for the casualties.
By M. Karim Faiez and Laura King Los Angeles Times - Sat Nov 8, 2:49 pm EST
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Istanbul, Turkey -- The U.S. military acknowledged Saturday that 37 civilians were killed and 35 injured during fighting last week in Kandahar province between insurgents and coalition forces.
Although the American statement stopped short of taking direct blame for civilian casualties in a southern province that is one of the country's most active battlefields, it demonstrated an unusually swift public response to claims of mass casualties made by Afghan officials.
The finding came just three days after provincial officials and the Afghan president's office asserted that three dozen people had died in an errant U.S. airstrike on a wedding party in a village outside the city of Kandahar.
The city, the main population center in Afghanistan's south, was the onetime stronghold of the Taliban. Militants and coalition forces clash almost daily in surrounding Kandahar province, which is a center of Afghanistan's drug trade.
The new head of the U.S. Central Command, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, responsible for American forces across the Middle East, was in Afghanistan last week to look at ways to revamp the Western military strategy in the wake of a dramatic resurgence by Taliban-led militants over the last two years. During his visit, Afghan defense officials told him that civilian casualties were sharply eroding public support for the presence of foreign forces.
The deaths and injuries of noncombatants also have become an extremely sensitive issue between the U.S.-backed government of President Hamid Karzai and Western forces.
On Wednesday, hours after Sen. Barack Obama won the U.S. presidential election, Karzai used what was to have been a congratulatory news conference to plead with the president-elect for an end to civilian fatalities.
The investigation of the deaths in Wech Bagtu village was carried out by Afghan officials, the Afghan army and the U.S.-led coalition, the American military said in the statement. That is a departure from the days when U.S. officials were sometimes reluctant to involve Afghan authorities in such inquiries, though such cooperation has become more common.
In releasing the findings, the U.S. military emphasized that during the battle Monday militants used villagers' homes for cover.
"Village elders told the joint investigation team that insurgentswho were not from their village . . . fired at [Afghan] and coalition forces," the statement said. Residents were prevented from leaving the area during the battle, it said.
The military did not directly acknowledge that it inadvertently bombed the wedding party, but said coalition forces used "close air support to suppress enemy fire."
Compensation was paid to the families of the dead and injured, the military said without providing details.
The prompt investigation and findings stood in sharp contrast to some recent high-profile cases involving civilian casualties. Afghans were infuriated when the Americans took weeks to investigate claims by the Afghan government and the United Nations that 90 people, most of them women and children, were killed in an Aug. 22 airstrike in the western province of Herat.
After initially saying that five civilians were killed, a U.S. investigation concluded that 33 civilians had died. But that finding was made six weeks after the airstrike, and the high-level investigation was launched only after videos surfaced that appeared to show large numbers of civilian dead.
"Civilians getting caught in the crossfire is the worst possible thing that could happen," U.S. Army Col. Gregory Julian said of last week's deaths in Kandahar. "We regret this tragic loss of innocent lives."
Afghan weddings are traditionally large, drawn-out affairs, and wedding parties several times have been the target of errant airstrikes, in part because from the air the gatherings can appear similar to concentrations of Taliban fighters.
In Afghanistan's clan-based society, civilian deaths can cause otherwise peaceable villagers to declare a vendetta against those they consider responsible for killing their kin -- in many cases, Western forces.
More than 1,200 civilians have been killed this year. A majority of the deaths were caused by insurgent attacks such as suicide bombings, but human rights groups and Afghan officials say hundreds have died at the hands of foreign forces during fighting with the Taliban and other militant groups.
Faiez is a special correspondent and King is a Times staff writer.
laura.king@latimes.com
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Stolen UN vehicle raises security worries in Kabul
Associated Press - November 9, 2008 3:03 AM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - A police official says authorities are searching for a United Nations vehicle stolen from the Kabul airport Saturday.
There are worries militants could use the SUV as a car bomb, or to ferry attackers close to sensitive sites.
The main U.N. compound in Kabul is on the road to the presidential palace. The road is secured by a gate and armed guards, but U.N. vehicles are usually waved through check points quickly.
It's not known if the vehicle was stolen by thieves or if it was an inside job by a U.N. staff member or relative.
The police official says the missing vehicle is being treated as a highly sensitive issue, and police commanders had been instructed to keep quiet about it.
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Pakistani airstrike kills 14 Taliban militants: official
Sun Nov 9, 3:18 am ET
KHAR, Pakistan (AFP) – At least 14 militants were killed Sunday when Pakistani jets pounded suspected Taliban hide-outs in a restive tribal area bordering Afghanistan, officials said.
Jets fired at the towns of Damadola, Harkai and Siprai in Bajaur district where Pakistani forces have clashed with Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants for the past three months, local administration official Jamil Khan told AFP.
"According to reports received here airstrikes have killed 14 militants and destroyed several underground bunkers and ammunition dumps used by them," local government official Mohammad Jamil told AFP.
Pakistan's tribal belt became a safe haven for hundreds of extremists who fled Afghanistan after the US-led toppling of the hardline Taliban regime in late 2001 and have since set up training camps.
Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri escaped a raid by an unmanned CIA plane in Damadola in January 2004, Pakistani officials have said.
Egyptian-born Zawahiri, who has a 25-million-dollar US bounty on his head, is said to have secretly visited the area in the past, according to Pakistani security officials.
The Pakistani military said last month that around 1,500 rebels and 73 soldiers had died while hundreds more militants were captured since the military launched an operation in Bajaur in August.
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Military chief warns against moving troops direct from Iraq to Afghanistan
Head of defence staff says British armed forces need time to recover after years of deployment in war zones
Jenny Percival and agencies guardian.co.uk, Sunday November 9 2008 13.26 GMT
Troops should not be transferred directly from Iraq to Afghanistan after a "significant reduction" is made to the British contingent there next year, the head of the armed forces said today.
Sir Jock Stirrup, the chief of the defence staff, said it was crucial for the armed forces to experience a reduction in "operational tempo" in order to recover from several years of being overstretched.
His comments came as the foreign secretary, David Miliband, indicated that the UK, whose 8,100 troops in Afghanistan make it the second largest contributor to the international force, would expect other Nato countries to take up a bigger share of the burden in any US-led "surge".
The US president-elect, Barack Obama, is preparing to order a significant increase in troop numbers in Afghanistan in the hope of quelling the Taliban insurgency in the country.
Miliband said this would "not necessarily" require an increase in the size of Britain's commitment there.
"As the second-largest contributor of troops in Afghanistan, the first thing we say is that we don't want to bear an unfair share of the burden. The second thing we say is that more foreign troops on their own are not going to provide the answer in Afghanistan," Miliband told BBC1's Andrew Marr Show.
Obama has also pledged to withdraw US troops from Iraq by 2012. The majority of British troops are expected to return home by the middle of next year. No official timetable has been set but an official announcement is expected by Christmas.
Stirrup said he was "optimistic" that 2009 will see a "significant reduction" in the UK's 4,000-strong contingent in Iraq, as the fundamental change of mission promised by Gordon Brown comes into effect.
But he cautioned that this will not mean that thousands more servicemen and women become available for deployment to Afghanistan.
"I have said for a very long time that the British armed forces are stretched. We are doing more than we are structured and resourced to do in the long term. We can do it for a short period, but we can't continue doing it ad infinitum," Stirrup said.
"We have to put ourselves back into balance. It is crucial that we reduce the operational tempo for our armed forces.
"So it can't be - even if the situation demanded it - just a one-for-one transfer from Iraq to Afghanistan. We have to reduce that tempo."
He warned that the struggle in Afghanistan was "a marathon, not a sprint", adding: "We need to be there at the finishing line."
He said he was cautious about the so-called "surge" being seen as a panacea but said it was clear more military force was needed in Afghanistan.
"In the context of what we are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, we are shouldering a burden which is more than we are able to shoulder in the long term, so we expect the others to take up their share of that burden," said Stirrup.
The shadow foreign secretary, William Hague, said he believed the bulk of British troops would be pulled out of Iraq next year and also warned that Britain made a "disproportionate contribution" to the Nato effort in Afghanistan.
He told Sky News: "I think by this time next year, British troops will have been pulled out of Iraq, other than some who may remain for training and other special operations. But I think the bulk of the troops will have been pulled out and we will be supportive of that in the opposition."
He added: "We do need the rest of Nato to play its part in Afghanistan and undoubtedly it seems that Barack Obama does intend to send larger US forces and that is part of what is necessary in Afghanistan," said Hague.
Miliband and Stirrup both ruled out the commitment of British troops to the peacekeeping force in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. "That is not on the agenda," said Miliband.
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Seven pointless years in Afghanistan
A negotiated settlement with the Taliban would precipitate the end of an unwinnable conflict
Robert Skidelsky guardian.co.uk, Sunday November 9 2008 13.00 GMT
Seven years after the beginning of the American-led bombardment of Afghanistan the Taliban are still fighting. Some 50 insurgents died recently in an assault on Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province. Osama bin Laden is nowhere to be found. Has the time come for NATO to declare victory and leave?
Recently, a French diplomatic cable relating a conversation on September 2 between the French ambassador to Afghanistan, Francois Fitou, and his British colleague, Sherard Cowper-Coles, was leaked in Le Canard Enchainé, a French satirical magazine. Cowper-Coles was reported to have said that the security situation in Afghanistan was deteriorating, that NATO's presence was making it worse, and that the two American presidential hopefuls should be dissuaded from getting bogged down further. The only realistic policy would be to cultivate an "acceptable dictator." Of course, the British foreign office denied that these thoughts reflected the British government's views.
The departing commander of British forces in Afghanistan, Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, has claimed that defeating the Taliban was "neither feasible nor supportable." Two days after making that gloomy assessment, the French chief of the defence staff, General Jean-Louis Georgelin, followed suit. And Kai Eide, the UN Secretary-General's special representative in Afghanistan, has agreed that the situation cannot be stabilised by military means alone. All call for a concerted political effort implying some form of negotiation with the Taliban.
A draft report by US intelligence agencies has also concluded that Afghanistan is in a "downward spiral" and casts serious doubt on the Afghan government's ability to stem the Taliban's resurgence. Moreover, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia hosted a Ramadan breakfast for the Afghan government and Taliban representatives. Predictably, both parties deny that any serious negotiations took place, while the US and Britain claimed to know nothing about this "Saudi initiative." But Afghan defence minister Abdul Rahim Wardak subsequently said that resolution of the conflict required a "political settlement" with the Taliban.
Yet at the recent NATO summit in Budapest, US defence secretary Robert Gates called on NATO members to provide more troops for missions in Afghanistan. He accused the British of being "defeatist" and argued that Afghanistan's deteriorating security situation could be addressed with an Iraq-style "surge," which has undoubtedly brought down violence levels in that country. The Americans have already committed 8,000 extra troops for next year.
So there seems to be a split. The British and French are busy briefing, and preparing to scale down their commitments in Afghanistan. They believe that boosting allied forces will only increase the sense of occupation and give the Taliban more targets. The emergence of a "realistic dictator" might allow NATO to withdraw most of its troops within a few years.
But the Americans want a "surge," and the US general commanding NATO forces in the country said last month that he needed three more brigades, some 15,000 troops in all, and Gates has asked the Europeans either to send or pay for them. The Americans recognise the importance of courting those Taliban leaders they believe to be motivated by tribal loyalties rather than religious ideology, but they oppose the latest Afghan policy of negotiating directly and officially with the Taliban.
Barack Obama advocates increasing troop levels in Afghanistan above the levels that the Bush administration has already pledged. Obama has that said he would send troops from Iraq as an urgent priority and made it a campaign issue to criticise the Bush administration for neglecting Afghanistan and diverting resources needed there to the misguided war in Iraq.
What candidates promise on the stump is not always what they do in office. In the second presidential debate, Obama said, "We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al-Qaeda." Are his patriotic credentials strong enough for him to renege on this pledge and pursue negotiations to withdraw without capturing the talismanic Osama? What would a US withdrawal mean for Afghanistan, for Pakistan, and for the future of NATO? To retreat from its first major "out of area" mission would be a damaging blow for the alliance.
And what about the British? Have they suddenly remembered the unsustainable cost of fighting asymmetric conflicts? Afghanistan has never been a place any foreign army could stay for long. The British were burned there twice (1840-01, 1878-80). So were the Russians.
Rudyard Kipling got his arithmetic right in 1886:
'No proposition Euclid wrote,
No formulae the text-books know,
Will turn the bullet from your coat,
Or ward the tulwar's downward blow
Strike hard who cares – shoot straight who can –
The odds are on the cheaper man'
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U.S. electricity project forges ahead despite Afghan terrain and Taliban
By Carlotta Gall Sunday, November 9, 2008 International Herald Tribune
KAJAKI DAM, Afghanistan: Five shipping containers marked with the Afghan flag, some of them still wrapped in plastic, now sit in the construction camp at Kajaki Dam, Afghanistan's biggest hydroelectric project.
They hold the United States government's largest single gift to Afghanistan of the past seven years: massive pieces of a 200-ton hydroelectric turbine that, when installed, will double the electricity supply to the towns and districts of southern Afghanistan.
The $180 million project, which includes distribution lines and substations, is intended to reach 1.8 million people and provide jobs and economic renewal to the most troubled and violent part of the country.
The governor of Helmand Province, Gulab Mangal, paid a brief visit by helicopter to the dam in his province in October to emphasize its importance. Speaking to reporters over the roar of the water, he said that even if the immediate benefits were not apparent, future generations would appreciate the assistance coming into Afghanistan. "The children of Afghanistan will not forget the work done for this power station," he said.
The Chinese-made turbine remains in its packing cases, and it will not be installed and working for perhaps a year. But its arrival in this isolated camp, deep inside Taliban territory, was one of the great feats of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan this year.
It has been a rare instance of a fulfilled promise in the effort to build up Afghanistan's infrastructure. But even with the step forward, the improvements to the dam, in an inaccessible area of northern Helmand Province, are still being held hostage by the Taliban's growing ability to mount offensives in recent years. The overall power project has been repeatedly delayed because of the difficulty of security and logistics. And the rest of the original $500 million proposal to augment the capacity of the dam itself has not been approved, cast in doubt by the Taliban's gains.
"In the case of the Kajaki Dam or others, the security situation impedes the delivery of the service," the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, William Wood, said in Washington in June. "The reason that there isn't more light at night and more warmth in winter for south Afghanistan is because the Taliban has not let us do everything, work as effectively as we'd like to on the Kajaki Dam."
This has been the deadliest year for NATO and Afghan forces in Afghanistan since the invasion in late 2001, as Taliban insurgents have attacked persistently, in particular with ambushes and roadside bombs. The offensive has severely curtailed efforts by NATO and the Afghan government to expand their control from towns into the countryside.
As the summer fighting dragged on, it became clear that 19,000 foreign troops deployed in the southern provinces, alongside thousands more Afghan soldiers and police officers, were in a stalemate with the insurgents, as one senior NATO commander put it. It looked as if Usaid's project to develop the Kajaki Dam would be put on hold for yet another year.
Then in late August, NATO exercised some muscle. More than 4,000 British, American, Canadian, Danish, Australian and Afghan troops combined forces to cut and secure a road through 160 kilometers, or 100 miles, of hostile territory to move the equipment and turbine parts that were too heavy to be airlifted up to Kajaki.
The cargo convoy, which included 100 vehicles and carried the turbine in seven containers weighing up to 30 tons each, took five days to struggle through the mountains amid a strict news blackout. Heavy fighting took place in villages south of the dam, including aerial bombardment, but the convoy took a different route and arrived in early September without damage.
The huge operation was criticized in the British news media, which questioned the exposure of British soldiers to such high risk to save a U.S. government assistance project.
Yet for the Afghans employed here, and the frustrated residents of cities like Kandahar, who have lived with barely a few hours of electricity a day for the past seven years, NATO was belatedly meeting its commitment to bring development to southern Afghanistan.
"It is slow," said Sayed Rasoul, 52, an employee at the Kajaki power plant for 28 years and now its chief engineer. "We have a difficulty with transport."
Rasoul is now in charge of the next stage, with a U.S. engineer, George Wilder, 62, who works for the American contractors in charge of the project, the Louis Berger Group. They work and live in a small construction camp next to the dam, protected by a battalion of British and Afghan soldiers who keep the Taliban, who hold the surrounding villages, at bay. Everything the workers and soldiers need comes by helicopters that fly high over the brown, barren mountains and then spiral down over the green-blue reservoir into the camp to avoid enemy fire.
Yet Wilder, who said he was pulled out of retirement to do the job at Kajaki, vowed he would stay until the new turbine was up and running. If all goes well, that should be by next August, he said.
"Of course, security will be humongous," he said. "But we will drive on with it one way or another."
The British troops have pushed the Taliban back far enough that the rocket attacks that forced the foreign contractors to pull out in 2006 are now rare, Wilder said.
"We have good nights and bad nights," he said, saying the worst were when British troops on night patrol fired mortars from the camp to cover their movements as they pulled back from a fight. The camp itself rarely comes under fire anymore, he said. "There is no danger here," he added.
Extraordinarily, Afghan workers have kept the power station running throughout the past 30 years of war and upheaval, and even now have negotiated with the Taliban so they can travel to work from their villages.
Rasoul leads a team of 43 workers, most of whom are white-bearded older men who have been working at the dam since it was built in 1975.
The Taliban hold sway in the countryside around the dam and even charge people for electricity, so they can be persuaded to let the workers keep the power plant running, the workers said.
"We do not have a problem with anyone," Rasoul said. "We tell them we are working and producing electricity for everyone in the villages and towns."
The work in the months ahead involves repairing one of the existing American Westinghouse turbines and installing the new Chinese one. But workers also need to survey and lay new transmission lines through Taliban-controlled country to Kandahar.
Mangal said he was confident that could be done through a mixture of force and persuasion.
"Firstly, we will extend the security with the support of the brave soldiers of our national forces," he said. "But secondly, we will try to win the hearts and minds of the people and tell them how important this power station is. I am sure they will support us."
Canadian journalist freed
A Canadian television journalist abducted and held for nearly four weeks in Afghanistan has been freed after Afghan tribal leaders persuaded her kidnappers to release her, officials said, The Associated Press reported from Kabul.
Mellissa Fung, a reporter for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. on her second visit to Afghanistan, was taken hostage Oct. 12 after reporting in a refugee camp in Kabul. She was freed Saturday after tribal elders and provincial council members negotiated her release, said Adam Khan Serat, a spokesman for the provincial governor in Wardak. Serat said there was no ransom involved.
Western news organizations in Afghanistan, including The Associated Press, had been aware of Fung's abduction, but the CBC requested that her case not be publicized for safety considerations while officials tried to negotiate her release.
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Canada buys wheat seeds to give Afghan farmers alternative to poppies
Ethan Baron , Canwest News Service Saturday, November 08, 2008
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Canada is providing $1.2 million to buy wheat seeds and fertilizer for thousands of Afghan farmers, but the Taliban warn they may attack any foreigners who attempt to distribute the seeds.
The money will pay for 293 tonnes of wheat seed, to supply more than 5,000 farmers with 50 kilograms each, and plant a total of 2,000 hectares of land.
"We look forward to working with the governor of Kandahar to sow these seeds of peace," said Elissa Golberg, Representative of Canada in Kandahar, head of Canadian development operations in Kandahar province.
The project is intended to raise farm yields, and give growers an alternative to the lucrative poppy trade, said Kandahar Gov. Rahmatullah Raoufi.
"We are going to avoid and prevent farmers from the poppy cultivation," Raoufi said.
Farmers have good reasons to switch from growing poppies to growing wheat, said Abdul Hai Niamati, Director of Agriculture for Kandahar province.
Pressure from other nations concerned about opium production, and from the Afghan government, provides a disincentive, Niamati said.
"The government says that if anyone grows poppy they will be punished, and their poppy will be killed," Niamati said. "If they grow poppy, the government will make trouble for them."
Also, wheat prices are increasing, and "that is why people are wanting to grow wheat," Niamati said.
Poppy cultivation also takes more time, labour, and water than growing wheat, Niamati said.
The Taliban won't target farmers who switch from poppies to wheat, but may take violent action if it's done by the wrong people, said Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.
"We are not against wheat growing. There will be no threat or concern for farmers who are sowing wheat in their lands," Mujahid said. "However if the government authority or foreigners come down to the districts for the purpose of distributing wheat seeds, we might attack them.
"If the seeds are being distributed by local community people or tribal elders or through ordinary people, it doesn't matter, there will be no problem."
Raoufi said the provincial government will set up a provincial-level commission, and district-level commissions, which will determine how the seeds are distributed, and monitor the distribution.
Seeds will go to farmers in five districts - Daman, Arghandab, Panjwaii, Maywand, and Zhari - who meet the minimum farm-size requirement, have the ability to irrigate, and are in need. Much of the region is a hotbed of Taliban activity, with Canadian troops having daily skirmishes with insurgents in some areas.
Mercy Corps, a U.S.-based aid group, will oversee the program, Raoufi said. Farmers will pay 25 per cent of the value of the seeds they receive, and that revenue will go into development work to be determined by Mercy Corps, Niamati said.
Niamati said the provincial government would like to see that money go to develop a wheat-seed farm at Tarnak Farm outside Kandahar, former home of Osama bin Laden, and the site of an April 2002 friendly-fire incident in which an American pilot killed Canadian soldiers Pte. Richard Green, Pte. Nathan Smith, Cpl. Ainsworth Dyer and Sgt. Marc Leger.
Vancouver Province
ebaron@theprovince.com
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Elusive threats boost PTSD risk in Afghanistan
Stefania Moretti CTV.ca News November 8, 2008
Canadian troops fighting in Afghanistan are up against two dangerous adversaries. The first, the elusive enemy; the second, the less-tangible threat of mental breakdown.
Indeed, new studies suggest soldiers deployed to Afghanistan are more likely to suffer from mental illness because of the high degree of uncertainty that characterizes the NATO-led mission.
Traditionally, wars have been fought on the front lines of the battlefield with an identifiable enemy in uniform. But in Afghanistan, the enemy is "elusive," said one mental health expert. Threat can come from anywhere.
Afghanistan has been described as a 360-degree war with virtually no safe zone. Suicide bombers dressed in civilian garb, improvised explosive devices strewn across the treacherous "Highway of Death" connecting Kabul and Kandahar and entire communities surrounded by deadly land mines means soldiers face around-the-clock danger.
As a result, Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan are likely at higher risk of developing post-traumatic disorder than their comrades serving in other missions, Dr. Alain Brunet, of the Douglas Research Centre and McGill University, recently told CTV.ca in a telephone interview from Montreal.
British troops sent to Afghanistan last year were nine times more likely to suffer from PTSD, according to that country's Ministry of Defence in a study released this month. Most British troops are stationed in Helmand province -- a less volatile region than Canadians stationed in the Taliban hotbed of Kandahar province.
Veterans Affairs Canada pegs the number of Canadian war vets who will experience PTSD as high as 10 per cent.
But the figure only represents former soldiers, and does not reflect soldiers currently on duty in Afghanistan, where the risk of PTSD is likely much different, Brunet said.
As many as 28 per cent of troops come back from armed combat with one or more mental health issues, according to data complied by the head of the Canadian military's deployment health section last year. Of those:
- seventeen per cent exhibited signs of high-risk drinking
- five per cent showed symptoms of PTSD
- five per cent had signs of serious depression
Since the mission in Afghanistan began in 2002, the number of Veterans Affairs members with a PTSD condition has more than tripled, up from roughly 1,800 to 6,500, according to a Veterans Affairs briefing note obtained by The Canadian Press in March. Veterans Affairs expect the numbers will continue to climb with troops scheduled to stay until at least 2011.
In 2007, the number of suicides among regular and reserve members of the Canadian Forces rose to 36, the highest in more than a decade, military police records from earlier this year show.
There is a sense that there has been a recent surge in PTSD, and it can be attributed to a number of factors, Brunet said.
The spike in military PTSD cases may also stem from fewer cases going unreported, thanks to education and screening programs implemented by the army in recent years.
Within two months of returning from a tour of duty in Afghanistan soldiers undergo a mandatory PTSD assessment followed by several weeks off and counseling.
Brunet, whose research focuses on the risk and remission factors associated with the disorder, said an officer with PTSD symptoms should not be re-deployed because the risks are "cumulative."
"The more you go (to Afghanistan) the more likely you are to develop the disease," he said, adding the diagnosis of PTSD in the army is "amazingly important."
Dozens of soldiers have already completed two tours of duty in Afghanistan, and some could face a third if the mission is extended.
But significant barriers preventing PTSD diagnoses among soldiers remain, despite efforts made by the Canadian Armed Forces to educate soldiers about the disease.
Having PTSD can be a career-ender for a soldier, Brunet said.
A combination of this fear of dismissal from duty and the "macho culture" that permeates the force makes officers hesitate to disclose their problems, Brunet said. "We are sending mixed messages."
The "hallmark" of PTSD is persistent nightmares, but symptoms can also include, flashbacks, gaps in memory, detachment from loved ones, little control over impulses, problems concentrating, anger and irritability.
Although it's natural to experience any or all of these symptoms after witnessing a traumatic event, PTSD sufferers become incapacitated by their frequency and severity.
"Personally, I wouldn't want to have a comrade working with me and to have to rely on someone with PTSD," Brunet said.
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UN appreciates India's USD 12 million contribution to Afghan
November 8, 2008
New York (PTI): The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has welcomed a USD 12 million contribution from New Delhi that will be used to provide fortified biscuits made from Indian wheat for 1.2 million school children in Afghanistan.
"Thanks to this generous donation from India, more than one and a half million school children in Afghanistan will be receiving these fortified biscuits at school. We already provide more than two million children with food assistance in schools and also take rations for more than a million girls in Afghan schools," Emilia Casella WFP spokesperson said.
The biscuits, which were produced in India, will be shipped to Afghanistan through Pakistan. This marks a major transportation breakthrough, opening a new route for humanitarian aid from India to Afghanistan, the food agency said.
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Lack of jobs 'pushes Afghans into Talib hands'
Written by www.quqnoos.com Sunday, 09 November 2008
Jobless refugees turfed out of Iran turn to lives of crime, officials say
RISING unemployment has forced many people living in the south-western province of Nimroz to turn to crime, militancy or drugs for money, officials say.
The mass influx of Afghan refugees booted out of Iran in the past month has also put a strain on infrastructure in the province, authorities in Nimroz say.
About 30,000 illegal Afghan immigrants have been ordered out of Iran since the start of October for not having work permits.
The returnees say they are willing to work in Nirmoz for $2 a day, but they complain that there are no jobs available for them.
The governor of Nimroz, Ghulam Dastagir Azad, said the Iranian government was deporting about 1,000 Afghans every day.
He said most of them do not have the money to go back to their own provinces and so they stay in Nimroz, turning to the Taliban or drug smugglers for cash.
Rising insecurity in the province has also forced investors to leave the region, the governor says.
The last stretch of road linking the provincial capital Zaranj with Iran’s southern seaport of Chabahar was completed earlier this year amid hopes that the new transport link would boost trade between the two countries and investment in the region.
Iran’s authorities have also said they have started to deport Afghans who have work permits but no passports.
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Laghman residents bemoan poor roads
Written by www.quqnoos.com Saturday, 08 November 2008
Governor apologises for lack of good roads, clinics and schools
Hundreds of Laghman residents today demanded an improvement in local infrastructure.
The protestors, most from rural areas in the eastern province, asked for improved roads, healthcare and education facilities.
Poor roads prevent them from getting sick family members to the few clinics in the area quickly, they said.
The province’s governor regrets the problems and promises to improve the road network shortly, he said.
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Talk is cheap - Gap-e moft
The Guardian By Nushin Arbabzadah 11/08/2008
While preaching human rights, President Karzai panders to a public that wants to see criminals hang
"I don't give a damn about human rights or foreign opinion. As long as I'm around, if a court orders the death sentence I'll make sure the sentence is carried out," said President Karzai in a speech recently.
Here's a finger-wagging Karzai reassuring his audience of around 400 women representatives from 34 provinces that the president will sort out serious crime.
The women had come together for the first nationwide meeting of the Women's Council, from among whom a smaller group had requested the death penalty for violent criminals and rapists. In other words, the kind of people who the Afghan president has regularly pardoned, depriving his people of much-needed justice. Afghans have a term for the sort of speech that the president delivered at the meeting. It's called gap-e moft or cheap talk. Karzai's a fluent speaker of gap-e moft. That's why, when a newspaper published his words, it made sure to add the following sarcastic comment: Lucky Us!.
Let's go back to the key terms in Karzai's sentence: human rights, foreign opinion and the death sentence. Two's company, three's a crowd! The Afghan public's increasing demand for capital punishment clashes with human rights and international expectations. Karzai is caught between the two, "walking on foot between two mules" as the Afghan saying goes.
So far, Karzai has opted for keeping his European allies happy at the cost of upsetting his own people. In the words of one newspaper: "To please his European allies and in his own words 'to ensure human rights', the president ignored dozens of death sentences, so public hangings could not be carried out and we failed to teach criminals a lesson."
That Karzai's European allies reject capital punishment is understandable. After all, ensuring human rights is the moral cornerstone of post-Taliban Afghanistan and the EU cannot be expected to endorse the death penalty. The question is why does the Afghan public ask for harsh methods of punishment even though such methods are in breach of human rights?
Some sense of the urgency of the current crime situation in Afghanistan can be gained from recent captions from the local press: "Men who kidnapped late king's relative had just left prison"; "police academy professor killed in shoot-out with armed kidnappers"; "20-year-old woman and leader of kidnapping gang arrested in Helmand"; "the capital is no longer safe; people miss Taliban in face of increasing crime"; "increase in kidnapping of investors and businessmen serious threat to economic development, says the head of chambers of commerce"; "on the fourth day of strike, Herati traders close shops in protest against kidnapping".
Such events give us a sense of why the public has had enough and is now demanding capital punishment for serious crimes. President Karzai seems to have understood this and taken action. His first step was to replace the interior minister. His next step was to plan to create a special force trained to tackle hostage situations.
Both actions were late in coming and were clearly a reaction to the kidnapping of a prominent, high-society figure, a distant relative of the late king, Zaher Shah. This is typical of the Afghan leadership. It reacts only when the threat is personal.
So now that human rights are no longer an excuse for miscarriages of justice and the president has given his word to tackle crime, will Afghans feel safer in their daily lives? The answer is no. In the words of one editorial, the problem is not the police force but the judiciary. Criminals are regularly caught and arrested, but when they are handed over to the courts they're freed. "Like all our other government organs, our justice system is corrupt and incompetent," said Hasht-e Sobh newspaper, adding that the system "regularly frees repeated criminals, releasing them in return for bribes or because of personal connections." Hence, the paper asked, "How can we entrust the fate of a human being to such a judiciary?"
In singling out the judiciary, Hasht-e Sobh made a valid point. After all, the verdicts reached in the Afghan courts often ensure bully's rights instead of human rights. Let's take the recent example of Parviz Kambakhsh, an Afghan student of journalism, who was sentenced to 20 years. His crime? He downloaded an article from the internet which the court considered to be "un-Islamic".
His real crime, though, was naivety. He trusted the section of the Afghan constitution that stipulates citizens have a right to freedom of speech. It's a human right, after all, and what is supposed to be the heart and soul of Karzai's new Afghanistan.
Now compare Kambakhsh's sentence to that of the former chief of the secret police, Assadollah Sarwary. In 1979, during the early years of the Soviet-backed communist regime, Sarway served as the head of the notorious secret police. The following episode provides a glimpse of the Afghan communist regime's attitude to human rights. In a conversation between the then Soviet envoy Puzanov and Sarwary's boss, president Taraki, Puzanov asked Taraki to spare the lives of two communist officials who had been arrested. According to the records of the phone-tap set up by the KGB, Taraki's response was to say, "I agree that repressions are an extremely severe weapon. But Lenin taught us to be merciless towards the enemies of the revolution and millions of people had to be eliminated in order to secure the victory of the October Revolution."
A true servant of the cause, Sarwary followed these elimination orders to the letter. That's why in the words of a Kabul Press article, "The name Assadollah Sarwary is firmly knotted in the minds of thousands of Afghans to memories of torture and mass murder. Thousands of our fellow Afghans were arrested at Sarwary's orders, tortured in Pul-e Charkhi prison and shot dead en masse. You will find hardly any family that has not been made to mourn or suffer catastrophic losses at his hands."
Despite all this, what was the court's verdict on Sarwary? Nineteen years. That is, 365 days less than the time young Kambakhsh is going to spend in jail for downloading an internet article.
And so, in the good old Afghan fashion, once again the bully's rights were given precedence over human rights, despite the promises of the constitution. When Karzai was asked about the extraordinary leniency shown to Sarwary, he said that a certain European country heavily involved in aid for Afghanistan had spoken against the death sentence for him.
The human rights talk is again just gap-e moft.
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$1b smuggled to Afghanistan
Staff Reporter The Post, Pakistan 9 November 2008
ISLAMABAD: Around $1 billion has been illegally transferred to Afghanistan during the last two months which led to worsening the country's financial crisis, well-placed sources said. "Dollars are being shifted to Afghanistan at an alarming rate of $8-10 million on a daily basis. The government is trying to stop this illegal process", a senior government official told The Post.
Quoting official reports, he said, "This dollar smuggling was the main reason for a massive devaluation of the Pakistani rupee in the recent weeks.".
Not all the smuggled funds are for immediate use in Afghanistan, with large amounts being transferred to Dubai in the UAE. The government has blamed the present decline in the currency on the policy of its predecessor administration under Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, saying it maintained an artificially high rate of 60 and 62 rupees to the dollar. Pakistan officials are in talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a rescue package aimed at helping the country resolve balance of payments difficulties will face harsh demands rather than negotiating points. The United States is using the Washington-based and largely US-financed IMF as a tool to impose its own terms and conditions related to the 'war on terror' in which Pakistan has been declared by the US as a major theater of war.
"The IMF does not negotiate but dictates its terms and this time the US has in fact pressurized Pakistan to turn to the IMF by not giving much-needed cash to the country at the meeting last month of the Friends of Pakistan", says economist Shahid Hassan Siddiqi. The United States and Britain jointly launched an initiative to form 'Friends of Pakistan' last month as alarm grew over the country's gradual economic meltdown, with fears increasing that financial chaos may allow terrorists to deepen their roots in Pakistan.
The 'Friends' delegation includes representatives of the United States, Australia, Canada, Italy, Germany, Saudi Arabia, China, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Turkey. The group's first working session will be held in Abu Dhabi in the UAE on November 17.
The government says it has not yet formally asked the IMF for a loan facility and that it would borrow money from the IMF as its last option on its own terms and conditions. While talks with the IMF continue, the government is trying to build public opinion in favour of an IMF program. An IMF-assisted plan may require Islamabad to cut defense, development and other current spending and raise taxes, which could hurt the poor.
The government has already decided to bring non-taxpayer sectors into the tax net and to increase the tax-to-gross domestic product ratio to 15 percent from the present 10.5 percent.
Media reports suggest Pakistan may have a chance to skip IMF for the next few months as Saudi Arabia has committed to give $4 billion to the country and provide the oil facility on one-year deferred payments. Ostensibly, Saudi Arabia decided to help Pakistan in overcoming the economic quagmire during the recent meeting between King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz and President Asif Ali Zardari, Saudi Arabia is expected to make a formal announcement in this regard at the meeting of the 'Friends of Pakistan'.
Pakistan is aiming to accumulate $25 billion, which may be enough to bring the economy back on track for the next 10 years. Pakistan needs more than $5 billion within a month to meet its international obligations.
If, everything does not happen as planned, Pakistan will have to go to an IMF programme sooner or later under extremely tough conditions. Having nodded in affirmative, Pakistan will get $9.6 billion from the IMF during the next three years at a mark-up rate of 16.7 percent per annum.
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Bin Laden son under investigation at Cairo airport
The Associated Press Saturday, November 8, 2008
CAIRO, Egypt: The son of al-Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden was questioned at the Cairo airport by Egyptian officials on Saturday after his application for asylum in Spain was rejected, said an airport security official.
Omar Osama bin Laden sought asylum in Spain, claiming he wound not be safe if returned to an Arab country. Spain said his application did not meet its requirements. Bin Laden, 27, and his wife were then sent back to Egypt, where they have lived for the past year.
Egyptian officials said they were opening an investigation to determine what prompted the couple to seek political asylum in Spain.
The Egyptian airport official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press, said a decision had not yet been made to allow them in the country.
Zaina Alsabah, the younger bin Laden's 52-year-old British wife, told the Associated Press by phone that the couple had applied for asylum in Spain because their residency permits in Cairo were not renewed and they had been threatened.
"We knew we weren't safe, if we stayed (in Egypt) we would be imprisoned," she said. "Our lives are in danger, we've been threatened already. We've been threatened by two princes in the Bin Laden family."
The Bin Ladens are an influential construction family in Saudi Arabia. Alsabah has appealed to Saudi King Abdullah to protect them.
"We believe that the king could help us and the king could give us protection," she said.
The younger bin Laden, 27, flew to Spain on Monday with his wife and asked for asylum, spending a week in a transit area at Madrid's Barajas Airport while his case was considered.
Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba confirmed that bin Laden's son had been deported, saying his application for asylum did not meet any Spanish requirements. The Interior Ministry denied his bid on Wednesday, and turned back the appeal Friday night.
The government says it usually seeks a recommendation from the U.N. refugee agency in asylum request cases, and that the agency had also recommended against asylum.
Omar Osama bin Laden — one of the al-Qaida leader's 19 children — caused a tabloid storm last year after marrying a British woman, a 52-year-old who changed her name to Zaina Alsabah.
The couple have been living in Cairo. The younger bin Laden has not renounced his father, but has said he wants to be an "ambassador for peace" between the Muslim world and the West.
Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding in the Pakistan-Afghan border region.
The younger bin Laden moved to Afghanistan with his father in 1996 after living with him in Sudan, and trained at an al-Qaida camp. But Omar has said he has not seen his father since he left Afghanistan in 2000 and returned to his homeland of Saudi Arabia.
___
Associated Press Writer Jorge Sainz and Paul Haven in Madrid contributed to this report.
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